City Council - Regular Meeting

There are no changes to tonight's agenda and we move we approve the agenda as published.

Mr. Mayor. Councilman Overton. There are no changes to tonight's consent agenda. I move that we approve the consent agenda for the mayor to sign and the clerk to attest.

Thank you, there's just a question for Bill nary my understanding is under our ordinance it's pretty cut and dry and in terms of. That there's not any flexibility or discretion on on this.

Sorry, I was running behind earlier today.

Okay. Mr. Larry, if you would be so kind as to restate What you stated before, Mr. Dalton walked in, so he has the ability to understand what you said before he came into the room?

Mr. Mayor. Councilman Kavanaugh. Missionary question. So again, if somebody's charged but found not guilty or found innocent, they still would be pursued. They still would be impacted by this particular piece.

Mr. Mayor. Councilman Overton. If there's no other comments by members of council, I would move that we except the fact that we can't change what our code currently states. And as much as I understand exactly what you've come up here and said, unfortunately, the legal system has some avenues that allow you to get through it quicker. But unfortunately, they're considered guilty pleas when they happen. And we live with that result, and we don't have a choice in this matter. With that said, I would have I would move that we deny the appeal of the denial for the mobile sales unit license applicati

I appreciate you being here. I recognize you're trying to do your best to rehabilitate and be a productive member of society. That's noted and appreciated. Apologies that our code is so narrow that it won't grant you this type of an exception, but wish you well as you continue to pursue your endeavors.

Thank you, Chief. Is it okay if we're going with questions throughout? Okay. If you don't mind just going back, it may be actually this slide too, but help me understand the training data piece of this, because I think that's an important consideration that some of our citizens have about training. you know, we control our data, we own it. But, you know, is people's data being used to train artificial intelligence systems and things like that? And what does that mean by a full read versus a partial? Yeah.

Okay, so if we opt in to do that, they're getting partial license plate information. Yes. Is it redacted by us?

Okay, so the system itself provides them with a partial read and then...

And do we opt in? Because I didn't catch that part. Okay, so currently we do not opt in to use the data in Meridian for training purposes for the Amazon system. And even if we did, you're saying it would be partial plates. But in our current choice not to opt into that, is that a department policy? Is that part of, like, where does that decision...

Chief, I'm kind of the dinosaur up here, so all this technology is really cool, but I'm having a struggle trying to figure out how it all fits.

Can you just share with me, I mean, what are we capturing? What is this data? You've got a camera. When I hear camera, I think of a picture. But now we have data and partial plates.

And that then follow up castle and that then is stored as a picture of the vehicle and the license plate until. We choose to to transfer that tax on for their training purposes, we would send them a partial.

I feel like examples really help people. It might help me. I'm going to give you, please don't be offended. I'm going to give you an outlandish maybe example, but it could happen. Let's say crazy police officer Tim is stalking someone and not that that person exists or that there's anyone I know necessarily named Tim who would do that, but Let's say that they're stalking someone and they're interested to log into the Axon system to find out what their intended target is up to. Tell me all the reasons that that couldn't happen or if it did happen, why or why not that person would be caught? Lik

I get that. But help me understand a little more. So the audit log is super helpful. So I assume that for everyone that because who knows, like I assume that means, you know, exactly what user logged in, what they looked at. Fantastic. And so how would we catch someone who is abusing this tool? How would that come to light? When we're doing our own internal audits, do we find out, are there things that flag suspicious activity? This tool doesn't seem like it's being used the right way. How would that come to light?

Mr. Mayor, as part of our audit function, is something generated that alerts a supervisor if searches take place without an associated case or an associated crime or offense? Like, is there something or is there like a random auditing that happens where, okay, you know, every month we choose three axon license plate reader searches at random to audit them like help me understand that auditing function and what kind of goes into it and where i'm coming from like my background isn't a lot of financial services where like fraud prevention and stuff's really important and that sort of thing would

Mr. Mayor, Councilman. Chief, a comment you made about how this has to be tied to a criminal investigation. I would imagine amber alerts would be automatically entered into this, and we would see those.

And silver alerts, are those, that's for?

Chief got a handful of questions. So it may kind of rapid fire through some of these. Talk to me about false positives. How many false positives have we experienced since we've launched?

What's the process when a license plate is flagged before an officer makes contact?

Mr follow up so. Personalized played out in the same scenario. So we get a hit, an officer pulls over this person. And maybe they miss like, what what does that process play out? I mean, does it conducted like any other traffic stop? And I guess what kind of redress do our citizens have if they're stopped? because of the use of these cameras. And it turns out that they shouldn't have been stopped in the first place.

Have we had any incorrect arrests? We have not.

There's maybe a couple more for me that's whatever to chief before I move back to the city of I was a newspaper writer and in our office we had painted on the wall if your mother tells you she loves you check your sources so that's where this questions come from your trust the verification you talked a lot about how you internally you're auditing use it is going on as a department discussed or explored an independent 3rd party body to independently review those audits to help ensure there's greater trust amongst our public. no we haven't okay mr mayor maybe in that same vein has the department

Okay. And then how long is our current contract with Axiom? For sure.

And would that contract auto-renew or would it require a separate action from the department?

I think like I at least I would feel better if we and I'd love for you to brainstorm about this if the council and the mayor think it's wise but if we want to just think through as part of our processes and procedures if there could be a random auditing function of some kind That would make me feel better because it's like a double check, right? Just make sure that people have in the back of their mind, just like how when you send an email at work, you know there's a decent chance that your email could be reviewed by anybody, right? I think the same kind of concept with this type of technology

Mr. Mayor, would it be fair to say like that this could be an ongoing conversation? And I'm just curious, like, at what point does it make sense to come back and sort of provide an update? This is, you know, these are some of the improvements we've made. This is how it's going. Because again, when we first embraced this, we never said like, we're just going to go here and never look at this again. It was always with the understanding that we're going to constantly look at it, continue improving it and make sure that those guardrails are really strong.

Question for maybe Mr. Neri, the Chief. Are these logs able to be public record requested?

Mr. Mayor. Councilman Overton. Just to take a second and just kind of thank our police department chief and your command staff for the diligent work you've done on implementing this program. Obviously, a lot of thought went into it. Nobody in the city other than probably the police department and to some extent our IT department has had to deal with building safeguards around so many important systems over the last 10, 15, 20 years, dealing with security on NCIS, on islets, on our mobile data terminals. I mean, this isn't something that's brand new to you with the License Plate Reader program.

Council next up is item 15. Mr. Mayor, at this time I'd like to move to executive session for Idaho code section 74-206a subsection 1a Idaho code section 74-206 subsection 1c and Idaho code 74-206 subsection 1f.

Okay, let me get you all my other emails. Sorry.

Mr. Mayor. Councilman Overton. There are no changes to tonight's agenda. I move that we adopt the agenda as published.

Okay. All right, and with that customer to mr. Mayor change we action on each of these 3 individually correct correct. On item number one I move that we approve the fiscal year 2026 amended revenues and expenditures in the amount of 250,000 $360 no excuse me 250 million 360,000 $333.

Mr. Mayor. Councilman Overton. Making the assumption that I approve the tentative approval, I would approve that we tentatively approve the fiscal year 2027 proposed revenue and expenditures in the amount of $224,442,540. Second. I have a motion and a second. Is there a discussion? Councilman Cavanaugh.

Mayor Mrakas, vote in favor of this this evening and may revise my opinion, as we get to a final vote and certainly invite the public to come in the way ended our public hearing is coming in in August, but i'm in full approval of this motion this evening.

I would move on item number three that we approve our declaration of the intent to collect foregone property taxed for fiscal year 2027 and the amount of $536,000 or $536,339. Second. I have a motion and a second to approve item three. Is there discussion on the motion? Councilman Cavanaugh.

Oh, nobody's surprised. I won't be voting in favor of this this evening. I think our community showed tremendous trust in us when they supported the levy last November and. As we went through the budget hearing process, I think I identified a little over half a 1Million dollars that we could remove from our budget. Mr. Mary, you said during our budget hearing that the foregone wasn't needed for ongoing expenses. And so I would encourage the council to take another hard look at the budget book between now and our public hearing. see if we could identify $536,339 worth of items to be removed. I

council any questions for the applicant mr mayor councilman overton just out of curiosity you're required to have eight parking spaces but there's 43 that's a sizable increase is there a expectation that you're going to hold events at this location as well no you know um

Mayor Mrakas, This mirror was robertson slide went by pretty quick for me how many, and if I use the wrong term how many look like candles do you have inside or is it was it.

Mayor Mrakas, Mr mayor. That's one little Roberts not yet not done yet sorry. So you're strictly it's strictly like a facility to come have your dog or any pet just their their shots there, so you don't do like surgery or anything like that there.

So you could, I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor. So you could have an overnight situation with an emergency care or, you know, a dog gets hit or something like that? Or is this kind of strictly a planned medical?

Will we close the public hearing on item number four? Second.

that's what governor straight and forward uh and uh modified development agreement apologies so i'm going to move that we approve application h-2026-0004 as presented in the staff report of july 21st and include all applicant and staff testimony second have a motion second to approve item four is there discussion on the motion if not correct call the roll

Mr. Mayor. Councilman Overton. I move that we go into executive session per Idaho code section 74-206A subsection 1A, Idaho code 74-206 subsection 1C, and 74-206 subsection 1F. Second.