City Council - Regular Meeting

Joining us for our closed session. City attorney Logue will make a closed session announcement and then we will welcome public comment on the items listed for closed session.

Good evening mayor, vice mayor, and council members. This is city attorney Jennifer Logue. There are two items on this evening's closed session agenda. Item 2.1 is a conference of real property negotiators pursuant to government code section five four nine five six point eight regarding City Lots 4 And 8, assessor parcel numbers 158Dash20Dash069 and 158 Dash 20 Dash 004. The agency negotiators are Arne Andrews, assistant, city manager, Don Cameron, assistant manager, Christian Murdoch, community development director, Amanda Rotella, economic vitality manager, and Angela LaMonica, real property program administrator.

The negotiating party is the Robert Green Company, and under negotiation are price and terms for payment of lease of real property. Item 2.2 is a conference with real property negotiators pursuant to government code section five four nine five six point eight. The address of the property under negotiation is 928 Mariner Drive, Mountain View, California. Agency negotiators are Arne Andrews, assistant city manager Christian Murdoch, community development director, and Angela Lamonica, real property administrator. The negotiating party is the Department of the Army, and under negotiation are priced in terms of purchase.

Thank you.

Thank you. Would any member of the public joining us virtually or in person like to provide pub public comment on the closed session items listed on tonight's agenda? If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or submit a speaker card to the assistant city clerk. We will take in person speakers first. Each speaker will have one point five minutes.

Seeing none, I we will now take first virtual speakers. Also seeing none. The council will now recess to the Plaza Conference Room for closed session and return to chambers at the close to continue regular session. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the joint meeting of the Mountain View City Council and Shoreline Regional Park community of 02/24/2026. Please join me in the pledge of allegiance. I

pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands,

one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Alright the assistant city clerk will take attendance by roll call.

Councilmember Hicks? Here. Councilmember Camay? Here. Councilmember McAllister?

Here.

Councilmember Ramirez?

Here.

Councilmember Showalter? Vice mayor Clark?

Here.

Mayor Ramos?

Here.

Thank you. We have a quorum with all members present.

Thank you. City Attorney Logue, do you have a closed session report? Good

evening mayor, vice mayor, and council members. City attorney Jennifer Logue. No final reportable action was taken in closed session this evening. Thank

you, city attorney Logue. Before we go on to presentations, I have my annual my not annual. My meetingly tradition of encouraging people to get involved with our city with our call to action, call to service, call to community. And this time, I'm encouraging people to join our community emergency response team or CERT. We have free trainings.

The next round will be will begin 04/09/2026 and will finish Saturday, 04/25/2026. You can register for CERT training. This this training covers basic skills that are important to know in a disaster and when emergency services may not be available. CERT members receive training in earthquake awareness, disaster fire suppression techniques, disaster medical operations, and light search and rescue, as well as team organization and management. Trained emergency personnel, including firefighters and emergency medical personnel teach all classes. So you can sign up on our website. Thank you so much. And now we will go on to item three, presentations. Please note these are presentations only. The city council will not take any action.

Public comment will occur after presentation items. If you would like to speak on these items in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the assistant city clerk now. So we will go to our item 3.1, our American Heart Month proclamation. We are happy to be joined this evening by Doctor. Carol Somersil with El Camino Health and Doctor.

Neil Scott, Mountain View resident cardiologist and innovator at the Fogarty Institute of Innovation to accept this proclamation. Doctor. Somersil and Doctor. Scott, would please join me at the lectern? Okay, the proclamation reads Whereas American Heart Month, also known as Heart Health Month, is observed every February and whereas heart disease remains the leading cause of death for both men and women in The United States with significant impacts on diverse communities and whereas American Heart Month is a time to raise awareness about risk of cardiovascular disease and the importance of healthy behaviors such as eating a balanced diet and staying physically active and managing blood pressure and whereas the first Friday of American Heart Month is also National Wear Red Day as part of the American Heart Month's Go Red for Women initiative.

Go Red Day is an ideal time to remind everyone to focus on their hearts and encourage them to get their families, friends, and communities involved and whereas by taking action including screenings, lifestyle changes, and supporting research we can reduce the burden of heart disease in our society. Now therefore I, Emily Ann Ramos, mayor of the City Of Mountain View along with my colleagues on the City Council do hereby proclaim the month of February as American Heart Month in Mountain View and urge all residents to join in this effort to make our community a healthier place. Doctor. Somersil, Doctor. Scott would you like say a few words?

Doctor. Sure. I'd just like to thank the City of Mountain View for this. I'm accepting this as Carol is on behalf of El Camino Hospital. I'd just like to say the progress that we've made over the past decades.

For instance, when I started training in the 70s, if you had a heart attack, a myocardial infarction, your chances of leaving the hospital alive were about sixty percent. In the 70s, 80s, with new drugs and new techniques, that went up to about eighty percent. Now, if you have a heart attack today, you have a greater than ninety percent chance of leaving the hospital alive. Here in Mountain View at El Camino Hospital, I gave you national averages. El Camino has a much higher, significantly higher percentage of patients leaving the hospital alive.

And, that's mainly because of all of the research that has been done. And, El Camino Hospital actually has been a participant in a lot of those research studies, just like you would expect from a major academic center. So, we're lucky to have a community hospital that has the personnel, the physicians, the staff that operate on the same level as a major academic institution. So, thank you very much for this commendation.

Okay, so we'll now take a quick picture with my colleagues up here. Oh, with the proclamation.

Oh, of course.

Okey dokey. Now we're on item 3.2, certificates in recognition to STEM science, technology, engineering, and math winners from the Santa Clara County twenty twenty five Synopsys Championship Science Fair. I am happy to acknowledge and congratulate the student recipients of the STEM award recognition at the Santa Clara County twenty twenty five Synopsys Championship Science Fair. I would like to welcome Anastasia Ali Shealy, I'm so sorry if I'm getting this name wrong, who's in attendance to accept her certificate. Ah, Anastasia!

We're just double checking. Were there any other certificate? Okay we are good. So here is your certificate. Would you like to say a few words or tell us what your project was?

Sure. So my project is about foot and mouth disease virus that affects cloven hoofed animals and it's mainly a big problem in Africa and it has large economic impacts especially on farmers and just the reproduction. So, we we focused on modifying an inhibitor and this inhibitor will block the polymerase that is prone to replication and this is why it's a big problem in like farm animals and stuff. So we did like synthesis and molecular dogging and stuff. Yeah.

You so much. We're gonna take a quick picture with my colleagues and oh, yes. Oh, wonderful. Former vice mayor Forrest Williams. But not a man who used San Jose. But we don't hold that against him.

I'm Kathy Jarvis, and I'm a volunteer. Forrest Williams is the, chairman of the committee for public relations, and the idea of the city council recognition for these events was all all his when he was on the San Jose City Council a few years back.

Thank you.

I take this opportunity to thank the mayor. I want to thank the council members and I want to thank the staff for all the work they've done to present to you our science fair winner for 2025. I know all of you have views of what the world is like, But there's nothing new under the sun. It's discovery. You must go in and find out what works together for the goodness of mankind.

And we are starting out with our students to encourage them to find those secrets that are hidden to make our lives better. Now, there's a little thing that I want to bear want you to take with you tonight. There is nothing that you touch that you can touch that has not had an engineering touch to it. So, think about that. And these students are now beyond what we've known over the years.

And they went to new environments, new challenges, new opportunities, and we want to just encourage them. And I'm so happy that you guys have felt the same way and brought them here to recognize them. Thank you very much.

All right, we love our students in STEM. Congratulations to all of you. Would any member of the council like to say a few words? Seeing none, we will now take public comment for the presentation items. This is the presentation items. I know some of you are here for another item. That is not this item. So this is for the presentation items. Would any member of the public joining us virtually or in person like to provide comment on the presentation items listed in the agenda? If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or submit a blue speaker card to the assistant clerk.

We will take in person speakers first. Each speaker will have one point five minutes. I am seeing no in person. I see one raised hand in virtually. Alright, Eva?

Yeah. This is for three one. This is crazy. I think doctor stock doctor Scott was my cardiologist back in the day, like, few years ago. So, doctor Scott, shout out to you. I'm eating less four legged animals, eating more plants, and working out more. So kudos to you. Happy American Heart Proclamation Month.

Thank you, Eva. Next, have Quentin. You're unmuted now, Quentin.

Hi. Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Okay. Is this the time to speak on the sorry. This is the first city council meeting I've attended. I'd like to comment on the flock cameras. Would that be now or

We're not.

It's in a future time, so feel free to lower your hand, and we will let you know when it's time. There's a couple of items before then.

Okay. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you. Alright. Seeing no other comments, we will now move on to item number four, consent calendar. These items will be approved by one motion unless any member of the council wishes to pull an item for individual consideration. If an item is pulled from consent calendar, it will be considered separately following approval of the balance of the consent calendar. If you would like to speak on these items or the next item, oral communications on non agenda items in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the assistant clerk now. Would any member of the council like to pull an item? Oh, there looks like a bunch. Council member Ramirez.

Thank you, mayor. I'd like to

pull item 4.2.

Alright. 4.2. Council member Scholwalter?

I just wanted to make a few comments. Is it okay if I just go ahead with those? Or I wanna see who else wants

to Before you do that, Councilmember Hicks, was there an item you wanted to poll?

Yes. I'd like to poll 4.3. All

right. So point three. All right. Council Member Scholwalter, was there anything you want to talk about that wasn't 4.2 or 4.3?

All right. Yes.

I just wanted to mention 4.4, the Miramonte pump station item, and talk about how it's really important for us to keep up our infrastructure. And this is a job that's important for our water supply infrastructure. And people don't think about those things very much unless they're not working. But we have to do a lot of work here to make sure that they do work properly. So I just want to thank the staff for bringing this forward and wish them the best of luck with the project.

Great. Thank you, Council Member Scholwalter. We will now go to public comment for the consent calendar items, not for item 6.1, friendly reminder. So would any member of the public joining us virtually or in person like to provide comment on the consent calendar items? If so, please click the raise hand in raise hand button in Zoom or submit a blue speaker card to assistant city clerk. We will take in person speakers first. Each speaker will have one point five minutes. Alright. We'll take our first speaker, Jim Zeroski.

So this is gonna sound a lot like a car commercial. Real quick, starting now, everybody knows that Mauna Loma Park became Mauna Loma Elementary Field. They were talked to the community about installation of fences, gates, and the use of the school field became actively discouraged by the school district and it caused a lot of harm in the community. Next. Because of this, the Monteloma Thompson area went down to point three three in dedicated park space.

That's about one tenth of the Quimby ratio. Next slide. City, with the help of Ellen and Allison and staff, purchased the property on 3538 Thompson back in 11/22. Next. It was the developments have been postponed and they we were told in December it was gonna be slated for development third quarter twenty seven. It's now going forward now, which we're happy about and we're thankful for. We're thankful for this, but we're a little concerned, and I'm not gonna use any more slides, because we're being told that we're going to have a Texas developer write a proposal about how to develop this. We went through this once with the Parks and Rec program. Why are we going to use a Texas consulting company? Go to the last slide, please.

Last slide. We know as a community the things that we need to do in the community that we need, we don't want to waste city resources on something that doesn't meet our needs and we don't want to foreclose our options. So I want to encourage that the city listen to the community first before the consultant comes back with a plan that says, do we want red or yellow slides?

Thank you, missus Zarevsky. All right. We will go to our virtual public comment, Robert Cox.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Okay, thank you. I just want to make comment on item 4.2, thank the council for the inclusion of the housing city flexibility and SB 79, it should be SB 79, think not SB 70, alternative plan timelines and good work. Let's hope that this has some provision when it gets up to our lobbyists and state legislature. Thank you for giving me the time to speak on this.

Thank you, Mr. Cox. We will now take it back to counsel for action. We will start with the balance of the consent calendar which is items four point one and four point four. We have a motion by council member Ramirez and a second by council member Camay. Council member Ramirez you have a comment?

No. I move to approve the, balance of the consent consent calendar.

Alright. We are ready for a vote. And it's unanimous. Yay. Alright. We will now go on to item 4.2, which was pulled by council member Ramirez. Go ahead.

Thank you, mayor. I know we're doing public comment separately, I think, for this item. Or do we do we do we take public comment for everything already? For everything? Okay.

Then I'm gonna go ahead and, move to approve, the staff recommendation, with with, one modification. First, grateful to staff for making the revisions that were, directed by the council, in the previous meeting. A lot of really good additions, and and appreciate the suggestions made by my colleagues. I did wanna clarify that my intent in making the modification to the e bike item was to eliminate the language that suggests discouraging the use. So I I wanted to clarify that k 21 and k 22 were they they're they're broad.

They provide, I think, the flexibility that staff needs to make recommendations to our legislative delegation, but they were intended to replace k 20. So I'd like to move to approve the staff recommendation excluding k 20, which was the original language related to ebikes. And then separately, a comment that I have heard that there is at least a bill under consideration that would, again, strengthen the state density bonus law allowing additional concessions. And I really do hope that the city staff working with our, legislative delegation can, prioritize either amendments to that bill or, some alternative legislation, that would address some of the concerns that we had talked about, basically ensuring that state density bonus law concessions don't allow, developers to, waive or bypass or, otherwise, reduce, local, inclusionary requirements, and specifically the number of affordable units and the depth of affordability. So that's not direction in the motion, but it's based on what I've heard about some some of the the new bills.

I hope that's something that we can continue to prioritize. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you, council member Ramirez. Is anyone else in the docket? Alright. We have a motion by council member Ramirez, seconded by council member Scholwalter. I believe we are ready for a vote. And the motion passes unanimously. Only all votes could be like this. Now we will go on to item 4.3, council member Hicks.

So this one is thompson mini park the professional services agreement for the planning of that park and I pulled it because I know there is is concern in the community and that people want, wanna make sure that the park is planned according to the the, desires of the people living in the neighborhood. So I pulled it so that I could query our staff about to give a little more information to members of the public about about how that planning process would take place and how the community can have input.

Good evening, everybody. Jennifer Ng, Public Works Director. So the item before you tonight for council approval is the council action to enter into a consultant agreement with Westwood Professional Services. As noted in public comment, this firm is headquartered in a different state. However, they do have a local presence with several nearby cities, most notably Pleasanton is where the staff that will be performing the consultant services for this project will be based out of.

We start a project off by obtaining consultant services, so this is the first step in moving forward with the park development. And then one of the first orders of work that the consultant will be tasked with doing is really figuring out and getting off the ground our community outreach. In this case, we're targeting our first community meeting with the community to happen this spring before school gets out of session so that people don't start leaving to go on vacation and they are able to provide meaningful input. Typically outreach is comprised of about three public outreach meetings. The first one will be really to sit and listen with the community, understand what the desires and needs are, provide any constraints that the city staff has such as budget, but really listen and take that information in thoughtfully so that it can be incorporated into a future concept design.

The consultant services contract before you is full scope for the full project, so it's from beginning to end starting all the way from public outreach, which is our first step, all the way to construction support services, so through the end. This is for the Thompson Mini Park as the land that we currently have acquired. I do want to note that we do keep an eye out for potential to purchase additional land to expand this particular park area, noting that this park land area is a little bit deficient in park space. So, as we design the park, we will be giving direction to the consultant to make the design in such a way that is easily expandable if we are able to acquire additional property. So high level timeframes.

We are going to be starting outreach this spring. In early twenty twenty seven, we will have a concept ready for the council to weigh in and hopefully approve. And then by the 2027, we are looking to be completing final design and then rolling into construction in early twenty twenty eight. So that's sort of the overview of the project.

Come on up. And

CSD Director John Marchant would like to add a couple words.

Good evening Council. John Marchant, Community Services Director. I'd like to reiterate, part of what director Ng was was speaking about, and our number one goal is to listen to the neighborhood, the community, the wants, the needs that we can provide in this area. And you may also know that we're already working on some of the playground improvements to the Mauna Loma actual playground that's part of the the campus itself, but also available to the public during the day. While school is in session, it is available.

So we're doing a number of improvements in that area. And just wanna once again reiterate that the process that's being talked about tonight to develop this park is our typical park development process in which we come in and is first listening and then bringing options forward to the community to give their their feedback, and we can take that and start really designing the the park. So at this point, there has been no design started. We're really starting with a clean slate. Thank you.

Thank you.

So I guess in summary I'll say I know the community, some members of the community were concerned that it was a Texas based consultant and that maybe we would do some abbreviated form of community outreach, but I hope that we've clarified that it's a firm with a local basis as well and that we'll be doing full community outreach and with that summary if there are no more comments I'll make a motion to approve.

Alright. We have a motion by council member Hicks, seconded by council member Schowalter. With no other comments, we're ready to vote. Motion passes unanimously. Now we will go to item five, oral communications.

This portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the council on any matter not on the agenda. Speakers are allowed to speak on any topic within the city council subject matter jurisdiction up to three minutes during this section. State law prohibits council from acting on non agenda items. If you would like to speak on this item or the next item in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the assistant city clerk now. Would any member of the public joining us virtually or in person like to provide comment on this item?

If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or submit a blue speaker card to the assistant city clerk. We will take in person speakers first. Each speaker will have one point five minutes. And I probably add in now. I know I hate to dampen anyone's joy, but I'm going to ask everyone, please, for when people speak in public comment, we try not to do any clapping or booing or any of that right now.

Hold it in. Hold it in. You could clap after everything is done or boo after everything is done outside. So we will begin with our oral communications. We have Elena Tyson.

I'm here to talk about something else, so sorry for everybody else. I have about a minute and a half. I have some pictures, I think. Thank you very much for allowing me to speak. I'm here to respectfully request that the 2022 smoking prohibition be amended, explicitly to include duplexes, otherwise making it revisable so that it can be enforced in a situation like mine.

So you can see in my backyard, I have a neighboring duplex across the way, and the distance between their backyard and mine is that common shared fence. They have probably about five feet. They sit in their backyard and they smoke. I did call the Mountain View Fire, Department Environmental Protection Division, and the gentleman that I spoke with there said that he would go out to the complex. The problem was it is not listed as an apartment, and it does not fall under the wording of the 2022 smoking prohibition the way it is written for the city of Mountain View.

And so there's really nothing he can do to enforce it. Every time they sit out there smoke, it blows into my backyard along with my neighboring units. I have to close my door. I can't sit in my backyard without inhaling the secondhand smoke. And so my request to the city council is to please either adjust the wording to include duplexes which are listed under the state of California as a multi dwelling, multi unit dwelling, or to adjust the prohibition's wording to include a certain amount of distance around shared fences.

Next please with the slide. Have a couple more angled slides so you can see the narrow space. Next. That's going the other direction and then next down on the ground where I'm sitting in my backyard and it just blows right in. So I'm respectfully asking you to please modify the wording in the 2022 prohibition against smoking so that I can actually enjoy my backyard. Thank you. Alright. Dylan Rich.

And then after Dylan Rich, we have Tim McKenzie.

Good evening, City Council. I'm Dylan Rich. I'm a director at Palo Alto Prep School in Mountain View. We are a small nonprofit that works with students on the spectrum, students with anxiety, students with ADHD. I've come several times before but I want to continue to make you guys aware of the sight lines. Right now students have to when they come to school and leave school, they have to walk quite a good distance into the street before, they can see oncoming traffic. It has caused, many near misses, with students in traffic. Please take some kind of action. I don't want there to be an accident with our students. Thank you.

Thank you. Tim McKenzie.

Greetings, counsel. Tim McKenzie. I use hehim pronouns. I have been a resident of the Montaloma neighborhood for over a decade at this point. I I am not free on Tuesdays most days, but I'm here for another item later on, so I wanted to use the opportunity to bring a comment forward.

I know that we're undergoing a city charter review, and my understanding of the plan is that there's a kind of a cleanup, inoffensive, just sort of cleanup language, make it smoother, streamlined for the next cycle. And then after that, there will be a more substantive, more substantial charter review that may perhaps be more controversial, may or may not pass. I know that staff time is a premium. I know that staff really works hard and does thorough reporting on everything and researching on everything. So I ask that even while we're doing that sort of cleanup, less large charter review that we consider the other items and start doing the research on them now.

And, specifically, I'd like to ask that the city adopt ranked choice voting as the method that we use for our elections. We get proportional representation. It's a way of extending and expanding democracy in a time when we are seeing it under attack. So I don't expect that to be coming up on the upcoming charter review. That's more minor, but I know that the research may be substantive and I would like to ask that that be included. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Karen Berkey. This is for items not on the agenda.

Yes I came for the other one but this is a new one. So thank you counsel. I actually wanted to bring this up. There was a survey that was sent out about how to improve Ringsdorf Avenue for like safety considerations and I filled it out and it wasn't specifically addressed in one of the questions but I put it in the other category and I would really like it to be considered. I have to cross with my two young children to Montaloma Elementary right at the flashing yellow light signal that is just past Middle Field that is along Rock Street.

Okay? And the speed limit is 35 miles an hour and no one goes 35 miles an hour. There is a contracted crossing guard who is there to help people cross safely and police have advised him to make sure that we cross on the same side he's on, etcetera etcetera. People constantly ignore him. People constantly drive right past him, almost hit us, almost hit him, go around us because they don't wanna wait.

And I would like staff and council to consider with those improvements to Rainstorm Avenue that that section be lowered to 25 miles an hour and that that light be considered to go to a red light. All must stop. Because right now, it's only worded as cars may not stop cross with caution. Well, the caution is not helping because cars are literally almost hitting us. We've had five or more near misses. And he tries to keep track of the license plates but it's not working. So that's my recommendation is 25 miles an hour with all red lights stopped. Thank you.

Thank you. Perfect timing. Now we will take virtual speakers. I see none. And therefore, we are now on to item six, new business. 6.1, automated license plate reader contract. Chinese and Spanish translation services are available for this item. We will now hear from our Chinese interpreter.

Thank you.

You. We will now hear from our Spanish interpreter.

Thank you.

Thank you. Now police chief Michael Canfield and lieutenant Evan Kroll will present the item. If you would like to speak on this item in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the assistant city clerk now. Alright. Go ahead.

Thank you, madam mayor. I'm Mike Canfield, Mountain View's police chief. With me is captain Evan Crowell, and this is item 6.1, our automated license plate reader presentation. This evening, I'll be presenting on an overview of our previous ALPR program, staff's recommendation, the previous city council direction, as well as our systems design and implementation, the Mountain View Police Department's use of our ALPR system, as well as our auditing and access access revelations of the system, our next steps, and our lessons learned. For background, the proposed system that we built was designed very purpose fully to have access limitations surrounding privacy but also balance for oh, thank you, Evan.

I appreciate that. But also balance for public safety. So it had rear images only of license plates. It was it kept those logs for only thirty days and had no facial recognition capabilities. There was strict external access controls built into this proposed system that required authorized signature approval external access.

There was auditing abilities of this system as well as a public transparency dash dashboard that everyone in the public could see that would list all of our agencies that we had granted access to. Additionally, we built a policy based on the system's configurations and the manner in which the system was purported to function. That meant no out of state sharing of information, no sharing of information with federal law enforcement, absolutely no use of the data for immigration enforcement. That training was required in our policy before any use could be used, and all use of the system had to be for law enforcement purposes, and there was absolutely no data sales allowed. At the 05/28/2024 city council presentation or city council meeting, staff presented our proposed plan, that proposed plan that I just described.

Like at that meeting like at the public safety advisory board meeting before and that meeting, Flux Flux Safety's staff was present, the staff that we had built worked with and built that system. At that meeting, city council authorized the city manager to enter into a one year agreement with Flux Safety and authorized the city manager to make modifications to the flock safety program, including the number of cameras and the locations of the cameras. The city council authorized the police chief and city manager to adopt our policy four sixty on ALPR systems and directed staff to return to city council a year after the pilot for approval for renewal. Additionally, city council directed staff to present our auditing information in our then twice yearly reporting to PSAB and to send that to City Council. Before our first camera was installed, Flock's team worked very closely with our staff on the onboarding process, very specifically in how they would or how we would authorize access for outside allied agencies within the state of California.

So agencies that I would approve or my designee would approve to have access, showing us how the portal would notify us, the manner in which they would sign the letter accepting the use of our policy, and then we would receive an email and then we would manually approve that approval, which meant that everyone, to the best of our understanding, that would be utilizing this system would have to go through that that process and that we had close controls over who had access to our data. And captain Crowell will

talk a little bit about how we used our data. Thank you, chief. Good evening, council. After council approval, there were significant delays in the installation process, which were due to a number of factors, but those delays ultimately pushed back our project timeline. In 2025, our cameras had hundreds of important alerts, which include 794 alerts for custom hot lists, which are created for vehicles involved in investigations, 233 alerts for stolen vehicles entering into Mountain View, and 51 felony vehicles, meaning vehicles that were known to be associated to a felony crime and then entered in a statewide database.

Our use of flock safety generated real actionable leads in at least 87 commercial burglaries, 65 vehicle break ins, 42 home break ins, and resulted in at least 41 suspects being identified and or arrested. In addition, our staff conducted almost 25,000 searches with the flock system between August 2024 and December 2025. This information is highlighted by several significant cases that were outlined in our staff report, including the arrest of domestic violence and carjacking suspect, rescuing a kidnapping victim, locating a missing family, including an at risk missing adult, along with identifying and resting arresting the primary suspects of a male theft ring involving over 500 victims in Mountain View and several other surrounding counties. Throughout the pilot program, administrators audited our flock system, our flock system used believing that the system was functioning as we had collaboratively designed. In addition, random selections of external data were reviewed along with regular audits of our Mountain View PD internal use.

The datasets were extremely large, but we did not notice any use outside of policy during these audits. Our internal use consistently showed throughout the entire process the professionalism and adherence to our policy.

Initially, staff and I monitored news stories about access to flock data systems outside of agencies policies. However, as we were monitoring those stories, we didn't see anything that alerted us to any outside of use or concerning access. However, as our program progressed and as we began to audit more, we looked deeper and deeper back and we did determine unfortunately that there was access from outside of the state of California early in the program in August '24 through November 2024. This was a huge surprise and a shock to us. This was contrary to our understanding, contrary to what we had been told and the communications that we had with flock safety, and we were shocked to learn of this data access.

We received assurances about the manner in which the system was set up and the manner in which it functioned and this fell short of that. It's our understanding that this access was enabled or allowed through a system or a tool called Nationwide Lookup. And Nationwide Lookup, as we have learned from speaking with numerous other law enforcement agencies as well as the city manager speaking with her peers, that nationwide lookup was a large scale problem both in California and likely larger abroad that allowed folks to access data outside of their awareness and outside of their policies. To be very clear, we did not know this was going on. We had not set it up, and we were surprised to learn of it.

When we pressed FLOC about how it could have happened, they told us that they no longer had records for how the system was turned on or how it was turned off. However, it was turned off for us in November 2024. Flock safety turned it off for the whole state of California to the in early twenty twenty five. However, they never notified us that this had happened. They never notified us that it had been on nor that they had turned it off, which was very concerning.

For context, just so you're aware, and I know it's in the staff report, but at that time, we only had one camera in place. It was at San Antonio and Charleston, and that was from November sorry, August 2024 to November 2024. As we looked back and continued to research, we located another systems function called Statewide Lookup, which worked very similar to Nationwide Lookup, but within the state of California. That system also created access outside of our policies and outside of our understandings. Essentially, other state or other cities or municipalities within the state of California could look at our data if they also had that function enabled.

This was counter to the assurances that we had been provided by Flock Safety and counter to how we had built the program. In conversations with other law enforcement leaders and other city managers in the region, it is very clear that this is not a Mountain View problem, that this is a flock safety problem and affected many other folks as well. Based on the system not working how we had designed, not working with the assurances that we had been given, I made the decision to deactivate the cameras

to allow staff time to come to city council and to allow you to make the policy decision

been about what to do with these cameras. Additionally, we met with local media and shared information with our community groups, letting everybody know what we had discovered. I wanna be very clear. Mountain View Police Department has nothing to hide. When we discovered this information, it was very clear that we were going to be transparent and share what we had learned, both with the media, our community, and with our law enforcement partners.

We also reached out to Flock Safety and their leadership team to express both my anger and frustration, but also to inform them of the things that we had discovered to help better improve this system so it did not continue. There are a lot of lessons learned in this pilot program. Certainly, that separating the staff that do the auditing from the staff that do the onboarding and the program implementation is important. That the firsthand confirmation of system settings, even if we're not aware of the settings, is essential as is a regular check-in with the program managers from the vendor in case a vendor chooses kind of mid program to change settings without notification. Additionally, data is significantly easier to audit when it is smaller, and that a program like this should really scale with the auditability of the data.

And lastly, that audits should be purposefully designed to find violations of policy in their construct. For our next steps, staff will begin to implement whatever it is that city council directs us to do. We'll also continue to evaluate the effectiveness and vulnerability and and value of new technologies as it relates to public safety, privacy protections, and data protections, and harm reduction in our community. I will be creating a community feedbacks group or community feedback partner group to better inform those conversations to engage in dialogue with me and the department about community harm protection, crime prevention, data concerns related to new technologies and public safety. Additionally, the police department and I will be presenting to our HRC annually on significant issues such as these.

And, of course, we'll continue to collaborate with our partnering agencies and neighboring law enforcement agencies to provide essential protection and community safety needs as well as collaborate about data sharing and privacy. With that council, brings us to the recommendation, which is to authorize the city manager or designee to terminate the existing automated license plate reader contract with Flock Safety. And, madam mayor, I'll turn it back to you.

Thank you, chief Canfield. We will now, does any member of the council have questions? We will do council questions, then we'll do public comment. Any questions? I'm oh, it's not oh. Yes. Okay. I'll start with council member Ramirez then.

Thank you, mayor. I have three, questions that you, partially addressed, but just to allow you the opportunity to provide some additional commentary. Can you share again how the nationwide lookup and statewide lookup could have been activated without the knowledge or consent of MVPD?

That's a really great question. One we would like to know. I know this. We are one of many agencies that had both of those activated outside of our knowledge. To the best of my understanding, I I believe there's a new news story about the city of Denver having the exact same problem that just came out today. Now I can't speak for the validity of it, but I believe the news story just came out today. I'm confident that this is much larger than a regional problem, much larger than a California problem, but it is a big problem with the access. We did not allow it. We weren't aware of it. We didn't accept it. It came in the system without our knowledge.

Okay. Thank you. In your communication with FLAC, what have, FLAC representatives told you?

Candidly, flock representatives in private conversations have been pretty blunt about their failures. They've admitted that they failed, especially related to the implementation of this program for us and for other vendors. And I agree. I think they have absolutely failed to to perform in the way in which they assured us that they would.

Thank you. I I appreciate that. And final question. Many of us many of us wear multiple hats and hear from other jurisdictions, staff, and, council members, and, you you acknowledge that it it's, almost certainly, it is not unique to Mountain View. I'm curious about what you've heard about other jurisdictions, including ones that have been referenced in the media like Woodside.

So I I don't know much about Woodside's program. In fact, I don't know anything about Woodside's program, their ALPR program. But what I do know is what I saw on the news, what I read in the news and what I watched in their town council meeting was a completely inaccurate statement about our program from a flock safety representative who either didn't know anything about our program or completely provided false information. The program that we created had a policy in place, was implemented in close partnership with flock safety and failed to perform in the manner in which they told us, and they assured us that it would.

Thank you, chief, and thank you, mayor. Those are my questions.

Thank you, council member Ramirez. Council member Hicks.

So I have just one question but I just want to tell members of the public first that if in case you haven't been to council meetings before and and don't know the nature of this and wonder why we're asking so few questions. We do have the opportunity to ask written questions before we come to this meeting and so this council has already asked 26 asked and had answered 26 questions. So these are the remaining half a dozen questions that we still have. And the questions that we've asked previously and the answers are available to you online. So my remaining question is you talked a little about community feedback going forward.

Can you say a little more about how you envision that happening? You mentioned both our HRC and also other community feedback, and I'd like details on both.

Yeah. Absolutely. I I we have spoken in the past and been present at HRC meetings, and I I see a lot of value to that, and I believe that it would be important for us to continue to engage, and I think at at least on an annual basis basis, if not more regularly, to present on issues like this or other updates like our annual police department report to the HRC. In relation to emerging technologies and public safety and the complexities and communities feedback as it relates to privacy and data control, that is something that I think is a very in-depth conversation that needs to be had without the same confines and constraints. So department you know, meeting at the department, having deep conversations about systems access, about configurations with subject matter experts within our community, as well as community stakeholders who just have very strong opinions about both public safety and the balance of data control.

And then do you see formalizing those in any way? I I've heard that the HRC had more interactions with the MVPD in the past, I may be wrong. So do you see formalizing those in any way? And then of course just to let the members of the public know that that would be on the agenda and members of the public could attend those meetings I assume.

Absolutely. So the HRC meetings would be agendized and would be structural and public. What I'm recommending for a community feedback partners group is much like my Latino community advisory committee or my faith leaders advisory council. So groups that I meet with regularly that can provide feedback both scheduled but also ad hoc and direct conversations about really in-depth complex issues. Those are not council appointed boards, but those are boards that that I meet with and that have direct access to me and the information within the police department.

Okay. So let me see if I understand. You're you're thinking of kind of doing this through two groups, one which is publicly noticed and the other which is a group how is that other group assembled?

It it is assembled much like the Latino community advisory committee and that faith leaders group from within our community of people that are interested in the issue have a passion to be engaged and provide feedback. And in this case, I would think that they would have either subject matter expertise in technology or strong concerns about privacy and public safety.

Okay. That answers my question. Thank you.

Alright. Council member Schulwalter.

Yes. Thank you for getting all this information to us. I know that this has not been a happy subject for you. I I have a couple questions. One is we ask it in the council questions, but I just really like to have you answer it a little bit in the public, because I think it's just the kind of thing everybody would want to wonder about and that is how would some of these crimes have been solved if we didn't have FLAC cameras? I mean you've been solving crimes forever, right?

I personally have not, but the Mountain View Police Department has since 1902.

I stand corrected. Thank you very much. Anyway, you have a track record. Your organization has a good track record of solving crimes. And that was true before we had FLAC. So I'd like to understand a little bit about what's the delta that you get with FLAC? Time? You're able to do some things you wouldn't have before, that sort of thing. And maybe if you could explain it with a specific example, that would be helpful.

Certainly. So I will say that the FLoC safety, quite frankly it's not a proprietary technology. ALPR systems, so license plate reader systems, do provide an ability to look in an area like a large scale space and look for suspicious vehicles or vehicles associated to something that's of significance to our community, whether it's a missing person or a crime afoot in a way that a human being just would be very pressed to do if they had to scour, maybe ask neighbors for for their cameras or to stand on every block and look at every license plate going by. So they provide a lot of eyes and a lot of information about who's coming in and who's leaving an area. And in some ways, they provide information that would not otherwise be able to be garnered and provide leads for investigations or even, like, essentially, the the direct suspects in cases or missing persons in a way that nothing else can really provide easily, maybe an officer who happens to be lucky in the right place.

In other ways, they help support kind of traditional law enforcement investigations. They point an officer in the right direction and then that officer then has to maybe go and follow-up on a vehicle without a license plate, but it it matches a certain type, they may canvas a neighborhood, see a suspicious vehicle that then aligns with what was seen on an ALPR system and kind of pick it up from there, and interviewing the person, looking to see if they're on probation or parole or any number of, maybe not quite infinite, but any significantly number of different avenues that one would go down. There are also technological systems and things that we do to investigate crimes, including digital cyber forensics. That's a very important field. But I would say that that this is a very significant technology that both improves efficiencies and does redirect officers or direct officers to suspects of crimes and victims of crimes in a really important and meaningful way.

Okay. So say my house is burgled and you didn't have the license plate readers, but you you still had the emergency or the the list of the hot list. Where those hot lists come from?

So a hot list in this case is basically a license plate or a vehicle description that we we think is associated either to a crime or to somebody that we're looking for. We would enter that into, in this case, the flock system or into somebody else's system. And then when the car comes by, whether it's our camera or someone else's, it would notify them. So in that example, it would not we would not have a lead from a hot list. We would need an ALPR system or perhaps somebody's surveillance camera or a neighbor who would have seen a car to provide that information.

You could think of this as kind of a neighbor on watch who's constantly at a kind of a significant intersection in a neighborhood, always looking for the license plate for the car from your break in. But let's say a a break in happened at someone's house. I don't wanna say it's your house. Let's say it's at someone's house.

Fortunately, haven't had one.

We we would traditionally, we would both look at neighbor neighbors' security cameras, speak to neighbors about what they saw, but also look for cameras for vehicles coming and going. And we might then try to match up a surveillance camera at a neighbor's house with an ALPR image capture of a vehicle then to try to pair those together. It may be the plate. It may also just be the vehicle description. But that would be one way in which we would initiate an investigation. And then from that vehicle, that provides us with a series of other leads. It may be the person's vehicle. It may be borrowed. It could be rented. Any number of things.

Okay. So then going on to the another one which I thought is easy to understand is the one about the missing person that you put in. That obviously you that, the family was concerned, they knew what the license plate was. It didn't have to come from a reader in that case necessarily, but they knew the license, you knew the license plate. So you could put that in the system and query other people for it. Couldn't you do that with a kind of an old fashioned APB or something like that as well?

Absolutely, Councilmember Schwalter. We can enter a vehicle into a system absent an ALPR system. So we could enter it into a state database, KLETZ database, but there's a a million law enforcement acronyms. But we could enter a missing person or a felony vehicle or a stolen vehicle. Those are entered into a state database.

In this case, what happens is a a license plate reader camera, an ALPR camera is tracking, is running running those license plates through that database. You don't need that that camera to find those people. You might need a keen observer, an officer kind of getting lucky or or with a good sixth sense who sees a vehicle and decides to run that plate, but you would need somebody manually to enter in that license plate. And if you've driven down El Camino at 2PM, it's pretty hard to to manually enter in all those license plates. So it is much harder, but it is certainly not the only way in which to fill Okay, someone

thank you. I just think we need to think about these things as we're Then talking the other question I have which kind of goes back a little bit to what Councilmember Hicks said, and that is how would the community feedback partners differ from PSAB or working with the HRC? And I think you answered that a little bit before. You answered how you would work. But how would it differ from PSAP?

Well, think for one, the selection of those folks. When we're working in our other advisory bodies, so our faith leaders advisory council, that Latino community advisory committee, it's a group that's nimble that we can meet regularly. I can schedule a very quick meeting or often meetings need to be canceled and rescheduled. It doesn't have to have a a work plan. It is able to be adapted to what is going on.

So you can imagine my Latino community advisory committee has had to shift kind of topics and issues of interest very quickly as issues related to that community have changed very quickly. So it doesn't it's not it it's not tethered to a work plan in the same way, and it is much more adaptable in a good way to the to the needs of what's going on. And if we're looking at emerging technologies, I think that that is really something that specifically aligns well with the ability and the importance of remaining very nimble as we review.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. I have one follow-up question from our docket of questions. Question 12 in our docket. Someone asked me, may not been me, what exact data was shared nationwide and with nationwide and statewide agencies? What are the names of the agencies that gained access to our data?

What were the reasons behind the searches? And then the answer was from August to November 2024, nationwide lookup appears to have been enabled on the flock safety system. A review of the federal law enforcement access indicated the following agencies included MVPD in their searches. However, there is no ability to determine whether any Mountain View ALPR data was actually accessed. So it was ATF offices in Kentucky, Nashville, Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, the USGSA Office of Inspector General, Recreation Area in Nevada and in Ohio Air Force Base. Was there any indication as to what they were searching for and why they were searching MBPD data?

I don't remember the search terms or reasons. Captain Crowell, do you recall? I do not. So I I there was nothing that stood out in our initial review. We didn't see anything that was, you know, immediately alarming. But it I I couldn't say without taking a deeper look as to to what their reasons were.

What were the usual reasons for people to search our data?

Well, crime investigations, burglaries. Sometimes it's a case number. The the same reason that in general, I would say, the same reason that we search our data is the same reason and the same reason we search other law enforcement agencies' data is is the same reason that agencies are searching ours.

Okay. Alright. Councilmember McAllister.

Thanks. So let's take current events and sort of tying on what Pat said. Savannah Guthrie, that that incident's going on right now. They're don't they do they have the cameras, accessibility accessibility to to do do what what is is doing? Because I see a lot of, quote, old fashioned methods of tracking, talking, knocking, and so forth. So would this this new technology be helpful in this particular instance?

Yeah. To the best of my knowledge, I I don't know any specifics about that case, but it looks like they are they are knocking on doors and looking for everything. This technology would absolutely be key in a case like that. I can tell you we utilized ALPR technology specifically for a kidnapping victim, a domestic violence kidnapping victim to help locate her. The short answer is yes. And then the longer answer is kind of the the process that that councilman Berkshire Walter was talking about. But, absolutely, this is a central technology for for a case that's that significant and important and difficult to investigate.

Is the term oh, what is it? I'm looking for time is of the essence. That technology will help get them to that point quicker when you're doing kidnapping or child's loss or something along those lines?

Absolutely. And and that's why captain Crowell highlighted in his slides. And also, it's in a kind of greater detail inside the staff report some cases that time really was of the essence. Some very serious domestic violence suspects as well as a kidnapping suspect that we were very worried about.

Okay, thank you.

Alright, we will now move on to public comments. Would any member on the line would any member of the public on the line like to provide public comment on this item? Please click the raise hand button in Zoom or press star nine on your phone. A timer will be displayed on the screen. Each speaker will have one point five minutes.

We will take in person public comments first. I'm gonna name like the first five names so I'm hoping that you guys will line up so it will get quicker. So we'll have Melissa Livanos starting first followed by Karen Berkey followed by Brandon King followed by Kimberly Wu. If you guys could all make your way to line up for that and we'll start with Melissa.

Hi. My name is Melissa Lavonis and I'm a resident of Santa Clara County. I've never spoken at a city meeting before or attended one, but I was moved to do so today because of the importance of this moment and how critical it is that we safeguard our data and our communities. We urge the city of Mountain View to support the staff report to permanently end their contracts with FLAC as Los Altos Hills and Santa Cruz have already done. We applaud the city police the city police chief for immediately turning off the cameras after learning how FLAC shared our personal data with out of state agencies.

However, we reject the report's proposal to engage in community discussion about the positive outcomes or explorations of future use of ALPR because mass surveillance doesn't keep our public safe, but rather endangers the lives of our most vulnerable residents. Motivated by the chief's promise in holding flock accountable, we further call for reimbursement for the associated flock fees and for a city class action lawsuit against flock who breached our contract and shared our data violating our trust. We must refuse all a r ALPR contracts because we must not replace flock with another harmful weapon of mass surveillance. We need to do our part to protect the vulnerable in our communities. We've seen how flock surveillance from we've seen how mass surveillance from services like flock have been weaponized already.

It's already happening. It's been used to racially profile people of color, to sue people seeking reproductive health care or gender affirming care, to endanger our neighbors by sharing their data with ICE. We need to protect our bodily autonomy and our neighbors and our own rights to protest and to have protected speech and to a reasonable expectation of privacy without mass warrantless tracking. Thank you.

Thank you. Next is Karen Berkey followed by Brandon King followed by Kimberly Wu followed by Austin Marshall.

Hello council. So I just wanna commend the police department that on February 2, I believe it was, they turned off the cameras and that's my birthday. So thank you for the wonderful birthday present. I would like you to make sure that they get completely cancelled and I don't want any new technology of any ALPR continued in any way shape or form. As they just demonstrated in their own data, they did have 41 arrests and a couple people were found which is great.

But that was out of more than 25,000 something scans. So this is not that big of a city, so obviously that makes sense because we're not that big of a city. But then in the city of San Jose, they have just gotten sued as well as the city of Oakland because all these are done without a warrant. Okay? Doesn't matter how long you store it, doesn't matter who's using it, who has access, it's done without a warrant.

And in the city of San Jose, they specifically only had point 2% of their millions of scans in the year of 2024 actually match the hot list of actual suspected crime or associated vehicles with that. So that's 99.8% of the rest of the scans are just random people living their lives. This is mass surveillance. It is not making anyone safer. The can the contract needs to be completely cancelled and it needs to not be replaced by anything else because I'm sorry, that's not enough data to support continuing this mass surveillance and a massive invasion of our privacy. Thank you.

Thank you. Brandon King followed by Kimberly Wu followed by Austin Marshall followed by Brian Jones.

Hi. I'm Brandon, and I'm a Mountain View resident. I'd like to urge the city of Mountain View to support the staff report to permanently end their contracts with FLAC and refuse any future proposals for other ALPR systems. We applaud our city's police chief for immediately turning off the FLAC cameras after learning how FLAC shared our personal data with out of state agencies. However, I reject the report's proposal to engage community discussions about the positive outcomes of ALPR and the exploration of any future use of ALPR because mass surveillance does not keep our public safe but rather endangers the lives of our most vulnerable residents.

ALPR systems have shown themselves to have systemic flaws nationwide ranging from technical mishaps that have resulted in things like guns out traffic stops for misidentified persons, including in San Francisco, spying on peaceful protesters, illegally sharing data with federal officers, and many, many more. Mass warrantless dragnet location tracking surveillance of all persons in the community regardless of their criminality is not public safety, and we cannot sacrifice our constitutional rights to privacy for the dangerous illusion of security. Not only should we terminate our flock contracts, we must refuse all ALPR contracts, and we must not replace flock with another harmful weapon of mass surveillance. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next up, we have Kimberly Wu, followed by Austin Marshall, followed by Brian Jones, followed by Jenny Schroeder.

Good evening council members. My name is Kimberly Wu and I serve as a community organizer for services, immigrant rights and education network otherwise known as CYREN and I cede my time to Tim McKenzie.

Oh man, okay. Alright so when Tim gets up I'm gonna have people who have ceded their time to just raise their hands. You don't have to come up but you did have to put in a speaker thing. If you are in the docket to speak and have it seated to Tim just let us know very quickly and then we'll move on from there until Tim has this. Actually should we just have Tim speak now?

I think it would be better to get an idea of how many people are going to cede their time and then we can calculate how much time Tim can speak.

All right, 123456789. Alright. And all of you turned in a blue card. Correct?

Mayor, the agenda provides for up to ten minutes

Alright.

For collection.

If you guys can go to the city clerk to confirm your card I'm gonna have Tim come up and do his ten minutes now. Do you have slides Tim?

I do not have slides.

Oh thank goodness.

Thank you. I am Tim McKenzie again still. Sorry.

Let's let's I will

wait. Sorry.

Confirm there first.

Mayor, do we wanna call for a quick recess?

Yeah let's do a five minute break while we get that settled. So we will Alright let's have everyone get back to their seats so we can get the meeting back into order. I'm calling the meeting back to order at nineteen fifty five, and we can get started with our we're apparently, we're getting two ten minute speakers. Thank you for consolidating many of your times. So we will now lead it up to Tim McKenzie.

Greetings, counsel. Tim McKenzie, still he, him pronouns, on the steering committee of Silicon Valley Democratic Socialists of America. I'd like to thank my community partners for seeding time so that we can go through this larger letter that we that we've put together to for you. We are urging you as council to, one, support the staff's memo to terminate the city's contract with flock safety and seek reimbursement for the $154,650 for the associated fees from the flock agreement. Two, refuse all ALPR contracts because we must not replace flock with another harmful weapon of mass surveillance.

And three, sue flock safety company in a class action lawsuit for breach of contract California s p 54 violations and data sharing violating our residents' trust in our government. Our presentation is supported by our submitted written public comment, which was endorsed by 17 community organizations and updated based on the staff's response to questions. These flock cameras are the equivalent of placing a GPS tracker on every resident in our city. In a time when our neighbors are wrongfully criminalized and detained regardless of immigration status, when our black and brown loved ones are pulled over for the way they look, and when the federal government assaults any peaceful protester exercising their first amendment right to free speech, we must refuse an AI mass surveillance system that will threaten our human lives and mental well-being. Mass surveillance does not keep our public safe but endangers all our residents and visitors to the city of Mountain View.

We generally approve of the council's re public notice, council reports public notice about the flock ALPR violations, but we strongly oppose any ALPR vendor replacement for FLAC and further urge the Mountain View City Council to sue FLAC for their breach of contract in violating and sharing our data residents and visitors' personal data. The council report explains the thorough process in securing Flock Company as the city's ALPR vendor and attempts to recommend a different vendor. However, we expressed the following concerns against such detrimental action as no guardrails can prohibit any ALPR vendor from violating our fundamental constitutional rights to privacy. Sections like initial exploration of ALPR technology, community engagement, and city council review and direction presume there is a policy that will ensure a safe ALPR vendor system. However, no perfect policy will protect us from the harms of AI mass surveillance.

Flock does not just read license plates, but it can also extend to identify and categorize people based on height, weight, race, gender, articles of clothing, bicycles, or animals. It would be nearly impossible to find a vendor that only captures still images, especially when Flock's AI powered cameras use the Condor model to track, pan, zoom, and tilt on people's movements. Auditing our personal flock data regarding ICE cooperation could produce a false negative. According to pages four and ten of Department of Homeland Security's data retention policies, DHS requires vendors to not leave a trail of ICE in audit logs on any ALPR except their own. We may not see any query results about ICE or if ICE accessed our data because ICE systematically does not leave any evidence of their wrongdoing.

The reason why we see searches related to immigration enforcement or ICE is due to side door access, but given the given current political climate, we can only surmise that ICE is accessing our data to weaponize against our communities. Side door access is when local police departments conduct searches on behalf of ICE or CBP. Our local police data is shared with other police departments who may use this side door to expose our personal data to ICE. Also, Mountain View Police Department, it participates in the Fusion Center of Northern California Regional Intelligence Center. We're on their transparency page, which gathers and shares data, including ALPRs, from other Northern California agencies to national, state, and local intelligence networks.

The specific training requirements for who can access our data are still not public information. How can the public and the city council hold the ALPR vendor system and our staff accountable when the community is excluded in the creation and review of the policies? How can we hold them accountable if investigations of policy violation is handled as a personnel matter through MVPD's professional standards unit. We must redefine public safety in our constitutional right to privacy. Mass surveillance does not keep our public safe.

When it violates the constitutional rights of every resident and visitor to our city for this dangerous illusion of security. When our private data is weaponized to separate our immigrant families, control the bodies of those seeking reproductive services, target individuals exercising the First Amendment rights to free speech, and surveil our Muslim neighbors outside of mosques. AI mass surveillance is a dangerous threat to public safety, and no perfect vendor will protect us from the systemic fundamental harms of AI powered cameras. The section on vetting of flock safety and MVPD operational data sharing procedures emphasized how the city council, city staff, and the police department proactively collaborated to prioritize resident safety when selecting a vendor. Our issue is not with the city's meaningful work to protect us, but our issue is with FLAC and with all ALPR vendors.

The technology itself is the problem. We cannot trust FLOC to act in good faith, especially when they conveniently omitted their statewide and nationwide lookup tool from our police department. FLOC's lie by omission thoroughly disrespects the extensive work that the police department and city council did to convince the public in flock safety and ensure compliance with our privacy standards. Per the council report, flocks lie by omission is what caused this breach in our data and broke our residents' trust. Quote, notably, staff have since learned that both the nationwide and statewide interfaces were enabled for many other agencies that were also unaware of them.

MVPD is not an outlier in this regard, end quote, which is why we're asking for a class action lawsuit. We applaud the Mountain View Police Chief thanks Mike, for immediately turning off the cameras on February 2 and personally apologizing to us. However, our residents have seen flock cameras blinking their lights and are concerned that they may still be on and collecting our data. Despite staff's assurance that no new data is being recorded and flock is not recording license plate information, recent flock transparency pages for Mountain View brings their note into the question because while the detected vehicles and hot hot list hits decreased, the number of searches increased from 556 searches to 558 searches, from February 18 to February 22. Our data is still being accessed and searched.

We encourage the city to explore physical barriers in covering up the cameras at effectively disabling their use because remember, we lease them. We don't own them. Not only is FLoC a deceptive company, their cameras are susceptible to being hacked in thirty seconds and have at least 51 confirmed vulnerabilities. If we cannot trust FLOC who pride themselves as the industry leader, how can we expect other ALPR vendors will meet our high standards? Because of FLOC's live omission, MBPD was included in federal law law enforcement searches from ATF offices in Kentucky Nashville, Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, the USGSA Office of Inspector General, Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada, and an Ohio Air Force Base.

Additionally, outside agencies searches from August 2024 to December 2025 were approximately 3,070,960 compared to the 25,000 some odd that Mountain View Police Department did, which represents over 124 times more than MVPD personnel in this time frame. We further expressed grave concerns about the search terms as others can encompass a broad range of abuses against our communities, especially during this time of federally sanctioned violence when people are being executed in the street. We strongly oppose that granting flock worldwide rights to our data is a reliable service as it shows a grave violation of our Fourth Amendment constitutional right to privacy. We further support the staff's interest in seeking reimbursement from the total $154,650 that our city invested into flood because our city's valuable money must be reinvested into community priorities like affordable housing. In a budget crisis, our city must protect all our valuable resources and refuse to waste any money in weapons of AI mass surveillance nor in defending ourselves from valid lawsuits that our residents may pursue for these data violations.

Finally, we urge the city council to unite with their constituents against our common enemy of flock and sue the company for breach of contract for sharing our personal data with external agencies without our consent. Based on the above reasons and the voices of our fellow constituents, we strongly oppose the premise of a community dialogue about the positive outcomes of the ALPR pilot program. We were harmed. And any exploration of any future use of ALPR in Mountain View from the next steps section. We cannot replace an AI mass surveillance camera with another weapon of mass surveillance against our communities.

ALPRs are not necessary. As per our city staff, quote, other investigative methods may have ultimately produced results in some cases. No perfect policy can secure the safest vendor as all AA powered cameras rely on the same mass surveillance technologies that violate fundamental rights to privacy. We must refuse all ALPR vendors because that is truly how we keep our public safe. Beyond our residents and previous concerns, we would like to highlight further evidence against FLAC, which, I will not be able to get through the rest of it, but one of my colleagues and compatriots will be coming up to finish the next bit.

Please get rid of FLAC, sue FLAC, no way LPRs, and I will pass on over here. Thank you.

Thank you, mister Mackenzie. Next is Melissa Dinwiddie. I'm sorry if I got your last name wrong, but you will also get some additional time as well.

Hi. I am Melissa Dinwiddie. I'm a Mountain View constituent for twenty years, and I represent Indivisible Palo Alto plus. The flock safety company cannot be trusted, and our government is now responsible for violations on our data. Investigators have found flock portal access credentials on the dark web.

Anyone with a $120 can easily create a Showdown account to access twenty four seven live streams of our personal lives. One user found a live stream on a children's playground making these cameras a prime accessible weapon for human traffickers. FLOC's track record on security places its customers in violation of SB 30 four's requirement that ALPR operators maintain reasonable security procedures and practices. From enabling broad searches of investigation and crime to granting CBP access to its systems, FLAC has violated reasonable security measures and wrongfully misled their law enforcement partners. Oregon congressional senator Ron Wyden boldly wrote to FLAC CEO Garrett Langley, abuses of your product are not only likely but inevitable, and FLAC is unable and uninterested in preventing them.

Mass warrantless tracking of every driver to the second violates our Fourth Amendment right to a reasonable expectation of privacy. US Supreme Court cases Carpenter versus US and US versus Jones affirmed that all residents have a constitutional right to privacy even in public spaces. Near perfect surveillance, cell phone location data, and GPS tracking on public roads gives our government a precise comprehensive record of all aspects of our personal lives from our familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual relationships. Organizations such as CYREN and CAR, CA, and ACLU Foundation of Northern Northern California and Electronic Frontier Foundation are suing San Jose, Oakland, and Norfolk, West Virginia for their flock contracts because these unblinking cameras retain our data for extended periods of time, stalking our residents every movement to the minute and failing to require a valid judicial warrant before sharing our private information, we, the people, refuse to waste our precious city resources defending ourselves from valid lawsuits. The Flock Company and other ALPR vendors violate state sanctuary California values, values act s b 54 and our city's non cooperation policies by sharing our data with ICE to deport our neighbors.

When the federal government has given ICE and CBP authorization to discriminately arrest our people based on the color of their skin or their accent and break down doors without warrants along with physically assaulting and fatally shooting our loved ones like Renee, Nicole Goode, Alex Preti, and Keith Porter junior, we must protect our immigrant communities who have built our vibrant, bustling, and diverse city of Mountain View. However, AI powered ALPRs including flock safety threaten the safety of our immigrant loved ones by sharing our personal data with ICE, giving federal immigration authorities an accessible GPS like weapon to deport our neighbors. State laws prohibit data sharing with federal agencies and out of state police departments, but FLOC allowed such sharing for years. At least 75 California police agencies were sharing these records out of state as of 2023. In 2025, San Francisco police allowed access to out of state agencies, and 19 searches were related to ICE.

On 01/13/2026, Santa Cruz became the first city in California to terminate their flock contracts due to data sharing concerns with outside agencies, including federal law enforcement and ICE. Two days later, on 01/15/2026, our neighboring town of Los Altos Hills also terminated their flock contract due to privacy concerns, cost considerations, and overall effectiveness. We must refuse all relationships with a company who violates our city's strong non cooperation policy and will jeopardize our immigrant loved ones for the sake of a profit. Police departments have weaponized ALPR data to racially profile black and brown communities, harass people seeking reproductive services and or gender affirming care, and target people engaging in their First Amendment right to protest. AI cameras have high risks of false positives racially profiling innocent individuals.

In October 2025, an AI powered gun detection system at Kenwood High School in Baltimore County mistook a Doritos bag in a young black teenager's hands as a firearm, triggering an armed police response. In another instance, a 12 year old in New Mexico was handcuffed after an ALPR camera misread the last digit of a license plate. These things are not foolproof. Without adequate human review, AI cameras can escalate innocent matters to armed law enforcement inflicting psychological trauma on our black and brown communities. And the ICE victim who had received five shots and got seven bullet holes.

Do you all remember that? That was an ALPR flock camera incident. According to Electronic Frontier Foundation, companies like Flock Safety allow law enforcement agencies to stake out locations like abortion clinics or create hot lists of license plates to track in real time. FLoC's technology can also search for a vehicle based on color, make, and model even without a plate number. Anti abortion activists have long been documenting the place of patients and providers who visit reproductive health facilities researching data that can now be easily cross referenced with ALPR databases.

More than 50 law enforcement agencies across the country have conducted searches through FLOC to track protest activity, going so far as to employ the terms no kings or simply protest. For example, local law enforcement agencies have scrutinized and queried flock nine times related to the activists of Direct Action Everywhere, an animal rights organization known for using civil disobedience tactics. When when the authoritarian federal government is threatening to arrest and detain people for publicly speaking up against their tactics, we must not make it easier for them to use our data to target dissenting community members undermining our nation's principles of freedom and democracy. For these reasons and more, we urge the city council to continue your unwavering protection of our immigrant communities and boldly stand against federal overreach and AI mass surveillance. No matter how perfect the policy, the current federal government has proven that there are no bounds to their lawless terror and violent propaganda on our communities, and we can expect and witness how they will weaponize any tool and data against our people.

Standing by our values means choosing community trust, privacy, and immigrant safety over unconstitutional hyper surveillance. We must terminate our flock contract and reject all ALPR vendors. Get the flock out of Mountain View City and will everyone who is opposed to ALPRs please stand or raise your hand.

Thank you.

Thank you Ms. Melissa. Just to confirm with the city clerk, everyone who turned in and seated their time has already been removed from the queue. Okay, so we will now go back to one and a half minutes. We have our next speaker Cara Silver followed by Tim Domke followed by Heidi Baike. Recognize the name but I can't pronounce it. Lucien Eckert. If you guys can line up over here so that we save some time as you can get called. Go ahead Ms. Silver.

Thank you Madam Mayor and Counsel. My name is Cara Silver. I am the co lead of the Immigrant Rights Action Team for Indivisible Palo Alto Plus. I'm also a public agency lawyer and I've been practicing law for over thirty years. First of all, I want to commend Chief Canfield for the brave and community minded decision that he made here and I encourage the City Council to do the same thing.

FLAC cameras have been used to hunt immigrants. Despite the protections of SB 54, FLOC has had numerous instances of sharing data with ICE and other federal agencies both directly and through side door requests. During this time of federally sanctioned violence, we must protect and keep our immigrant families together by refusing to invest in artificial intelligence surveillance that can be weaponized with no clear guardrails. Additionally, flock cameras set us down the road of mass surveillance. Our communities should be able to drive and walk along our streets without worrying about whether their information will be used and shared.

The federal government is not equipped to regulate this far reaching technology and even our state government is not equipped to do that either as Governor Newsom recently vetoed a bill providing reasonable guardrails for flock.

We have our next speaker, Tim Domke followed by Heidi Beike.

Mountain resident. I'm very happy the chief that you took the action to shut off the cameras. I think you see a lot of momentum and a lot of enthusiasm tonight to get out of this relationship with FLAC. Mountain View is not the first or only community to come to this decision, and as we look at communities that were a little further ahead of us, it may not be as easy as canceling a contract. In December, in Eugene, Oregon, they disabled their cameras. They made a city decision. They disabled their cameras. Flock reactivated those cameras afterwards. In Spring I'm sorry, not Springfield, in Evanston, Illinois, in September. They went even further.

They removed flock cameras from poles in their city. Flock reinstalled them. It may not be as simple as canceling a contract or getting our money back. We need to not stop until these are out of our city. They have to be disabled. They have to be removed. They have solar panels and wireless transmissions, and as long as they are up on poles, nobody in this room, even you chief, have control over those cameras, as proven by some of the experiences we've had already and from other cities. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Heidi Balicke, Lucienne Eckhart, followed by Brandon Downey, and then Serge Bont.

Hi, I'm Heidi Baeke and I am a over twenty year resident of Mountain View. I also work for the Mountain View Wisbon School District. These comments are my personal comments. I thank the Chief and the MVPD for turning them off. As was just stated, I have been seeing that these cameras are not always turned off and citizens are taking it into their own hands and taking them down.

I was just reading about different places that people are just climbing the poles and taking them down and destroying the cameras, which maybe would violate our standing of having a lawsuit against FLAC. Being able to return everything unharmed may help that. I also want to reiterate that no ALPR is going to be safe at this moment in the environment we're finding ourselves where our first amendment rights are being violated, our fourth and fifth amendment rights are being violated. So please no more ALPRs. Thank you.

Thank you. Lucienne Eckhart followed by Brandon Downey followed by Serge Bont followed by James Kussmaul.

Hey, folks. I'm Lucienne, resident of Mountain View. I'm a

Could you get closer to the microphone?

Yeah. Of course. Sorry. Hi. Yeah. So I'm a tech worker, and a lot of us are concerned that there's no actual rejection of warrantless dragnet surveillance in the current proposal. We can't just take a tech company's word that they're not going to like enable unauthorized access of our data. There needs to be like a structural physical impediment from that happening. And with current ALPR technology, that is not not feasible, unfortunately. It's not good enough just to wait until, like, something goes wrong and then acting on it after the fact when one of our community members could be harmed by that.

And so far as Mountain View is associated with the image of Silicon Valley, there's a unique opportunity and perhaps responsibility to set an example for other cities in the area and beyond by rejecting ALPRs in general. And joining a lawsuit would also help with that as well. So that's pretty much what

I got. Thanks.

Thank you. Next is Brandon Downey, followed by Serge Bont, followed by James Kussmaul, followed by Raul.

Alright. My name is Brandon. I've lived here for twenty years. I've worked in information security for twenty five. If you've used a product from any number of tech companies, I've probably done a security review on it or

a privacy

review. And I'm here today to tell you that it's not just flock. ALPR cameras and the tech is dangerous. By way of analogy, some technologies are like gunpowder. A little bit can be used for fun, think fireworks, bigger amounts even for defense when used responsibly, but store enough gunpowder and it becomes too dangerous to store in bulk around people.

This technology is the same. It is gunpowder tech. That's because there's tech that stores and correlates personal information about us and our location are like gunpowder because however convincing the story from the people whose job it is to sell it, the risks of recording and keeping this data cannot be made small enough to justify the damage done when inevitably a data breach occurs. Our inability to keep personal data safe at scale is not a theoretical risk. The history of the last decade is the history of one data breach after another.

We now live in a world where the consequences of mishandling data are dire. Out of control agencies like ICE and DHS are desperately trying to gather as much data about us as possible to build a literal panopticon to decide who they can harass and who they can lock up. These agencies have already added look into the camera for facial ID to your papers please to their demands. We don't have to make

Thank you. Next is Serge Bont, James Kussmaul, then Raul, then Lana Sheridan.

Good evening. My name is Serge Bont. I've been a resident of Mountain View for close to thirty years, and I've always appreciated Mountain View's tradition of good community policing, one that makes sure that everyone treats a trust of officers so that issues, crimes can be reported and information shared without fear. In contrast, I and many of of your residents are have no trust at all with the current federal level policing. So when I saw the the, you know, the the fact that FLAC, you know, could could share information with our governments, I think it's a it's a big risk of eroding the trust that we have in in in our Mountain View Police Department.

So I'm very appreciative of the chief taking the courageous decision to to to remove flock from from Mountain View, and I urge you to to to to approve this. In terms of the next steps, I I have similar concerns that had me expressed about that technology in particular. So for our next step, I think you we should have probably a community discussion, maybe a community forum held by the HRC so that all these issues can be surfaced before you you commit to to moving forward with anything like this. Thank you.

Thank you, mister Bont. James Kussmaul followed by Raul, followed by Lana Sheridan, followed by Yun.

James Kussmaul, 28 year resident of Mountain View. I just wanted to echo the comments of many of other speakers encouraging counsel to adopt the staff recommendation to cease the contract with FLOC, as well as to echo the comments to avoid future use of ALPRs in the way that they've been used. I can certainly I know I personally, working on a lot of advocacy for street safety, see a lot of value in things like very tightly targeted red light cameras and speed cameras, but even those seeing how much vendors and such mismanaged data, that makes me nervous. And that's a case where we have a specific purpose to the use of the automated enforcement mechanism. ALPRs are just sort of a generalist dragnet

for

all the data, and are not serving a targeted purpose in the same way, which makes them, as some other speakers have argued, unacceptable constitutionally. And so I would encourage counsel to not continue with this category of automated enforcement, And I want to thank staff for all their work on making sure that they're responsive to community issues and to the accounts for their time.

Thank you Mr. Kussmaul. Next we have Raul. If you guys can come down, Raul. Going once, going twice. Lana Sheridan. Alright. Next we have Yun. Followed by Wei Tran.

The council has the responsibility to apply the precautionary principle before imposing any product on the people. The precautionary principle holds that the product has the burden of proving that it's safe and effective. In The U. S, the predominant use of the principle is in the medical domain. But

in the

case of mass surveillance, it's more crucial to apply the precautionary principle because in this case, we do not have free, prior, informed consent as we do in the medical domain. ALPRs fail the safety and effectiveness test miserably. There have been multiple cases of APLR abuse in which external entities and owning jurisdictions have used the data to track down, intimidate, and retaliate against observers and critics. As for the effectiveness, there have been a few rigorous statistical independent studies, and in all of those cases, researchers have found that no statistical evidence that ALPR deter crime or help solve crime. When you look at the so called benefits, insist on statistical analysis that accounts for confounding factors not just except raw data that usually comes out of police reports.

We urge you to reject all ALPR. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Hui Tran, followed by Ariel, followed by Evan Barnes, followed by Angelica Guadalupe.

Good evening council members. My name is Hui Tran. I'm executive director of CYREN. You've already heard about our lawsuit against the city of San Jose but I want to talk to you about another one. Last year, the DOJ sued the state of California to try to get access to all of our unredacted voter rolls.

We you know, for all of the bluster from the administration about being anti immigrant, this action was important for us because for us to uplift the voices of immigrants, we have to get our communities registered to vote. And we want them to participate in our democracy because that's how we hold power to account. Last December, we intervened. Last December, we filed a motion to dismiss. Last month, we won on all counts and the DOJ was prevented from accessing the voter rolls for California residents.

One sentence in that opinion, though, stood out. Judge David Carter stated, It appears that the DOJ is on a nationwide quest to gather the sensitive, private information of millions of Americans for use in a centralized federal database. The risk of federal seizure is why we have to oppose the creation of mass surveillance locally. Even if our local law enforcement shows that it stands with immigrant communities, each and every vulnerability, each and every weakness, each and every pathway we create that allows outside parties to access ALPOR data creates enormous risk on our residents. We're really happy to see how Mountain View handled this data. But every time we create a mass surveillance

Thank you. Next is Ariel followed by Evan Barnes followed by Angelica Guadalupe followed by Yurizi.

So first of all I really just wanted to say that I I can't imagine how this happened in the first place. I'm glad that we're all seeing our mistakes here, but I personally wish we had kept AI mass surveillance in horror sci fi movies where it belonged. That said, I do agree with everyone else here. We need to get rid of FLOC immediately. That includes taking down the physical cameras.

That also includes never having another contract with another similar company for a similar purpose in the future, and preferably again also suing FLAC for the city funds that were completely wasted on that program and misused. Let's see what else. Oh, yeah. Okay. So let's talk about me.

I'm a law abiding citizen. I've literally never even had a traffic ticket. I'm not an immigrant. I'm not coming from out of state to seek an abortion, generally like an average person, except I do help organize protests, and these cameras fucking scare me. And I don't feel like normal law abiding citizens should feel scared that they're being constantly watched by the police because that doesn't sound like a very free democratic society to me and I and I would really hope that that's not you know how anyone else sees our country, you know, as a place where you're always watched by law enforcement. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Evan Barnes, Angelica Guadalupe, Yurizi, Katie Paizi. I would like to do a friendly reminder. I have this trouble all the time as my colleagues would know. Please limit swearing to to not. So thank you. Go right ahead.

Hi, council members. My name is Evan Barnes. Thank you for hearing me. And, thank you police chief for immediately turning off the cameras. I appreciate that. I'm here to urge you not just to not renew the contract, but to pursue legal action against FLAC. They very clearly violated California law, and they should actually be punished for that. I would also urge you to say no new ALPRs or automated surveillance systems at all. Just imagine for a minute that you found out that your neighbor had been watching you out their windows and keeping a log of every time you left for work and came back from work, and the clothes you wore, and maybe what makeup you had on that day, and that they then started installing cameras along your commute and outside your gym and at your grocery store parking lot, I think you would feel violated. I know I certainly would.

You'd feel like they were stalking you, which they are. But that's what FLAC has been doing. That's what automated surveillance does, is it's stalking on a mass scale. And the fact that it's on behalf of the state doesn't make it any better. In a lot of ways, makes it worse because it's susceptible to abuse. I just wanted to say humans are we're bad at understanding consequences on societal scales. I see the compelling use case for tools like flock and solving crimes like kidnapping. I understand the cost of violent crime. In 2017, when my best friend was murdered while she was at home alone in the house that we shared, and I still, with that in mind, don't think that mass surveillance is worth it. The trade offs have to outweigh the costs.

The benefits have to outweigh the costs. And with luck, they just don't. 41 cases solved with the help of it is great, but they violated the civil liberties of hundreds of thousands of people who fell in the view of their cameras, and that trade is not worthwhile.

Thank you. Next, have Angelica Guadalupe.

Oh, short.

Okay. Hi. I'm Angelica Guadalupe. I'm here with CYREN Youth Liberation Institute. I'm gonna repeat what a whole bunch of these people have been saying, so I apologize.

But first of all, we wanna thank the police chief for turning them off after realizing that they were sharing our data. But not just that, but youth in Mountain View deserve to feel safe. And with this tracking devices and, you know, being monitor you know, being tracked, To be honest, every step we take is not safe for our youth, and we just ask for the city to end all contracts and, you know, any future contracts that you guys would have with these companies that do survey our companies, our citizens, and residents of this area. And then, yeah, I think that the youth deserve to feel safe, not surveilled. Thank you.

Thank you. Yurizi followed by Katie Paietes followed by Al Brooks followed by John Scarborough.

Hi, my name is Yuditsi and I live in San Jose but I'm here to represent CYREN and the youth that I work with who also live in Mountain View. As many of my peers have said, we urge the city of Mountain View to support the staff support the staff report to permanently end their contracts with following the leadership of cities in Los Altos and Santa Cruz. And we applaud the city police chief for immediately turning off the cameras after learning how FLOC shared our personal data. However, we reject the reports proposal to engage in community discussions about the positive outcomes of ALPR and exploration of any future ALPR because mass surveillance does not keep our public safe. I know you've heard this countless times but I'll say it one more time, mass surveillance does not keep our public safe.

This is a fallacy that is weaponized when there is a lot of economic turmoil because this is when people feel most vulnerable And so, it feels like an easy way out to present this as a public safety issue and many people want to believe that, but ultimately mass surveillance only leads to most to more violence to the most vulnerable. Thank you.

Thank you. Katie Pietes followed by Al Brooks followed by John Scarborough followed by Ada.

Hi, my name is Katie Pietes. I'm senior at Mountain View High School, and I'm here to represent the CYREN Youth Liberation Institute. We urge the city of Mountain View to support the staff report to permanently end their contracts with FLOC. We call for reimbursement for associated FLOC fees and for a city class action lawsuit against flock who breached our contract and shared our data. Flock violates our fourth amendment right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, effects.

Flock also violates six nature of California Value Act s b 54 by directly sharing with ICE or indirectly sharing with immigration authorities through fusion centers weaponizing our data to deport our neighbors. Think about the vulnerable, undocumented youth, the youth of color who are living in Mountain View, who should not live in fear. We should be protecting this community, and by protecting this community is refusing to invest in AI surveillance. As a young woman myself, I already walk in fear alone on the streets. I wouldn't also wanna add cameras looking at me while I'm walking on the streets of Mountain View. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Al Brooks, John Scarborough, Ada, then Jesus Romero.

Good evening. I unite with essentially everyone else here in calling for an end to the FLOC contract and calling for the city council to not engage in any future ALPR contracts or the use of such surveillance technology. I also wanna just explore some of the fundamental principles at play here. Counselor McCallister, earlier you raised the example of the Savannah Guthrie case, a case in which license plate readers and the like have not had a meaningful impact to this point. I wanna lift up a case in which license plate readers have had a meaningful impact.

It was raised slightly earlier, the case of Marimar Martinez, an advocate against the occupation of our communities by border police who was shot five times by border police for her advocacy. Content warning for gun violence and misogyny after shooting her. One of the officers said, I fired five shots and she had seven holes. Put that in your book, boys. And I think this raises the issue that we need to highlight about the ways that power concentrations are continuously causing harm in communities.

Those who seek power tend to take it from everyone else, and we do not need to help them. We should be very suspicious of instances where people are seeking to use technology and new data and AI tools in order to concentrate the people's power, and instead we should be investing in our people and treating them as partners in public safety rather than enemies. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have John Scarborough, followed by Ada, followed by Jesus Romero, followed by George Duke.

Hello mayor, city council members, chief. I'm John Scarborough. I'm a long term resident in Mountain View. I'm really glad we have a community for all. I'm really glad we have a lot of our community out here today. I like the diversity we have. It makes it a great community. I agree with a lot of the stuff folks have said technologically about this technology and socially. But what I'd like to do is set the scene. So if you noticed, a lot of dystopian movies have mass surveillance.

There's a reason for that. Surveillance is a foundational tool for repressive systems from the Panopticon prison through the Stasi secret police in East Germany, 1984, The Hunger Games, to repressive regimes around our around our world now. It is a tool to repress people, to repress democracy. So it is a problem with the system, not a problem with flock. It is a problem with surveillance and the lack of privacy that we have here.

So it's not a friendly neighbor looking out for you. It's a Stasi police that never sleeps. So I encourage you to continue canceling and not renew it with any other APLR or other surveillance technology. Thanks.

Thank you, mister Scarborough. Next, have Ada followed by Jesus Romero followed by George Duke, followed by Yan Ming Wen. Ada? Ada? Alright. Seeing no Ada, Jesus Romero? Following Jesus Romero, have George Duke followed by Yan Ming Wen followed by Connor O'Brien.

Good evening. My name is Jesus and I'm here for a PSA and to make one suggestion. We prefer you don't, but if you ever consider entering any future contract with any surveillance vendor, you must require an independent third party technical audit, not just of policy compliance, but of the actual hardware, firmware, and capabilities of every device deployed in Mountain View. I want to begin with a retake on the famous quote from poet Dylan Thomas because it captures exactly why we're here tonight. We cannot go gentle into that good night when it comes to civil liberties.

We must rage against the dying of the light when it comes to transparency, accountability, and the truth. We owe it to the community to shine a light on every part of this system. The city's own report confirms that Flock reached their contract and therefore our trust. It raises a deeper question. If Flock hit these features, what else might be hidden? A cyber security researcher who has spent seven months analyzing Flock's theories I mean, yeah. Flux technology recently laid out a series of claims that deserves attention for verification purposes. He states that Flux license plate readers feed video into an AI model trained not just on vehicles but on people, animals, and even bikes. Shoot. I'm sorry.

He claims that after training this model, Flock expanded into full video cameras with live streaming, people detection, and vehicle detection. He states that in early twenty twenty five during a private seminar, FLAC announced that all LPRs nationwide were upgraded into video cameras for free meaning every LPR

Thank you. Sorry. I know it gets really fast. George Duke followed by Yan Ming Wen followed by Connor O'Brien.

Hello, Council. My name is George Duquet and about thirty five years ago, my mother and my older sister and I fled Columbia and landed here in Mountain View. For the next thirty five years, we've lived on Bush Street, Wiseman area, Easy Street, and yeah, now Tyrella. And you know, I'm raising my kids. My kids have gone to all the schools here.

I went to all the schools here and you know, with all of this talk, I can't imagine how I would have felt, you know, knowing that I was being watched, knowing that ICE was coming after people like my family. And so I wanted to make sure that I came today. I didn't write anything. I probably should've wrote something, but being a long time resident of Mountain View, you know, I've lived in Campbell and Sunnyvale for a few years, but I've always come back to Mountain View, right? Mountain View's been my home.

I'm fortunate to have been able to raise my kids here, and they're here so that they could understand what they need to know as long term residents of Mountain View in the future for when they need to come to City Council to speak their mind. And so I hope that you guys don't renew a contract with any other vendor and take everyone's words seriously. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Duke. Yan Ming Wen, followed by Connor O'Brien, followed by Julie Meyerson, followed by Alex Brown.

Hi. I work in Mountain View just down the street. I'd like to echo everyone else in rejecting the use of ALPR systems to surveil us. I'd like to say that this data is too sensitive and too granular to trust any vendor with, let alone one as unreliable as FLoC. The EFF reports that other ALPR vendors, including three ms, Motorola, and more have serious vulnerabilities that allow even unskilled attackers to gain access to camera feeds and troves of the license placed data.

This is beyond just speculation. In 2019, Perceptix, the ALPR vendor for US customs and border protection, experienced a massive data breach of ALPR and biometric data, including over 100,000 images of license plates. And as we all know, despite their promises of data restriction, FLoC says it retains the right to share municipal data with federal agencies such as ICE even if local police departments restrict sharing. These are only a few examples of the risks we take by allowing ALPR systems in our community. I urge us to reject any future use of this technology. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Conor O'Brien followed by Julie Meyerson followed by Alex Brown.

Thank you. Good evening. Conor O'Brien. I'm a resident of Mountain View and like Tim, a member of Silicon Valley DSA. I wanted to ask that the council absolutely terminate the existing contract with FLAC, but also not pursue any ALPR program in the future with any other company.

I wanted to emphasize one dimension of the problem with ALPRs in general that goes beyond the untrustworthiness of FLAC in particular. The whole case for these programs hinges on the benefits that are meant to flow from participating and wide reciprocal sharing of the data with agencies outside of Mountain View. The scale of that means even if we have perfect policies and the restrictions are perfectly implemented, it still would not be enough to prevent data from ending up in the wrong hands. We know this because there have already been reports of local departments doing searches on behalf of federal agencies and even informally sharing their passwords with federal enforcement, which means that engaging in any of these networks is asking all of us to trust that not just NVPT, but every single agency or person with quote unquote legitimate access to our data will not share it on to federal immigration enforcement or anyone else who's not meant to have it. It only takes a single individual weak link in that trust to compromise people's safety.

I think for the city to pursue ALPRs despite these risks would be a choice to roll the dice with the safety of our most vulnerable neighbors in the hope that putting them at risk might buy some extra measure of security for the rest of us. And I really hope that's now what our city stands for.

Thank you, mister Connor. Next, Julie Meyerson followed by Alex Brown.

Hello, everybody. My name is Julie Meyerson. I'm from Sunnyvale, just down the road. First off, I wanna commend you guys for, coming publicly, explaining what has happened with flock, and shutting them off. I want to continue to keep those off, make sure that we get as much of the data back as we can, and make sure that they can't continue to share that data.

It's kind of weird to think that our data, you know, me a a citizen, a law law abiding citizen, would be monitored every time I drive down certain roads. That does not make me feel safer. That makes me scared because I recognize how powerful that is and in the wrong hands, and it seems to be I mean, I just got a letter from a company I've never heard of saying that there's a data breach from some medical files that were shared. I can't even get my doctors to share the medical information I need to share, but these dark web companies are able to get my information, and it does not make me feel good. And I can't imagine what it would feel like if I were more vulnerable. So thank you and let's do more.

Thank you. And our last in person public speaker before we go to we have lots of Zoom ones.

Oh, I know.

Mister Brown, go ahead. Seconds?

Hi, friends. Alright. No. I got I got it written down. It's gonna

be a

fun one. First things first, shout out to four zero four Media and Jason Kebler, especially for all the coverage of Flock. Same for Ben Jordan and Gainsec. Keep up the good work. Second, Mike, great job. Credit where it's due for living up to your commitments and for protecting the integrity of the the city of Mountain View and MVPD. Third, Alfred Hitchcock warned us about birds. Flocks are dangerous. We should heed that warning. Fourth, have you considered replacing Fox with all the drones that the government used to replace the birds that they murdered back in the sixties by dissolving all their bones?

That bird thing surveillance system seems much more battle tested. I mean, it's like sixty years. Finally, an option that could help a lot of people, an MLPR system where we hire people to stand at corners around the city and write down license plate numbers that they see in notebooks, and the PD could just ask them to go through them when they're looking for cars. Don't ideas. Thank you.

And I have thirty seconds left.

Okay. Now we will have our, we will now have our virtual public comment. We will start out with Victor Sin.

Good evening, mayor and council members. I'm Victor Sin, chair of the Santa Clara County chapter of the ACLU of Northern California. Automated license plates related to surveillance technology that makes it less safe for us, particularly immigrants, black and brown people, religious minorities, people seeking reproductive health care or gender affirming care and protesters exercising their first amendment rights. FLOC's transparency portal on Mountain View's data shows that less than 0.2% of the data are related to hot list. The vast majority of the data is gathered on law abiding people going about their everyday business.

The Trump administration is looking for ways to exploit local surveillance systems in order to target immigrants and activists. Some states are plowing through ALPR data to detect people seeking abortion. The only type of secure data is no data. In other words, do not gather the data to begin with. We urge you to terminate the flock contracts and end the use of ALPR immediately and permanently. Permanently. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we have Leo.

Hi, there. Thank you. I'm Leo. I'm a resident of San Jose. I also work a little bit in Native, and through that experience, know that this sort of technology is not as safe as people who are buying it would like to believe. It's very easily, as other people have mentioned, easy to hack, get into. Abusive ALPRs endanger the lives of our most vulnerable residents. We must refuse all ALPR contracts because we must not replace FLAC with another harmful weapon of mass surveillance. FLAC is not the only issue. It's a problem with the technology and its abuses as a whole.

Police trust this technology far too much. As explained by other speakers, false positives have already shown to be common, and these false positives often lead to an elevated police response that can also end in the harm of residents. It's wasting city resources for the purpose of violating the Fourth Amendment rights of city residents. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up, we have Lucilla Ortiz.

Hi. Good evening, City Council. Thank you for having me. My name is Lucilla Ortiz, and I'm here representing Silicon Valley Rising. First of all, I wanna commend the police chief for doing the right thing as soon as he found that there was a breach and the promises that the tool, you know, that were being used was happening, that he turned it off right away.

You know? So I wanna commend him for that. And also to repeat what he said is that this is a tool, and, this is a tool that was developed for the purposes of profit. And right now, the people that are giving to them the most profit is federal government that is leaning towards authoritarianism, and we have learned those of us who have taken history lessons, we have learned that authoritarians abuse data to kind of extort their power in any way, and that puts us all at risk. And so I want you to think about that as you're thinking about the pros and cons of this future contracts.

You know? Nobody is going to be safe, especially in this political environment that it is. And if you are giving your money to companies that have supported authoritarian governments, you know, that in itself is being complicit in this anti government pursuit that the federal government is doing. So thank you.

Thank you. Next, have Eva Tang.

Hello, counsel. Eva Tang, formerly of the Public Safety Advisory Body, Old Mountain View. Been here almost a decade. I really actually haven't been happy about this despite flexing my hip mobility at you two weeks ago. It has real put real people at risk, people I love and have shared joy and laughter with, people with beating hearts who are part of the daily Mountain View community who fear for their lives so they can't speak like I'm doing right now. This PD has shown me it is not indeed committed to transparency. I could have caught this data breach for you in December if you let me see the files, but you didn't. External audits done at, quote, random intervals when the data breach wasn't caught for over a year? Chief, you gotta be kidding me. I teach middle school.

I teach gaslighters all day. Alright? How do I teach 12 year olds to take accountability when my local PD doesn't? This is a tool that puts our community at risk, and a tool that puts our community at risk is not public safety. It is subsidized private security. Another thing you should know is that the Department of Homeland Security has a policy on LPRs. The vendors are not permitted to use any of ICE's query data and they're not even allowed to retain it. So how would we be able to keep track of them not accessing our data? No ALPRs, period. We can't trust you with them. Thank you. I yield my time.

Thank you, Eva. Next we have Bruce England.

Thank you, mayor. Bruce England, living on Wisbon Station Drive in Mountain View. I'm really enjoying hearing all these comments from people, and I agree with a whole lot of it. And I also am even more concerned than when this meeting started. I I also commend the chief for having taken immediate action against the flock cameras.

And I also just want to mention I have great respect for chief Canfield and many people on PD force. I'm glad we have a PD that we do. And yet, we're faced with huge challenges like this one. As I've said a number of times, I feel that folding the PSAP was highly premature, and I think that that was done because a former council member wanted it when they probably should have frankly held their tongue as they were leaving council. You might reconsider that because HRC is not a replacement for PSAB and the groups that Chief Canfield brings together, those are not public meetings, and there's no public record.

And so that's not a replacement either. Please revisit PSAP. We need this kind of oversight that you're hearing in public comment tonight. The FOIA requests were handled poorly. And the cross department work, I encourage that. And lastly, the transportation dashboard is pretty slim and not effective right now. So I hope the PD will have a look at that and get it updated. Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. England. Next, we have Anna Marie Morales.

Hi. Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Awesome. Good evening to the mayor and council members. I'm Anna Marie, sheher. I've lived in our beautiful city for over forty years. I thank our police chief for turning the cameras off. It is truly appreciated. That is not enough, though. I ask that they be removed permanently and not replaced with another mass surveillance system now or in the future. There must also be real transparency and accountability. This is an urgent matter.

You have the opportunity right now to permanently end our contract with Block Safety and you must do it. Follow Los Altos Hills in Santa Cruz who have already acted. Our data was shared outside the state without our consent. These are not harmless license plate readers. These are mass surveillance systems art the of neighbors.

And the instigators have found block portal credentials for sell on the dark web. This if the city claims it owns this data, then the city is responsible for protecting it and therefore must act now. Do not reopen the door to more community discussions about future ALPR use and this permanently seek reimbursement, hold FLAC accountable, sue them and refuse to replace one mass surveillance.

Thank you, Anna Marie. Next we have Michael Sorry, forgot your name wrong.

Oh,

no. Hey, can you hear me?

I can hear you.

Great. Thanks, everybody. I'm Michael Moltop, a Mountain View resident. Mountain View and Mountain View PD have set up what I believe to be good ALPR guidelines. But unfortunately, all the city's effort means nothing because with impossible to ensure that these guidelines are followed.

The problem is that FLoC's system is trivially abusable. In this last year, we have seen law enforcement officers using other FLoC's cameras to track girlfriends they thought were cheating. We have seen California departments defying California law and sending their Flock data out of state. We have seen local law enforcement officers in Chicago literally giving their Flock logins to ICE, so ICE can use Flock even if Flock says they don't work with ICE. I'm gonna mildly disagree with some folks here and say that there are ways that a better company could improve this system.

Searches could require case numbers, searches could be done by departments, searches could require local approval, but Flock implements none of this and has no protections. I would love to live in a world where we can use surveillance to catch more bad guys, but for this surveillance to be a positive benefit, we have to be able to trust that the surveillance won't be abused. FLoC is not trustable. FLoC is the diametric opposite of a trustworthy entity. Stop FLOC surveillance, get rid of the actual cameras, ban private FLOC cameras. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Sam Guzman.

Hello city council members. I'm here to urge you all not only to terminate the existing contract with FLAC, but to terminate any and all future investment with ALPR surveillance. This pilot program has perfectly demonstrated the fundamentally unethical, exploitative, and invasive nature of this mass surveillance technology and the myths of its possible regulation. There is no amount of regulations you can propose to ensure that AOPRs don't risk our communities. Federal agencies have been fatally attacking our communities and building databases of immigrants and activists to be their next victims.

Time and time again, local police have failed to regulate their violent overreach. Whatever promises Mountain View has made to protect our data have already been violated. The warrantless collection of our data in itself is already a betrayal to the community. The appropriate response is to stop entirely. There is now no more room to claim ignorance and apologize for negligence. Future investments with AOPR vendors would now only be interpreted as an intentional and direct threat to all residents of Santa Clara County at the behest of our local law enforcement. Please choose us, reject AOPRs, sue Flock, and invest that money back into the communities you've risked. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Sebastian Briseboise.

Hello. Can you hear me fine?

Yes, we can hear you.

Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So hi. My name is Sebastian Brisebois. I'm a Mountain View resident. And, yeah, it would be foolish to trust ALPRs after this incident. These surveillance companies do not have our best interest in mind. They care about making money above all else, which is a concern when they handle valuable data that can be shared with others that shouldn't have access to it, whether it's on purpose or not.

One thing we've learned over the years about tech companies in general is that they are likely to violate our privacy and security. So we shouldn't ever choose again to build infrastructure that can violate our privacy and safety like this. This is especially a concern with how our federal government is since it's constantly violating our rights and bullying private companies into bending to their will. So it's important to remember also the false positives LPRs as other speakers have mentioned. And yes, they just have a possibility of harming people and we shouldn't be accepting that.

So I don't think this is what public safety should look like. We have other ways to do it with housing, better roads, etcetera.

Thank you, Sebastian. Next we have Hannah Leonard.

Hello. Yes. Can you hear me? Okay. I'm gonna cut to the chase here. My name is Hannah Leonard, and I'm with the Silicon Valley DSA just like the certified hero, Tim McKenzie. I'm gonna cut to the chase here and talk directly to chief chief Canfield. Speaking as an air force veteran who has worked on the flight line, as in someone who knows what it feels like to be charged with upholding the safety of others, I can tell you that back in my active duty days, no one would have thanked me for repairing a mistake that endangered the security of others. They call they call it doing it the bare minimum, and I get written up, full stop. A lot of people have thanked you for ending the flock contract, and I agree that was the, like, the right call.

But to be honest with you, just giving constructive criticism, in my opinion, if you want to deserve all the thanks that you've gotten here today, you need to drop your recommendation of searching for another ALPR contract entirely. The fact that you even suggested it suggests to me that MVPD didn't actually learn the lesson that needs to be learned here. It indicates to me that you want to normalize a technology that encourages warrantless surveillance and creates an infrastructure that is inherently dangerous.

It is

an uphill battle to control ALPRs, and eventually someone who you do not want to control that technology will get their hands on it just by creating the infrastructure alone. So please seriously reconsider even the notion of going back to ALPRs. That is something that we need to get taken down if we want to live in a safe community. Don't let yourself get scammed, basically.

Thank you, Hannah. Next, have Batman

of San Jose.

Can you hear me?

I can hear you, Batman.

Perfect. Because I'm not gonna sugarcoat this. Like the last speaker mentioned, this is the bare minimum, turning off the cameras. If they put the cameras back up, you need to build a box around them and lock the box. I don't care what you have to do, you need to stop this.

We've already seen the damage that FLoC has done across the country. And switching over to another brand of, you know, fascist surveillance is not a solution here. Good community policing should not have our neighbors watching their back 20 fourseven. Good community policing should involve discussions with the community, transparency, openness, not this backdoor overreach into our private lives. I work in Mountain View, and I don't want to see my coworkers get taken by ICE.

And this tool will allow that to happen. Tools like this will allow that to happen. So remove any cameras that are still up. Do not, and I repeat, not go over to a different form of surveillance because, again, the voters will remember this. And each and every one of you will be up for election at some point, and they're not gonna be so kind if you don't.

Thank you. Next, we have Claire Witt White.

Hello. Can you hear me? We can hear you.

Hi. My name is Claire. I'm with Silicon Valley DSA. I'd like to urge the council to cancel the flock contract. It's my belief that Mountain View cannot guarantee compliance with SB 34 and continue using the FLAC cameras.

FLAC safety has a known track record of poor security practices and misleading law enforcement about data sharing policies. Mountain View's flock data have already been shared more widely than intended, and I believe that this company has already demonstrated that they are dishonest or incompetent. And for that reason, I believe more policy violations are likely. Even assuming that Mountain View's sharing policies are followed, it has been reported that local police departments, including 10 California departments, have conducted searches on behalf of federal authorities. This includes SFPD, which Mountain View currently shares its FLOC data with.

Anyone who has viewed flock search audits has seen that a large proportion of searches have missing reason codes or use vague codes such as like investigation or suspect, which means that, access is completely unaccountable, and any agency, with access to Mountain View's data can search on behalf of ICE with no evidence. So, yes, please protect our immigrant neighbors and all of our civil liberties and cancel the contract. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we have George Lance.

Yes, well can you hear me?

We can hear

you. Okay, great. I know you guys know the First Amendment and the importance of not discriminating and viewpoint discrimination is about as bad as it gets. Please refrain from that. And remember that you can be offensive with your free speech, and if people want to say fuck the cops, they can say that.

And you can't stop them. This is free speech, Patel versus Pam, and so on. Don't make me file a restraint against your city because I'd be happy to do it. We have a problem with this law group because they're trained by the same genociders in Israel that train these groups that come through and treat us all like ICE, and the rest of them are all trained by the IDF. And if there's one efficient group of killers and authoritarians, that would be genociding Zionist Jews in Israel and their friends like Epstein and the financiers that keep us enslaved in our countries.

We should get away from groups like this. Should also make sure that our city governments don't spend any money with Jeffrey and his group of Jewish premises, in their deviant sexual perversions. Some of the board there may not, in the comments about their daddies, the Zionist Jews, but the rest of the world is coming, to real sanction that they're like and we need to wake up that as much as we're waking up with this fox stuff everybody. Time to take action.

Thank you. Your time is up. Next we have Kinton.

Hello. Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Thank you. To the Mountain View Police Department, well done auditing and turning off these cameras. To counsel, you buffoons excitedly voted for the surveillance state, and now you clutch pearls and do your best surprise Pikachu face when the surveillance state is abused. Who could have seen this coming besides everyone? Of course, the system was abused.

Abused is its raison d'etre. This company's product is an intentional Fourth Amendment violation. This is not taking a photo in public, it is taking a photo, GPS and timestamp tagging it and then putting it into a searchable database. There is case law here, Carpenter versus United States, where warrantless access to time stamped cell phone location data has been ruled a fourth amendment violation. Even if we decide to have some sort of public surveillance cameras, they should never be accessed without judicial oversight.

I think we've seen enough headlines about police and other parties have abused these systems that requiring an actual warrant should be table stakes. Many people supporting these surveillance cameras will say, you should not care about these cameras if you have nothing to hide. Saying you do not care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say. In conclusion, I guess better late than never. Get these flocking cameras out of my flocking city. Thank you.

Thank you. And we have our last, virtual speaker, Larry Fink.

Yes, can you hear me?

Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

All right, great. Thank you. So the time is already going. Okay. Good evening there, city members, and especially the elected hypocrites in the audience. I'm here to talk about the Flock safety cameras, those license plate readers that could finally bring some accountability to our streets. Let's be real. These cameras are just another brick to the police state wall, surveillance monster that's already out of control. But here's the ugly truth. The police aren't protectors. They're corrupt puppets taking orders from elected criminals. While Antifa thugs riot, burn cities, assault innocents, the cops stand down, twiddling their thumbs because their Democrat overlords tell them to. But God forbid, a white man, a Christian, or anyone daring to stand against them show up. They all get harassed. They get doxed and persecuted.

Leftists get away with murder, literally, while conservatives are hunted like dogs. And let's not forget about the beautiful irony of it all. The same leftists who are sobbing and whining about the police state cameras and fascist ICE just watched the precious Renee Goode and Alex Prettye get lit up by federal agents in Minneapolis. Prettye and Goode, more like Pretty Deade and Goode riddance. They stood in the way of real enforcement, played hero for illegals, and found out what happens when the machine they built finally turns on their own. Fight harder hypocrites, your woke martyrs got exactly what they're entitled. ICE wins. We must secure the existence of our people in a future for white children. It's just crazy watching these liberal retards cry.

Thank you so much for your comment. We will now that was our last public comment. So I actually am going to ask my colleagues, would you rather take a break now or power Okay. We're powering through. All right. How does everyone feel? Do you want to take a break now? All right. We will take a break after this item. Yeah. Okay. Alright. So we have on the docket list Councilmember Kamay.

Great. Thank you. So I have a few questions. So for Chief, there was a couple council questions that asked about some of the concerns the public raised about the blinking lights, worried about the cameras could be so operable, and then another question about you know should council vote on the staff recommendation and the contract how fast could we expect the cameras to be removed so maybe you don't mind sharing that information and answers to those questions with the public. Think that'd be helpful.

Certainly. I'm going to pass the technical question to Captain Crowell.

In regards to the blinking lights, we were made aware of that issue. We had been consistently reaching out to Fox since chief turned off the cameras to ensure that they were actually turned off and not collecting data. They assured us they were aware of the blinking light issue. We have not received any specific about what the lights were, but we've been assured that there's no data being captured.

Okay. So we I know that there was some conversation or some question too in the council questions about physical barrier alternatives to cover in the cameras. So is that something that council would need to provide direction or or would need to be explored?

To the the second question that you also asked. Yes. The contract, I believe it states that the cameras would need to come down in a reasonable amount of time. An alternative that has been discussed between city staff is bringing in a a vendor or our own staff to have the cameras removed by electricians to expedite the process, but it would be at the the obviously, an expedited intent, but we need to see what the timeline would be with Fluxafety.

Okay. I think given the level of interest from our community, would there be a way for us to share with the community when the cameras are Should we go in that direction? Not trying to jump the shark on my recommendation, but

Hending the city council's direction, communication would not be a challenge.

Okay. First

have to provide to the community.

Okay, great. Alright, well thank you very much. Thank you mayor. I'm gonna make a motion and first I just want to thank our community and express my solidarity. I also want to thank our police chief and our city staff for their swift action once the unauthorized access to our data was discovered.

I appreciate the professionalism, transparency, and community focused leadership shown in this moment by our city. Acknowledging a situation, acting quickly, and communicating openly reflects integrity and public service. We've talked about how our city is known as a community for all and being a community for all means telling the truth even when it's difficult. It means choosing accountability and it means centering trust. So tonight as a council we have the opportunity to act with unity.

The policy decision before us I believe is clear. So I'm making the motion to support the staff recommendation to authorize the city manager or designee to terminate the existing automatic license plate reader contract with soft with the flock safety and also hoping that that will include not looking into other ALPRs at this time and when the cameras are removed being able to provide a community message so that residents know that the cameras are no longer in our city. And I think this is all taking into account and not lost on me. Just last week, February 19 was the day of remembrance and the day of remembrance is in to acknowledge when President Roosevelt signed executive order nine zero six six which led to the forced removal and incarceration of over a 120,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry living in the West Coast. Families were forced to abandon their homes, businesses, and livelihoods.

No Japanese Americans were ever charged or convicted of espionage or sabotage, yet they were targeted and imprisoned simply for having a face that didn't look like everyone else's. And I believe this history reminds us of what can happen when civil liberties are overridden overridden and when safeguards fail. So at this moment, I believe it's incumbent on all of us as City Council members to be vigilant in protecting both our public safety but also our civil rights and I believe by taking this action we can do both. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Kameh. We have a motion by Council Member Kameh and it was seconded by Council Member Ramirez. Next we have on our docket is Council Member Clark.

Thank you. I I I think I support the motion. I just wanted to clarify a couple of or one thing and then make a just a friendly suggestion if if others are amenable to it. One the the first would be, well, I certainly agree. I don't think we're we're going to be interested in implementing a new a o p r solution anytime soon.

I do the the wording of, you know, looking into things. I just wanna make sure that the I think I'm as bad of a situation as this is, I'm I'm really proud that we have the the chief who we that we have and the team that he's surrounded himself with as well as our city management leadership. And I I just wanna make sure that they have I think that they should have the the the tools and the ability to bring, you know, any solution to us whether any technology to us that they think will help improve the the the safety of of our community. Obviously, I don't think we'll be interested in AOPRs, or replacement AOPRs anytime soon, but I just wanna make sure that they we're not limiting their ability to to research other things. So as long as we clarify that.

And then the only other thing that I was going to bring up is I think it I don't know how the termination process works with respect to the actual provision in the contract or if there's a there'll be a runoff period or something like that. But to the extent there is, I'm happy to support the motion authorizing staff to terminate the contract if they wish. If there's if there's some if there's some negotiation that occurs that maybe I think before before we open and implemented this system, we had access to, like, a query only query only account. And so maybe if there was a way for us, if the chief and the city leadership wants to preserve a query only ability, obviously no camera is not providing data or anything like but still have the ability to query those databases when, you know, something significant happens. That way, we're we're still getting the benefit of that.

And obviously, that we would only do that if there's no cost to it or or maybe but I just want to give staff the negotiating flexibility to if there's an opportunity to preserve some of the more helpful aspects of this that doesn't involve us you know, having cameras or providing data or spending or giving any more money to walk as part of it, that might be that might be helpful. So I would just suggest that we give them the ability to to do that if they wish. Not not not directing them to do that, just giving them the ability to do to do that as part of the termination process or or the or the wind down process for this. Maybe it's like an interim an interim an interim option. Those are the only two things I suggest.

I think I'll likely support the motion, but if others wanna chime in on those, I think that might be that might be helpful. Or if staff has any comments on that, they can comment on that too, whether it would be helpful or not.

Council Member Schwalter.

Yeah. I I appreciate Council Member Kamay's statement. That was very good. We are really proud that the the police department has been honest and straightforward and come forward to us with this problem. And it's also very interesting how this problem is so widespread.

I mean, it's not just us, it's many organizations. So, I hope that as we move forward with this, we will take this lesson to heart, but we won't necessarily take it to heart by ourselves. We will think about, you know, what are ways that we can protect, continue to protect, but protect our residents as the Mountain View Police and also working with other police in ways that safeguard everybody's liberty. The other thing I want to talk about here is the idea of value and cost. You know, when we first talked about this in 2024, that's when the proposal to install these came forward.

The world, our nation in particular, was in a very different place. So, we heard on the city council, we heard about all of the safeguards that the police were putting in place, and we thought they were a good idea. But I think that in retrospect, we can say we were naive, and we should have been more skeptical. And certainly the place we find ourselves in as a nation, I mean it's just completely different now. And it means that this sort of thing has to be looked at with a completely different lens than it did before.

Maybe it should have been looked at that lens before, but it's just really crystal clear now that it needs to be looked that way before. But I just want to say that I really appreciated when you first laid this out to us, you talked about what would be the value for law enforcement. And you had lots of examples and many of them will come through. And you talked about the cost and the cost was in terms of money because that's kind of where we were at that point. We weren't so concerned about civil liberties.

But times have changed, and now the cost for money is really inconsequential. I mean, we don't want to spend $100,000 on something that we shouldn't spend it on, but what's the real cost is the cost to our civil liberties. And so I think that sometimes we have a tendency to think just in terms of money. And it's really important for all of us to remember that costs aren't just money. There are other things as well.

And so that's why it's so important that we move forward with getting rid of these cameras. And also, I think we maybe have a little bit of a hole in our communication about crime statistics. I know we do have a transparency page and if somebody goes to that transparency page they can see the crime statistics. But I know I just get very busy and I've never done that. And clearly I should have done that.

So I would just ask that moving forward, maybe every year when those crime statistics are fresh or in whatever timeframe that you think makes sense, Chief, I would appreciate it if you would just send me an email with a little update about this is where we are this year, and this is how it changed. So that I just don't get overwhelmed by day to day activities and forget about these things because they're very important. So thank you and yes, will be supporting the motion. Appreciate it.

Councilmember Hicks.

Well I can keep this short because former council members have said much of what I would have said. Thank you Councilmember Kameh for I think really wrapping that up in a good way. And I will be supporting the motion and in particular important to me are yes authorizing termination of the ALPR readers with flock safety, also taking the cameras down. I like the way you said expediting that process and communicating it to the community. I guess will we be securing the remaining money from the contract?

Is that implied? I'm not sure that I heard that said.

Thank you, Councilmember Hicks. That will be part of the discussions with with legal and with staff.

Okay. So we don't need to add that to the motion, but I assume that will happen. And then most important or equally important, what you said, not starting up a new contract, not shopping around. In particular to me, while the situation with ICE continues to evolve, you know there's a State of the Union going on tonight. I don't know what's being said and you know the state that we're in now is not the state that I would have been able to envision five, ten, fifteen years ago. You know, we're in a a really novel and not good situation, and I would not want license plate readers out in while we're while we're in this particular state, and I hope we can get out of it.

Thank you. Council member Hicks. Council member McAllister.

Okay.

I'm gonna put a little context into my answer. I recall when I was on the council last, there was a concern among many of you in this room that we should defund the police department. And that was part of the the national narrative at the time, and it seemed to have influenced a lot of people in Mountain View. And so I'm putting that in the back of my mind, and now we have a concern about privacy, and the national narrative is about ICE coming along and and taking care of and going after people, and I'm totally on board with that. I mean, the abuse of the political system going right now is is outrageous.

And we are a community of all. We should protect them, but sometimes we gotta take a look at what we do right here in Mountain View. We don't want I don't want the national narrative to affect what we do, what we know how to do things. This, and I've been here longer than most of you, and I have trust in the Mountain View Police Department. Back when we were talking about defund the police back then, I said I had trust in the police department, and then people went out and said, let's get a board.

And the board went through a process, and they came out that Mountain View Police were good people, good organization. And so I wanna bring go back to that that they're still excellent people, and we should trust the Mountain View Police. The flock, I totally agree with what everybody's saying. That's gotta go. But I'll also take the position flock goes, technology is a tool. Is it the right tool at this moment? No. Does it need a lot of work? Yes. But it is a tool for to protect all of our residents in Mountain View.

Now when we're talking about ICE, that's a particular niche people in town, but they deserve but we all deserve the same protection. But that's what it's going at. But I know of a personal incident where the chief came there was a burglary ring in Mountain View, well, throughout the area, and they were targeting Indians and and Asians because they kept money and gold. And they were doing daylight break ins and taking money. And I don't know if many people this was in '24, late at '24.

And technology like this helped solve the crime, and that's important as it is a tool that will help protect our residents from these type of deals. We also have to understand, again, the technology is not there, but thieves don't live in Mountain View. They come in. They're we know are a prosperous ous city. We have things to do. So whoever the criminals, they're always going all the way around. So we need all the help we can get. And some of the technology of, you know, the old fashioned, as Pat was saying, it's not gonna help us protect the whole city as a whole. And so that's important. I was having a nice conversation with Tim over here.

He says he's a scientist. And I said, Tim, you're doing something. You're doing experiment. And if it fails, do you just quit? Do you pack up? And he goes, no. We changed it to I said, do you change the parameters? Do you change some of the stuff? And he goes, yeah. Well, I think we will be in that position now that we tried something, it failed, and we will wait until the technology or something that will help that whenever if we do decide to go down that path, maybe something.

But personal liberty is very important, and I I just I'm amazed and proud of the passion that I saw tonight. It was just incredible. Even those people from out of the city came in to say, hey. Let's protect all, and that that's really nice. I mean, that was that was nice of them to come down to this city to figure it out.

They know that Mountain View is a pretty a damn good city, I'll say. Not the best, but a damn good city. So I will support the motion, but I also say we need to trust our police. Don't start and, unfortunately, you guys I mean, the group was pretty unanimous about Mountain View Police is good. Flock's not good. Technology's not good. And so I would like everybody to walk away tonight still thinking, trust our police. Because with Wade, they don't have trust. They can't protect you, bottom line. And whatever issues are out in the national narrative coming down, just remember, these guys are there day in and day out protecting us.

And, again, I've been here a lot longer, and I have not seen any of the incidences that have occurred elsewhere in The United States, elsewhere in California. So, those are my words. Thank you, chief. And the newbie up here, first time up here, nice, under fire. So it's pretty nice. But that's it.

That's all I got to say.

Thank you, council member Bencaucer. Council member Ramirez, are you good? No no comments? Okay.

Thank you, mayor. I I wasn't in the queue. That's because I, agree with, the motion of the floor. I appreciate council member Kamay's comments, introducing, the the concerns and appreciating, the input from, the community. In addition to, I think, your generally effective advocacy, I appreciate the fact that you were, very courteous and respectful and adhered to, the the mayor's request not to, you know, be loud and and and applaud.

Thank you for for, I think, your, important civic participation in in in this important issue. The only other thing I wanted to share since I'm in the queue involuntarily now is I'm grateful to the the chief for being proactive on this issue, reiterating that this is not unique to Mountain View. I think what is unique about Mountain View is our response. Grounded in in the community and and and I think very responsive to to the concerns that that we've been hearing tonight and and earlier. Thank you for, your work on this.

Thank you, council member Ramirez. So I guess my comments. So when we considered the ALPR contract in 2024, I mentioned I had feelings about it. I couldn't put into words, and I got a lot of flack for saying I had feelings, and I really couldn't explain it. I had a lot of time since then to really understand why I had concerns.

I mean, like obviously what happened recently was a nice validation of that. But my parents grew up under martial law in The Philippines. There was a system where surveillance wasn't abstract. It was a tool to use, monitor, intimidate, and silence. And I grew up a lot with those stories on why my parents fled The Philippines to come to The US.

Even though I was born in this country, I grew up with the awareness on how belonging can feel conditional. I thank council member Kamay for sharing her story and her family. But since twenty sixteen, I've carried a passport card with me at all times, not because I I was unsure of my own status. I was born in this country. I I I have citizenship. But I felt like I needed that safety blanket to show I belonged in case I would get picked up on the street. And keep in mind, this was 2016. This was Obama administration. And so for many immigrants and communities of color, surveillance technology carries that same historical weight. It's not neutral.

So I am glad that the police chief was proactive in removing the cameras or taking our cameras offline. I am hopeful that we can expedite it. I am also hopeful that as you do your conversations I know some people concerned about like those conversations could lead to other conversations ALPRs. I hope that it doesn't, quite honestly. I hope that these community conversations actually draw into how can our police department protect our community, all of our community, especially with these threats from the federal government.

It is out of all the things, as mayor right now, this is the one that keeps me awake at night. And I was scared in 2016. I am now it is suffocating how terrifying it is for our community now. And I hope you continue that conversation with those who are most vulnerable in our community on how we can protect them. I support the motion on the floor.

I'm glad that I'm hoping it sounds like it's going to be unanimous. So that's going to be great. I'm really hoping that more cities take a deeper look at their program. I am slightly worried that they don't have the same care that our police department has and the push that our community has on our police department to ensure that we have that kind of accountability. So with that, once again, I will be supporting ending this contract with Locke, and I hope it is expedited.

And I hope that we can find a way to get those cameras out. So thank you. And now let's move to a vote. Oh, council member Clark wanna clarify the motion?

I just wanted to clarify that. So the motion is essentially the the staff recommendation it sounds like. And then the only question is maybe maybe to the chief. I don't know how the the termination process works. Would it would it be helpful for you to have the authority within you know, we're we're authorizing you to to to terminate the agreement.

Would it also be helpful for us if there's support to authorize you to negotiate access to a quarry only ability like you had earlier? That way you can do if there's a kidnapping or something like that and you want to run a query through some neighboring jurisdictions that are part of the network or something like that, you'd have the ability to do that or is that just maybe that isn't helpful. I just want to make sure we're giving you the tools you feel you need Thank you, counsel. This interim period.

To to answer the question, it it is helpful. To be very clear, I am very proud of how we utilized our ALPR data, very confident in the manner in which it was utilized within the police department. It it is an important tool. It could provide significant leads and insights into important investigations. If that's the direction of counsel, then we'll take a thoughtful approach to how that is utilized within the organization and what access controls those are those are provided to our folks. If that's direction, certainly, it would be something that we would examine utilizing.

Okay. Yeah. It wouldn't be I guess it's up to the motion maker and the second It wouldn't it was not directing you to do that. It's just giving you the ability through the the the negotiation process to to do that if you'd like. But that's up to the the motion maker in the second or whether they they wanna include that or not.

You want me to it it's essentially before we rolled out the cameras in the fully l a ALPR system, we had query only access so that we could run let's say there's a kidnapping or a significant event that occurs and there's a plate or something associated with that. They could query the database of of the the rest of the network. So, like, San Francisco, maybe the chief can describe this better than I can. But they would they would be able to get some of those hits. So there's no data being provided by Mountain View. It's just a query on the account so that they're not losing access to that database tool that they previously had access to. If they want it, it's up to them. I

I I appreciate the suggestion. I I guess, you know, it would be helpful to understand, can we cancel the contract and still benefit from the data? How does that work operationally?

The legal question about how to cancel the contract and maintain it, I don't know. If we were to cancel the contract or amend it in some way to have us have no cameras but only a ability for our selected department members to access that data. It would provide us with the ability to have insights for significant cases, but would not provide any data into the system.

Do you think I I I guess it would be helpful to to better better understand whether FLOC or other jurisdictions actually would would wanna participate if we're not contributing to the to the system?

I I think that would be a conversation that we would have with them. My initial feeling is that likely that there is a a path for us to have access without providing any information, but that's not something that we've discussed with them. However, that was in place as council member Clark stated prior to this pilot program, and I believe that numerous agencies do utilize the the data without inputting any data or having any cameras.

Do you need direction from the council to achieve this? It feels like an operational matter.

So I think just to explain a little further, one of the things that most ALPR vendors do before an agency would enter a contract is they provide kind of a see what our system can provide you sort of access. And so that's essentially what MVPD did before we entered into a formal contract. We had no data that we were providing, we had no cameras that we were providing, but it allowed the police department staff to be able to query a search. Even though we were not giving anything to anyone. So I think operationally that is something that the chief could discuss as we cancel this contract.

I just don't think we have a resolute answer as to whether that's possible. But it is something that I believe most of the vendors allow.

I think my suggestion isn't directing them to do that. Thou shalt do this. It's just giving them the option to have that as part of the conversation of the of the termination.

Okay. Alright. We are going to council member McAllister.

So I just asked the chief, the data that we collect is for only thirty days and then it's deleted?

That is the standard data sharing is in the system is a thirty day. I think there are some agencies that have variations, some more, some less. But as a a rule of thumb, thirty days is the

So so council member Clark's deal, the most it would have last would be thirty days to queue up the information?

That's correct.

Okay. Just bring some clarity that it's only gonna last thirty days or whenever we cancel it.

Council member Hicks.

Yeah. I'm just a little skeptical. I'm a little confused about the implications of of this of how it would affect our negotiation. It's We would be canceling with flock but keeping a connection with them and I'm wondering does it expire in thirty days and then also how does this affect our negotiations with them for getting money back, for taking the cameras down? I don't think we'll have the answers to this tonight, but it sounds like it might not be a path we would wanna go down.

Yeah. Those aren't questions that I'd be able to answer immediately. But I do think that there the there the access is potentially separate from the removal of the cameras, etcetera. I don't see one at first pass as being impeding the other.

Yeah. It seems like there might be a payment system for continued use. It just seems like there are a whole bunch of questions we don't know the answer to, and I don't feel like I can like I can make that kind of decision right here. I'm a little skeptical that it's a good idea.

Councilmember Camille? Okay thanks.

Well I guess as the motion maker I should say if I accept. I think I appreciate the sentiment Councilmember Clark I think given that there seems to be more follow-up and information necessary perhaps that can I don't feel comfortable at this time including it but I understand the intent and I appreciate colleagues input in terms of wanting to make sure that we have public safety tools that are evolved to be able to meet the needs of our residents? I think at this time it was also agendized as a recommendation to terminate the contract I feel conflict in terminating a contract but then negotiating other aspects of a contract when the staff recommendation was to terminate so I think at this time I'll just keep it as the staff recommendation and perhaps staff chief can provide an offer in a memo on the other tools that are available I'm assuming it's not just these query systems anymore that there might be other elements to public safety that we are not aware of as a council because we are not in that line of work day in and day out. So that would be hopefully a compromise council member Clark.

That's perfectly fine. I mean if there if there are if there are databases that solutions that you want to bring to us at some point, that's query only. You know, I'm I'd personally be be fine with reviewing that. But but, yeah, if you wanna just keep things simple and just go with the staff recommendation tonight, that's fine with me. I just wanted to raise it.

Now the docket is clear. I think we are ready for a vote on a clean motion. Motion passes unanimously. We will now take a ten minute break. We're gonna reconvene at 10:00.

Alright, I call the meeting back to order at 10:06 p. M. There is because it is past 10:00 we need a motion to extend past 10:00. I see a So moved. Thank you Councilmember Clark.

Thank you Councilmember Kamay. We have a motion to continue meeting past 10:00 moved by council member Clark, seconded by council member We are ready for a vote. No. Oh my gosh. So, a bare majority passing it.

Four two with, council member Ramirez absent. So now we will move on to item 6.2 fiscal year twenty twenty five twenty six mid year budget status report and adjustments. Fiscal year twenty twenty six twenty seven preliminary general operating fund forecast and fiscal years twenty twenty five to twenty seven council work plan six month project update. Finance and an administrative services director, Derek Ramponi, and assistant finance and administrative services director, Grace Zinn, will present the item. If you would like to speak on this item in person, please submit a blue speaker card to the assistant city clerk now.

Alright. Alright. Good evening, mayor Ramos and vice mayor Clark and council members. Derek Rampon, your finance and administrative services director. As you said earlier, I'm joined with Grace Singh, the assistant finance and administrative services director.

Tonight's item is the fiscal year twenty five-twenty six mid year budget report. As you know, this is our standard annual mid year report where we look at how the city is doing financially for the first six months of the fiscal year and if any adjustments or changes to the adopted budget are needed. The city has a long history of sound fiscal practices between prudent budgeting practices of balancing ongoing expenditures with ongoing revenues and only using one time revenues for one time costs, not for ongoing expenditures. In addition, the city makes it a priority to adopt structurally balanced budgets every year. And in recent years, the city has experienced strong revenue growth resulting in larger than normal operating balances at year end.

These operating balances have allowed address a portion of our unfunded liabilities such as making additional payments directly to CalPERS to pay down the city's pension liability and to fully fund the city's post employment benefits that are due to retirees for health insurance. Another one of the city's financial practices is to build reserves in anticipation of potential budget constraints and to maintain sufficient funds to withstand significant temporary declines in revenue. This slide is a reminder of the financial recognition that the city has received and continues to receive from the triple a credit rating by Standard and Poor's, the highest rating possible to the continued recognition by national organizations for our budget document, our annual audited financial statements, and excellence in procurement as well. All of these accomplishments are great examples of not only the strong fiscal health of the city, but also the excellent product that the city prepares in relation to the budget and reporting and procurement. Here's a timeline just as a reminder of where we are in the budget process.

As you can see, we're here at the midyear budget update in February. We'll be bringing back a preliminary review of the fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven recommended budget in April, as well as there will be a study session for this capital improvement program. In May, at the May we'll release the recommended budget and then two meetings in June, two public hearings that will see adoption of the recommended budget. It's important that we paint a picture of what's happening at the national and state level before we dive into the local economy. Overall, the national economy entered calendar year 2026 on relatively solid footing and has remained resilient despite ongoing economic uncertainty and market volatility.

Inflation still remains a concern as consumer prices remain elevated compared to pre pandemic levels. Adding pressure to the inflation is the uncertainty surrounding tariffs on imported goods. And as of recently inflation still remains above the Federal Reserve's goal of 2%. Consumer spending continues though to be the driving force behind much of the economic activity and growth in the nation. However, it appears that only higher income households continue to increase their purchasing while lower income households have reduced their spending due to rising costs.

With that being said, the nation faces continues to face significant potential challenges. Changes in federal policies, federal government shutdowns, and the threat of federal funding freezes and reductions all add to the uncertainty and have potential to negatively impact economic activity and consumer confidence. And then at the state level, the state budget is facing a shortfall of $21,000,000,000. In order to balance the budget, the state has moved funds around and is dipping into some of their reserves. This is another potential issue that we need to watch as this could have a negative impact on the local economy.

Now we're turning to the local economy. I do want to say that even though we are continuing to see signs of a slowing economy, we are doing better than others. Other cities are experiencing similar issues as us showing basically a slowdown in growth in revenues. Specifically the city of Mountain View is not experiencing the same growth rates as it has in the past especially with property tax revenues and even other revenues that are flattening. While unemployment remains low around 3.5%, it is higher than a year ago but is lower than when it hit a peak of 4.1% in July 2025, but we are expecting local unemployment to continue to increase in the near future.

And as impacts the city of Mountain View locally, we see fewer employees that are working in the city impact the sales tax revenue that is generated. Now we're turning to the numbers for twenty five-twenty six. You'll see this is just a comparison slide of the estimated, what staff is estimating for the current fiscal year in the far right column compared to actual amounts from twenty four-twenty five in the far left column and the adopted budget in the middle column for this current fiscal year. As you can see, the adopted budget estimated an operating balance of $743,000 and now with the mid year amendments we're expecting a balance of about 1,700,000.0 at the end of this fiscal year. To put some of that in context, just wanted to say that you can see that the revenues are coming in slightly higher when compared to the budget for this fiscal year.

This is the general operating fund revenues for twenty fivetwenty six. As you can see they're mostly expected to be the same as the adopted budget with a few increases in some of the categories but a decrease in property tax of 2,500,000.0 or 3% and other local taxes such as utility users tax which is estimated to be 10% or 1,200,000 lower than the budget. And as you can see on this slide, sales tax is actually expected to be in line with the budgeted level of about $23,000,000 Now we turn to expenditures. They are expected to be slightly lower than the adopted budget but only by point 2% or $378,000 As you can see on this slide, we continue to see savings in salaries and benefits. These are in line with expected salaries savings due to normal vacancies.

This slide is a snapshot of all the other funds or some of the major funds of the city I should say. As you can see, really the development services fund, is anticipated to end the year with revenue that is higher than the budget and expenditures coming in lower than budget. As you probably recall, this is a reversal of recent trends of negative budget variances in the development services fund. The Shoreline Regional Park Community Fund is trending to have revenues that are also coming in below budget which is mainly due to lower than expected property tax revenue. However, expenditures are also expected to be below budget.

Here is a summary of the recommended mid year budget adjustments by fund type. The largest items on here are transfer of funds to reserves as can be seen by the arrow there. That includes $2,000,000 to be transferred to the CIP reserve, 1,000,000 to the strategic property acquisition reserve, and $1,000,000 to the parental leave reserve. The other large item you'll see on this page is the $11,700,000 decrease in revenue in the Shoreline Regional Park Community Fund. Of that amount, 14,200,000.0 is actually the lower than expected property taxes, but that's offset by $2,500,000 in expected investment earnings coming in higher than budget.

For further details on these adjustments, they can be found on pages 34 through 39 of the staff report and in attachments two and three. As part of the mid year report, staff is proposing various position changes as can be seen on this slide. There are two new limited period positions being proposed, three new ongoing positions, and a few reclassifications of existing positions, including a reorganization of the Transportation and Business Services Division to create a new division that focuses solely on transportation and traffic. More information on these proposed position changes can be found on pages 39 through 42 of the staff report and attachments four and five. Now we turn to fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven forecast.

These details of this section start on page 43 of the staff report. As you can see on this chart, the general operating fund revenues are flattening while expenditures continue to climb leading to a much smaller operating balance as previously discussed. Staff is projecting an operating balance of around $453,000 as can be seen on the far right for next year. It should be noted that this projected operating balance does not include any 20 six-twenty seven ongoing budget requests that are currently under review by the city manager and budget team. I would also like to note that this projected balance of $450,000 will likely change between now and the preview of the recommended budget in April.

Staff is currently analyzing projected revenues and expenditures and will include these updates in the April 14 item. I would also like to point out just a few assumptions and risks that are related to the forecast. Unfortunately, nobody has a crystal ball. We are using current data with input from economists and others to build our forecast. As stated earlier, revenue growth is expected to be minimal with expenditures that are increasing at a higher rate than revenues.

Some of the risks or unknowns when developing the forecast are how long will it take to get inflation back down to the 2% target, any uncertainty with policies that are coming out of Washington and what their impact may be on the local economy, and it also should be noted that a recession scenario has not been included in this forecast. Attachment one to the staff report lists out each department's performance measures and provides a six month status update on each. As you will recall a few years ago, the city brought in a consultant to revamp and improve all of the performance measures for every department. And now that we are in the second year of implementation of these performance measures, we've been monitoring them and have been updating them slightly as needed to refine them to align with tracking capabilities. The final item in the staff report is attachment six which is the six month project update for the fiscal year's twenty five-twenty seven council work plan.

Another update on this will be provided in June. And then just next steps on this final slide showing the next steps. The next touch point for the budget will be the preliminary review of the fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven recommended budget and the CIP study session on April 14. The first public hearing on the recommended budget will be held on June 9 and the final public budget public hearing and adoption of the budget and the CIP will include will occur on the June 23. We wanna thank you for allowing us to present this item and that concludes our presentation. Grace and I are happy to assist with answering any questions.

Thank you, mister Raponi. Does any member of the council have any questions? Anyone? Council member McAllister.

My questions are more towards the performance, criterias and and that. So I don't know if that has to do with you, or will this be the time to ask those questions? Okay. So I will. Okay. So under community community development department, item 10, number of companies receiving business assistance from the city. It says 75. So exactly what type of assistance are these business is receiving?

Good afternoon, evening, thank you. I'm Andrew O'Tella, economic vitality manager. So it's a variety of services, everything from receiving support around our facade improvement grant program to support from our business ambassador team, permit facilitation, site selection support. We meet one on one with businesses to understand their challenges and then do resource resource referrals, So a whole range of services they receive.

So it's not financial, it's just knowledge and guidance?

Some of them do receive, you know, our facade improvement grant funds but it's not just that. It's a variety of services and support. Okay. Thank you. Then

the question for the oh, I just marked it here. Well, let's go to public works. I have a question for public works. Thank you for staying. So my question to you is more clarity. On your performances, number of construction projects awarded and percentage of time approved bid is within 25% of the engineer's estimate. So what does that mean?

That means that as we finish 100% design plans and specs, our engineer or our consultant, our design consultant at that time gives us a 100% estimate for how much they think on bid day our project should cost. And then so what this number is is it's a comparison between that number that the consultant gives us. Say they say x project should cost a million dollars, and on bid day we get five bids and the lowest responsive and responsible bid is, you know, $1,100,000, then our difference is that $100,000 difference between the engineer's estimate and what we actually get for a low bid. In this particular instance, just doing quick math, that's a 10% differential. And so it would count as being within this 25% differential in the performance measure.

So you used the word the consultant gave you a bit. How often so how do we use consultants mostly for getting us to the point or how much do we do in in house to get to that estimate?

The vast majority of our projects are done through consultant design. We utilize their expertise and their, I'll call it, their embedment in the industry and keeping track of what current trends are with respect to material pricing and labor costs to give us the most, as best as they can predict, the best estimate for the project at that time.

So reading this chart here, you've had 15 projects within the first six months and 80% of your projects come within 25% of the engineer's estimate?

That is correct. And that is 25% either above or 25% below. So it's a plus or minus.

Is that a good number to work with? I mean, that could be industry standards, but is it something that we strive to do of course, we strive to do better.

It's it's data that we use in house really to track how our consultants are doing. Personally, in my experience, any any low bid that comes in about 10% or so of the engineer's estimate, that that that's pretty good.

Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome.

That's very informative. Okay. City manager's office. This is the item 17, exit to permanent housing from city funded homeless programs. I was just is there a dollar amount? Well, maybe our finance director, is there a dollar amount for that particular program?

I'm trying to find it real quick.

What's that? City managers number 17. Oh, we have a volunteer coming down.

Audrey Ramberg, assistant city manager. The city's investments in our programs for unstably housed include our Safe Parking program which is approximately $1,000,000 in city funding per year. In addition, there are contributions in partnership with the county for permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing, and I don't remember the precise dollar amounts for those, but they're in the amount of around a couple $100,000.

Okay. The reason I ask is, being nitpicky, well not just being me, that you did 60 people exited permanent housing and I'm just trying to say how much it cost us to get 60 people into permanent housing. I'll just see how we're doing with our money and if the programs that we're doing are a good worth of value. If you could get to that later on, that'd be appreciated.

Sure.

Think and one other thing I, I don't know if it's a comment about the fire department or is that a question?

I believe you had a comment.

Comment. Okay. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you, Councilmember McAllister. Councilmember Scholwalter.

I just have a couple of questions. And there are things really that were in the answers, but I just want to share them because I think they're sort of an interesting change. One is the $4,000,000 think 34, question 34. The staff report says appropriate $4,100,000 in the Shoreline Regional Park Community Fund for administrative overhead. Provides increased funding for administrative overhead costs based on updated cost allocation study. Can you tell us a little bit about that cost allocation study and what the impacts of that are throughout the city?

Yeah, thanks for the question. So year ago we conducted a independent cost allocation plan study which basically looks at all the administrative costs throughout the city and determines who's benefiting from those costs. Which departments or funds of the city are benefiting from. And specifically if you think about Shoreline as a standalone agency, we provide accounting services, the financial accounting services, IT, human resources, police and fire, all those costs should be borne by a separate agency like that that receives those services. And so we had not done a study in ten years and as a result of that study it was determined that increased charges need to be allocated throughout the city to different funds.

And so as a result that's what we're bringing to the council tonight that Shoreline should be paying $4,000,000 more at mid year for those types of overhead and administrative fees including police and fire and the ones I mentioned.

Well that makes good sense. Is there some sort of an industry standard for how frequently you update that kind of thing?

Yes, every five years.

Every five years, okay. But time goes by so quickly when you have to do studies like that. It's really hard to keep up with that kind of thing. Okay. Then the other questions I have relate to the council work plan. And one of them was the first one was the city code cleanup. I thought we had kind of done the cleanup that we were going to do when it was it was taken care of.

It would. It's not It's not Council

council member Showalter. So there's been a a few items related to the code cleanup. And, actually, the next item on tonight's agenda is part of this work plan item, code clean up for our small businesses.

You know what, I didn't ask that question completely enough. I'm sorry. That's why it didn't make sense. Yeah, I got that. I read that. But I was thinking the reach code part we have completed. Is that not the case?

That is a very resounding yes. Completed it in August '20 Well, '20