City Council - Regular Meeting

fuel storage tank that is no longer needed by the city, and we do recommend approval.

Any questions or recommendations?

Move for approval. Second.

I have a motion and a second. No further discussion. Roll call, please.

Dee Boots.

Yes.

Jeremy Shuler. Yes. Mike Brawley. Yes. Tom Martindale. Yes. Melody Cranford. Yes. Shirley Hilton Flannery. Yes. Tracy Hoos.

Yes.

Deputy Mayor Derek Reed. Yes. Mayor Ryan Lowe.

Yes.

Item passes. We are striking item three. Before we conclude tonight's meeting, we do have two people signed up to speak. When I say your name, come up to the podium and state your name for record. You'll have three minutes. First is Nina Graham.

good evening i want to thank the people of muskogee again for the building and the opportunity to talk to our public servants i'm here tonight over our flock cameras as a technical person hooked up into a lot of technical communities i want to write read what i wrote in my notes because i feel that this is a huge invasion of not only our privacy, but it's also a high risk to any obedient, law-abiding citizen. And there's also, by the way, a tech community that's building a Shepard's type camera to follow all our elected politicians so that we know. We are uniting on a clear flock. Cameras are not wanted. The technology is flawed. Our constitutional rights are violated. There is so much rage that the tech community has built a Shepard security system that will track and supply a tech group with every detail of your actions, every call, every text, every email, every trip, every meal, all your visits, where you go, when you go, who you visit, back and when you get home, and when you stop, when you leave, who you meet with. Your vehicles will be profiled on your entire family, including your spouses and children and your vehicles. They are also ready to collect this data and combine it with the public data, Bluetooth, Cigna commercial data, sources, vehicle records, and different records from advertising, et cetera. I know that sounds invasive and it is very wrong. It's abusive, but that's what you're doing to us. Flock cameras, as you notice, are being sued all over the country. Many cities to avoid the expense are taking them down. I highly recommend that nobody does the same. They have enough lawsuits to continue with right now. And I can assure you outsiders will come in in support of this lawsuit. If we don't remove these block cameras, they are absolutely flawed. They have had people pulled over saying that they were installing cars, people addressed for crimes that they didn't do. I wouldn't want that on you. And I don't want these cameras on me. I'm a law abiding citizen as probably all of you are. I don't understand why you went to that technology. It's very costly, not just for the servers, but for the maintenance of them. And the cameras are not cheap as well. We have a lawyer here. He should know that they are a violation of the Constitution, and he should know that the ramifications can be quite expensive to this city. I love this city in one way, and I'm scared to death to stay in it in another. There's a lot going on here that needs to be looked at very seriously. Thank you for your time. Please remove these flock cameras ASAP.

Thank you, Ms. Crown. Next, we have James Johnson. Mr. Johnson, if you'll just state your name for the record, and then you'll have three minutes.

Yes, my name is James Henry Johnson. I live at 212 Bel Air Place here in the city of Muskogee. Mr. Mayor and City Council fellow citizens here in Muskogee, I thought we would just be loaded up with folks coming to the meeting today in protest of the $29 million lawsuit that maybe it's just commonplace, but maybe everybody knew about it except me. I've been moved back here after spending 25 years in California. I've been back seven years, and the newspaper dated the 29th of August was the first time I've heard of this $39 million lawsuit. To me, it's very unfair. It even seems like there's too much capitulation going on. That means agreement with the lawsuit itself. For instance, I read nowhere, although I did pull down your report, Mr. Randall, that you made to the city. I did pull it down and have a copy of it right here. You never did say whether or not the lawsuit had been appealed to the Supreme Court. And I even appealed a lawsuit myself in probably 1995. I did it myself. It was a divorce case, and I appealed it to the Supreme Court of the state of Oklahoma. Wrote it myself. And I'm surprised that that wouldn't be done in this particular case. I don't really think some of us really understand what this really means for the city of Muskogee. I kind of think I wouldn't have moved back here and bought a house if I would have known that this was in the offing, that there could be a possibility of me having to pay maybe almost $1,000 more per year as far as real estate taxes because of this particular lawsuit. I'm not arguing the fact that it probably is... or worthy of some kind of money being paid. But I myself actually went and looked at the addresses of these properties. And you should do the same thing. Most of these properties are vacant lots. And I couldn't really find a single one of these properties that was in livable condition. It might have been at some time in some type of livable condition, but it really just looked like the lawsuit is something that's ripping us off, something that doesn't serve us here in the city, because I just Googled how much we are paying for the new city complex, and it's like $27 billion. So we're paying more for this lawsuit than we are for our new city complex here. And who would vote now for any bondage or tax increase here in the city facing this type of payment that we're supposedly having to pay. But I'm simply saying, why not file it with the Supreme Court? That's what we do. When we get a lawsuit in a lower court, we file it to the next highest level. And the fact that it was filed in Creek County, that should mean something to us as well. So I thank you for the time. I do appreciate it very much.

Thank you, Mr. Johnson.