Remarks by Sue Wilson
50 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 2 of 2
OK, and so it is. It is a little different than some other policing tool, so I don't have to say it is evil, but I'm going to definitely say it is different and unusual in American society. And the other thing I wanted to ask about is you did these numbers so fast, but you know, I think you are a technical presenter in every sense of the word, and I really apologize for the comment that Councilmember Bonner said that you're not. Some of the technical information you gave us is the during the two times that the Richmond. Flock data was accessible to agencies outside of Richmond without anybody…
Okay, so I just want to say there is no reason to feel calm about those two data breaches. They quite possibly could have sent somebody to an ICE facility to some other messed up thing without us. We will never know. Or certainly, I don't know who has the, I don't think anybody has the ability to audit 1.5 million of those, or maybe someone does. The next thing I wanted to check in, and again, this is my point of like these systems are really dangerous. And nobody, I'm not trying to like, anyways, these systems are really dangerous. And I don't think there's a way to make them safe. Third…
That was five minutes of me speaking. Yes okay I enjoyed it so much okay but here's my question is there anything that would stop a future city council which had different politics and they do change over every once in a while or a future a police department that that city council protects if we built a system it's is it easy for them to just say we're going to network it you know like if we build the tool can we currently the current users of it control the future use of it
So I say don't trust the government. There we go.
I wanted to speak to the item. And also, I don't get the difference between, it sounds like that Zepeda's replacement motion is just approving the motion as is. I'm not comfortable with all this teeing up and stuff. It's like you either approve a contract or you don't. And so I think we should vote, I think we should break it up. And if we don't approve the ALPR contract tonight, we could come back and approve it in three weeks if people get the answers to the questions they want.
I'm waiting for the chair to say if I can.
Okay, so my replacement motion is that you take the recommended action as written. So if everyone can pull that up, delete the line and to add license plate reader and surveillance equipment, We can come back to that in a second. I just would like to get something done tonight. Let's get the rest of the stuff approved.
And then just also, maybe we have to do some kind of gentle person's agreement of this. I don't think we should actually increase the contract by $3,500,000 tonight. Sorry, $3,500,000, because I think that's also for the ALPR technology. So if there's some magical way of saying... we're approving whatever increase is attached to these other technologies which we are just ready to approve because I don't want to mess up the rest of the stuff. Is there a second?
Same thing, sorry. I apologize, Sohaila. I thought you wanted to do sort of the teeing up stuff, and that makes me real nervous. I just want to make it clear that, like, let's do a separate motion for that.
No, I think mine was the last one was I replaced his replacement.
Oh, sorry. You're right. My apologies. Thank you.
What do you mean by bring back a contract? Like, I don't understand what you mean, like, bring back a contract with ALPR.
Yes. Sorry, I don't understand the motion. Point of order. What's the motion?
That's true, but that means we're approving the contract. All contracts come back to us.
It is not. My motion was not to approve the ALPR. You're sending the city attorney to start the ALPR contract, and I don't want to do that because we haven't seen the data yet. And I actually, I haven't been able to speak to the item. You know, like I didn't get to speak tonight.
I wanted to... This point of order, I haven't spoken yet, but I actually just want to speak to the provide direction on limited time revenue. So I don't know if now is the right time or not. It's not the right time. Then I will wait.
Thank you. So I'll just say it plainly that I think getting public input is really important. And it isn't something that we can afford to wait on. I went and looked at, I guess, what we call the administrative record for this item. And on January 27th, we voted to hire a an outside consultant in order to conduct this public input on how to spend the $550 million settlement. And the reason that we hired an outside consultant, and we were criticized, we spent $300,000, is to take the pressure off of staff. And so I think we've heard loud and clear about the capacity issues, and that's why we…
So anyways, I encourage us all to vote for C. By the way, I also think, you know, actually Councilmember Zepeda, Robinson and I did have a couple of meetings. I think I got busy. Maybe they did as well about finding a way to prioritize city council items. And I think we, you know, whether it's us or somebody else, I do think that we should continue working on that. Other cities do have actual formal systems for ranking things that city councils decide on about what should be done first and second. Berkeley has a system. I started to look at if someone wants to look into that. I don't think…
Point of order, didn't we already approve a contract to gather information on the use of the limited time revenue, not on the whole budget? Like haven't we already made this decision both in January and April?
We have a motion and a second. I do a motion to end debate. I have a quick question. When you have a motion to end debate, if I can get a second.
Sorry, I thought it was up. Can you hear me?
Okay. So I'm 100% convinced that the city needs to fully fund and then begin and then complete the renovation on the fire stations now. That we must be the city lineup, you know, the city council lineup. that puts that plan into motion. It's been too long. It's not acceptable how we've forced the firefighters to work in those conditions. The firefighters who spoke tonight have made it clear that they would like the chance to go to Richmond voters and ask them to approve this bond measure to raise money for that project. Fire department management the finance department and the city manager…
Personally, I think you should just add Sohaila because she's expressed an interest in it. But procedurally, I thought that it is just the mayor who makes appointments. I didn't think that it was possible for a majority of the city council to say, we've decided to make this appointment. So is that really what we're doing here? So in the spirit of collaboration, I think you should just appoint our mayor. But I also don't think we have the ability to force you to do that.
Well, so I don't remember this. Oh, sorry. I think I don't remember this ever happening with appointments to an ad hoc, but I definitely remember this happening with appointments to boards and commissions. And what would happen is if the mayor was appointing someone that the majority of the city council did not agree with they would just vote no on the appointment and then the mayor would there'd be no appointment until such a time that the mayor brought back some person that was acceptable to the group. And so that might be the sort of the action of tonight is if a majority of us would like…
Yes, thank you. Go ahead. I share Councilmember Jimenez's concern with the fact that even though we did approve this a while ago last year, it wasn't included in the budget that we just approved in June. And I just, again, want to sort of highlight that I don't, I mean, maybe that is something after I finish speaking that the city manager could address of how come that wasn't funded or even like proposed as a potentially funded item. And I also think that Richmond can and should have nice things and I think this is a really nice thing I think it's absolutely worth doing I don't think it has…