Council - Regular Meeting

good evening everyone i'm calling to order this august twenty fifth twenty twenty six meeting of the richfield city council it's seven p m if you're able please rise and join us for the pledge of allegiance for all Clerk Friedrich, can you please note for the record that Councilmember Coleman-Woods is excused this evening? Thank you. Our first thing is approval of the agenda.

I move approval of the agenda. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed? We've approved the agenda. Next would be consideration of the minutes of July 28th 2026 City Council Work Session, July 28th, 2026 City Council Regulars Meeting, and the minutes of the August 12th, 2026 City Council Work Session.

I move approval of all three sets of minutes.

Second. Okay, it's been moved and seconded to approve all three sets of minutes. Are there any comments or just corrections? Hearing none, all in favor please say aye. Aye. All opposed? And we have approved the minutes. Next, we're going to move on to the open forum. Participants can share their comments in person by voicemail or email and may also request to participate virtually. For more information on submitting comments, refer to the council agenda and minutes page on richfieldmn.gov slash city council. And... The way the procedure works is that you please state your name and your city of residence. Then you will have three minutes to address the council. I will hold up a yellow card when you have 30 seconds left, and then I'll hold up a red card when your time is expired. And please stick to the timeline so that others have a chance to speak. Council will be listening to the speakers, but not engaging in a debate at this time. If you have questions, the staff will provide answers either via email or at the next council meeting. And thank you for taking the time to share your comments and feedback with the council. Is there anybody else that wishes to speak that hasn't turned one in? Okay. Thank you. So what we usually do is take three minutes per person And we have 30 minutes set aside. And I have exactly 10, but now we have 11. So, is there anybody else? So, what was that? You can add extra people. I just need to know so I can make a motion to extend the time. Okay, so at this point, I'm gonna move that we extend it from 30 minutes to 45 minutes so we have time to listen to everyone. Is there a second? Second. Okay, it's been moved and seconded. Any discussion? All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed? And so then I'm going to wait for the last person to bring up their form. And then we'll start calling people up.

Oh, no problems. Don't worry about it. We've got plenty of time.

All right, so first we'll call to speak is Jody Johnson. Do I have to touch this to make it work? If there's a green light on, it should be working. Okay, good.

I'm not great with technology. Hi, my name is Jody Johnson. I'm a retired social worker. I've lived in Richfield for 32 years. I had concerns about the flock cameras. My daughter pointed them out to me two weeks ago. And I looked up a number of informational pieces on them, but I was concerned by what I saw. I saw that they had a pretty large error rate that went between 32 and 71%, and that in some cities, people that had had never committed a crime had been pulled over, harassed or harmed because they had been assumed to have been in a stolen car. And I'm very concerned about the fact that people in Richfield could be pulled over and erroneously harassed based on something that's not very accurate. I'm also concerned that we, the citizens of Richfield, were not asked before those were installed. I didn't know anything about any kind of informational meeting or anything like that. I also saw that according to the Washington Post in August 2026, 50 law enforcement officers have stalked their former or current girlfriends using this technology, so I'm very concerned about domestic violence that could be committed using this technology. There is a high rate of domestic violence with law enforcement folks anyway in one of the older studies, but one of the ones that's quoted a lot is 40%. So it concerns me a great deal that this information could be misused and that those folks would then not be able to get services because their boyfriends are in law enforcement. There was also an incident in May 2025 where a woman from Texas fled from Texas to Illinois to get reproductive care and was tracked by the flock cameras. I think that's going to happen more and more because some of the states have created more restrictive policies. Minnesota still has fairly liberal policies, and so I think we're going to see a lot of people coming here. And the problem is that it doesn't just record and keep the information here in Richfield. it hooks up to the cloud and it's available nationwide to law enforcement. And so it can take that information and use it as it sees fit. And there isn't any clear answer as to where it goes or how long they keep it. They say they keep it 30 days, but most things virtually are really hard to get rid of. They can also track where people go with their cars, so they can track people throughout their day, and that information could be used for a number of things, custody battles or different kinds of employment things. So it's concerning to me that those cameras would be able to actually track people when they go to the store, if they go to a bar, wherever they go, that that technology allows them to do that. Also, law enforcement shares the information they get from the flock cameras with ICE, and that is okay. And that is a very concerning thing to me. We've obviously had a lot of issues with ICE. Two people have been murdered. Many people were illegally detained. And I would be concerned about the people in Richfield being at risk. I'm concerned about privacy issues potential lawsuits if anything would happen with harm Okay, thank you very much Thank you Next we have Angie Rieger Hi, I'm Angie Rieger actually today is my 20th anniversary living here and I I

Interesting day today, so I'm coming here and speaking here. So I'm also talking about the flock cameras and surveillance, and it's more broad than just flock. So good evening, everyone. I'm here representing the residents here who signed our petition. If you haven't seen it, I'd like you to go out and read it. Asking this council to pause. and ultimately end our contract with Flock. I promise to be brief. I promise I'll be respectful. I promise not to read the entire group chat that we've had in our community. Here's the short version. Somewhere between one council meeting and the next, Richfield quietly acquired a network of cameras that photograph and log license plates of every car that drive past them. Yes, yours, mine, your pastors, your postal carriers. whether or not anyone in the car has done anything wrong. Most of the residents I've talked to didn't know these cameras went up, myself included. None of us got a vote. And I want to be clear, this isn't hypothetical privacy. These systems are real. They make documented mistakes with real people's lives. In San Diego, officers were relying on flock to match a license plate on a red Alfa Romeo. Near a carjacking scene, a passenger in that car spent nearly a month in jail before the mistake was caught. In Sherwood, Arkansas, a camera misread a license plate. This past February, they detained the driver and the passenger at gunpoint with their daughter in the back of the car, the six-week-old. Just this week, actually, if you read an article, there's an article from Oshkosh, Wisconsin. They decided not to go with Flock. They found Flock was lying to them about what their software does. They aren't glitches. They're predictable costs of trusting algorithm with everyone's movements. So on behalf of the signers, I'm asking the council to formally and publicly answer the questions in the petition. I can send you the link as well. In writing by September 15th. Our request is simple. Pause the contract. Cancel any remaining contract. Delete the data that's out there. Answer our petition questions in writing. Hold a forum for everyone in our city. And commit to putting future surveillance proposals to actual resident vote. We are not anti-safety. We're pro-accountability. Our residents are capable of deciding together. whether we want to live under this kind of surveillance. We haven't been asked. Tonight, we're asking you to ask us. Thank you.

Thank you. Birgit Johnson.

Birgit Johnson, Richfield.

How to prevent an urban concrete jungle here in the future? There's an easy answer to that. Keep the parks green and keep them natural. Don't fill them up with buildings and structures. What some may call wasted space, for example a grassy area, is already in use. For example, killdeer probably nests there, turtles use it for laying their eggs, people fly kites, etc. There will be a need for green space always. Our priority seems to lay with staff, though looking at how condensed our park spaces already are. We need to retain all of our green space now to prevent overcrowding. Urban development significantly contributes to habitat loss, causes alteration in local climate conditions in the form of the heat island effect. An overabundance of impervious surfaces in cities such as concrete, pavements and rooftops prevent rainwater from being absorbed into the ground. Instead, this leads to excess water runoff, overwhelming city drainage systems, and frequent and severe urban flooding. Elevated pollution levels are also associated with dense cities. Besides air pollution, wastewater management issues, surface water contamination pose an issue. The lack of exposure to nature is an important issue. that contributes significantly to our overall well-being. You all know this, but you may think we don't matter that much in the big picture. Everything matters. We are part of nature, and we need to be with nature to thrive. When we ignore nature, we will always pay the price. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Adriana Martinez.

Good evening, Major and members of the City Council. My name is Adriana Martinez, and I serve as board member of the Twin Cities Chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, or NAREP. We are the largest Latino business organization in the United States, representing more than 50,000 real estate professionals across more than 100 chapters nationwide. I'm here tonight for a simple purpose, to introduce ourselves, who we are and who we represent. And I want to put into perspective that starting nationally, the U.S. Latino economy now represents more than 4.2 trillion in GDP. Yes, trillion with T. If the U.S. Latino community were its own community or own country, it would rank among the five largest economies in the world. And over the next two decades, nearly 70% of new homeowners in this country are expected to come to come from Latino community. That shift isn't coming someday. It's already here. Here in Minnesota, Hispanic homeownership has grown more than 60% since 2010. And then we bring the story right here to Richfield. Nearly 18% of Richfield residents are Hispanic or Latino, almost one out of every five people in this city. But the number that really caught my attention came from research I conducted on residential purchases. During the second half of 2025, nearly 15% of all residential purchases in Richfield were made by Latino home buyers. Think about what this means. These aren't simple people living in Ridgefield. They are choosing Ridgefield. They are purchasing homes here. They are investing their money here. They are raising families here. They are putting down roots here. We are building generational wealth. And let me say this in a way that might surprise a few people. We didn't leave places like Mexico, Colombia, or Venezuela because we didn't like the food or because the music wasn't good. We came here for the same reason immigrant groups have always come to this country, opportunity, economic opportunity, a better future, the American dream. And now we are building that future here. So when this council discusses housing, zoning, redevelopment, affordability, or neighborhood investment, the Latino community isn't a side conversation. We are already part of the economic story of Richfield. And that's where NAREP comes in. We bring data. We bring market experience and we bring credit connection to the families who are defining the next generation of homeowners. We are not here asking for exceptions. We are not here hat in hand. We are here as professionals, as practitioners, as part of the economic engine in this region. So as these conversations continue, we would anticipate to be part of them, not as a formality, but as a partner. Thank you. Thank you. And I will leave this handout with somebody. Thank you.

Thank you. If you could give them to the clerk. Next, we have Linda Peterson.

Linda Peterson, Richfield, Minnesota. I'm here to speak about the flock cameras. They not only get your license plate, but also your day to day itinerary. Where you go, how long you're there, if you visit family and friends, if their cars are out front, they can probably get those too. Flock does this. It's supposed to keep us safe. This isn't only local, it's nationwide. And it's beginning to feel like I'm no longer in the home of the free, but more of a police state. I don't remember being asked if I wanted flock cameras in my neighborhood. I am asking now to cancel the flock contract and advise us of the steps being taken to keep Richfield safe. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Jess Lyons.

I'm gonna move it, okay.

My name is Jess Lyons, and I've been a member of the Richfield community for almost 10 years. And I'm also here to speak about the flock cameras. My neighbor, a single mom, was kidnapped off the street in the middle of December before we had all the boots on the ground. I know her children. My children ride the bus with those children. And it threw me into so much of the mutual aid that I know many of us in this room participated in groceries for my neighbors, figuring out other kids and their safety needs, transporting them. I don't know, I don't know if it was trauma that made me not realize that there was a flock camera at both sides of my neighborhood. I'm not sure. But I remember after shuttling people to work, being terrified that we were going to be seen in the car, I remember when I did notice that it went up in mid-February. My neighbor had just returned. Ice stalked her at the place that she was released the same day. When I looked at the contract and saw that in 2023, our city paid $36,000 for a one-year contract, I thought I was going to lose my mind. All of the mutual aid work that happened here in Richfield in May, the leaders of some of those groups met to determine what we were going to do about the food needs, because food was still an astronomical need here in Richfield. $30,000 our community was supporting in food needs. People were raising money in Richfield and out of Richfield. $30,000, hundreds of families had been fed in Richfield since December. Myself and a partner raised $70,000 in January. We paid 45 families' rents. And I know that I'm not alone in this story. $36,000 you could feed our community for a month. For a month. I'm concerned that I don't know what Flock is selling that data for. I'm concerned that we would welcome it into this city. And the question that I want to ask is, I choose to be here, and what I saw from Richfield, I want to be here. Who are we? As the leaders of Richfield, who are we and who will we become? That question is deeply important to me now. It is deeply important to me moving forward. We could feed people. We could house people that choose to be here, that bring so much to our city and to our schools and to each other and to our neighbors. Who do we want to be?

Thank you. Thank you. Sika Don is next.

Hey, Mayor and members of the Council. I'm also here to speak on flock cameras. I am Sika Dawn. I'm a resident of South Minneapolis. I am a member of the Chamber of Commerce in Ridgefield and I own a business here. I grew up here and I've spent my entire life in Ridgefield. done all sorts of things, and seeing the flock cameras come up, especially without community input, just dropped my soul out of me, especially after what we did this winter communally. Things that concern me about flock cameras are the bad faith uses. Number one, tracking people's patterns as a pretext for arrest, as it happened in April 25th of this year, and a gentleman traveling from Madison, or from Milwaukee area over to Michigan, They tracked his whereabouts over and over again and decided that that was caused to arrest him on suspicion of cannabis distribution. That's a pretext for crime, not solving a crime. That's not keeping us safe. That's determining who they think is going to be a criminal and doing that instead of investigating actual crime. Stalking, which is something that people have brought up. Many people have already been tried for the stalking cases. That's not something we need here. The JCC case in Georgia, a JCC issued a FOIA request to see what their flock cameras were showing up as and who was accessing their data, only to find out that for hours, an inside of their gymnasium had been being watched, where children were playing, where people were entertaining themselves. And that was not something that they had approved of. Flock had decided to use them as a test case. to study up and show and sell their services to other people without permission. They were never going to tell anybody if a FOIA hadn't been requested and authorized. Not only that, but them turning information over to ICE. Somebody brought up that we were a huge contributor to protecting our community during ICE, and knowing that they share this data with the very people that are causing so much harm in our town. in our metro, it is really evident that this is something that is negatively affecting people's lives directly. There's an error rate. There are people who are being pulled out of their car at gunpoint. People are going to jail and sitting in jail. I couldn't leave my job for six days because I was in jail on false claims because somebody had seen my car doing something. And I know a lot of other people couldn't as well. This is not a safety measure to those that are being affected negatively. This is a situation, like so many, where we need to evaluate people over property. Yes, cars that are stolen are being recovered. Okay. I still don't want to see an 18-year-old pulled out at gunpoint. If that is happening to one person, that's one person too many. If these AI surveillance tools are misreading plates, that's a bad thing. Having surveillance particularly owned by outside stakeholders that have had accountability issues in the past and offer very little in transparency undermines our community's autonomy. To those that are saying, but I'm not doing anything wrong, I want to remind you that in a metro area where we had so many people injured and multiple deceased members for the activism they did during ICE, as a result of practicing their constitutionally guaranteed rights with only one person currently facing charges and zero officers being tried for their crimes, you're not doing anything wrong here in America until they change the definition of what wrong is. We have processes to enforce, investigate, and prosecute crime, and while we can have progress to make these systems more efficiently and more practical, it cannot be at the expense of our quality of life. So please listen to these voices and request full transparency from FLOC, cancel these contracts, and find out where everything was going with that information. Thank you.

Matthew Berg.

I'm Matthew Berg, and my wife and I are actually three-year residents here next month. We chose Richfield because not only do we have family here, but also the amazing community that is here. Many examples of that have been talking about our ice situation and raising all of that mutual aid for our neighbors. I'm not going to reiterate everything that has been talked about with the flock cameras. I just want to point out that they've been advertised as license plate readers, but why do we have flock cameras aimed at parks? Why do we have flock cameras aimed at businesses instead of where they should be, on the side of roads? And the overreach that has been well documented, the cases that have been talked about here tonight, just add to this. And so I think the growing... concern with not just Richfield here but across the state and the country is flock is impeding on our rights. It is a privacy issue and it is something that no one here wanted. We've had multiple people say, we never were asked about this. And so in a time where our privacy is being sold whether it's off of our phone, whether it's off of any app that we use, whether it's our car, we don't need another thing that is in our city using our resources, eating into our privacy. And so this is one thing I think should be an easy thing that we can say no to and join the growing movement across the state and the country, putting a line in the sand saying we won't do this anymore. So thank you guys.

Thank you. Dr. Aaron McCain.

I appreciate everyone's time. I'm here speaking on behalf of two people. The first is Aaron and the second is Dr. McCain. And Aaron's just like the dude down the street. And when my neighbors stand up, he gets choked up pretty easy and say, that they don't feel like they're in America anymore, it really, really gets to me. But we've got to talk about Dr. McCain for a second, because Dr. McCain's the guy who writes a four-page memo for free to the city council outlining the legal liability upon adopting flock cameras and then spells out a very real national security concern that will likely happen upon adoption and would just give dumb, dangerous people more dumb, dangerous ideas. I'm going to share one with the chief of police, too. But to get you to read that memo, I have to actually say who I am. And so I'm going to do that. And I don't really like talking about myself or my job, so I'm going to do this fast. For the last 20 years, I've been a leading U.S. privacy, AI, and disinformation expert. Within my little industries, I am most famous for being the person crazy enough to become a disinformation diversity hire at a MAGA adjacent Bible college downtown to get the left and the right. And I mean like hardcore evangelicals and the ACLU to agree on privacy. or bar associations and Big Ten and the RNC and the DNC and my kids get poached by the Illuminati and I have to keep my mouth shut. But when I pop up in my neighborhood, the reason I'm popping up is because I'm saying, city council people are here for a reason. You're good at managing your community and city council was developed to handle local issues. We're not talking about local issues. We are talking about global issues of national security and our fundamental constitutional rights and the maintenance of our democracy and the prevention of civil war next door. And none of us signed up for this. And as a complete systemic failure of state and federal government over the last 10 years and all the weird rooms I have to sit in, that cities, and thank God we have like kind residents who care about their cities and kind city council people who are trying to get informed on these issues. But it's absurd that we even have to have these conversations at this level. And so the only thing I guess I would ask is for us to survive and thrive in the next decade, cities like Richfield are going to have to lean on the experts in our communities. And I only have three lanes, y'all. I know about AI. I know about privacy. And I know how to try to stop a civil war next door. And you might have heard me say that one or two times. But everybody in this town knows something about something that we're going to need them in a room for. to get through this. We are a small city and we don't have much money. So my only two points on the flock camera would be this. Please read this memo. Please understand that the legal liability is nothing that the city of Richfield could afford. And to my friends in law enforcement, please understand somebody tried to shoot me up in North. That's how I ended up here in Richfield. That's why Minnesota did not get the AI alignment Super Bowl ring. Hilariously, somebody stole my car off the driveway the first year I was here, but let's put that aside. I am a fan of law enforcement, but I'm also a fan of our civil liberties, and all I'm trying to say is when people in a town come out on a Tuesday night and say something about this smells funny, something about this doesn't smell like America, and the resident nerd is like, holy crap, don't do this, please just listen when that coalition shows up, and hopefully you never have to hear from me again. I appreciate y'all's time. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. If you had a memo or something, did you give it to the city clerk? Thank you, so she can share it with us. Next, we have Nikhil Nadiav. My apologies.

No worries. Thank you, Mayor. Okay. Hi. My name is Nikhil, or Nick. I live in Richfield. My family has lived here for about four years. I'm here, like many of you, to speak about flock cameras. Like so many others here, my concerns with these cameras are because of a policy or at least an attitude of carelessness and non-transparency, as well as a total lack of accountability from Flock, the company. Some of you may know that back in January, a group of tech activists on YouTube were able to remotely access the Flock cameras and view their live, uncensored camera feeds, as well as some of the scanned data. They were able to do this to at least 60 flock cameras across the country before they simply stopped trying. These cameras were found to be almost completely unsecured on either the hardware or software level. This means that literally anyone who wanted and tried would have been able to also access these cameras and the data within them live as it was coming through the stream. We are lucky that the only people who did this were YouTube activists who immediately bought the issue to flock. Even though the company says that they fixed that issue. The level of highly sensitive data that flock cameras gather is simply too dangerous to trust with a company that cannot be bothered to take simple security steps. If activists and YouTubers were able to do all of that, please think of what people with bad intentions are capable of doing and indeed may have already done and we have simply not been told. Speaking of the data that they gather, like a lot of us have pointed out, Flock has marketed the cameras primarily as automated license plate readers. But their newer Condor models pick up much more than that, including the color and make of cars, as well as the body and facial features of the drivers and pedestrians walking by. Now, I don't know about the rest of you, but when I go for a walk in the city, I don't wear a license plate, so I don't know what's up with that. But I would really like for it not to happen. They can access any of that data at any point and share with any agency that asks, all without a warrant. So that's concerning. All of that can and has happened in multiple cases, as many of you have helpfully pointed out. And people have been stalked. People have been falsely accused of crimes. People have been hurt. And Flock's repeated lies have enabled all of that. People have mentioned what happened in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in April, and I'd just like to provide some additional context so it's on the record. In Oshkosh, Flock was asked whether they generate heat maps based on their camera data. Basically, did they track people and create a map of where they went and their activity throughout the day? Flock categorically said, no, they didn't. Within 24 hours, the police chief in Oshkosh was notified by subordinates that Flock had indeed lied, and activity heat maps were available. to the police of every car that passed by. Obviously, from that data, extrapolating your activities for the day is pretty simple because no one drives a car somewhere and then just doesn't do anything. This was a lie that was so blatant that it relied entirely on police officers in Oshkosh being either too stupid, too inept, or simply too careless to find out, as well as being too immoral to point out the lie. On the recommendation of the police chief, the city canceled its contract, and I hope we follow through here too, because to me, any single one of these issues would be bad enough. Taken together, they paint a picture of a company that is deeply broken, it doesn't care about the people that their products are supposed to be quote-unquote helping, and has proven that they have no issues lying to local politicians and regular citizens to get additional contracts. I don't want any of their cameras around our homes, and having them in our city will lead to a loss of personal privacy that we won't easily get back. If the people of Richfield want flock cameras, and those cameras are so useful and helpful, their implementation in our city should be a matter of public debate and vote. It should never be something that sneaks in uninvited, resists leaving, and in the meantime makes us pay for our own warrantless surveillance. Thank you.

Thank you. Steve McCune.

Good evening. Steve McKeown. I lived in Richfield in the same house right down the street down here for 56 years. And what I've seen in that time, we've had a... I'm speaking both on the Legion development and the flock cameras. What I've seen in that time, it was all pretty much a white community when I first moved here. We were the youngest on our block, and now we're the oldest. And we're like the United Nations right now. And back then, we shared stuff, food, tools, you know, helping out each other. My first wife died. There was people just coming over all the time to take care of the kids. And that still is ongoing today. We still share. And so I'm not casting any... thing against the council here or the police department, but we really don't need these flock cameras. That's so well said by everyone here. Now I've been involved on Penn Avenue where we have the demonstrations during the week. I've been at the schools in the morning where my kids went to school, you know, to try and be there to try and stop ice from entering and taking away little kids or their parents. So what good are these flock cameras going to do when we have an administration that can't even get along with Canada? They can't come back and take somebody from Texas that shot through doors. That can't even come and get killers of a couple of our citizens in Minnesota. This we don't have to feed into. So I am speaking against the flock cameras. The technical details were well set out here about the dangers of them. I'm not going to go into that. Also on the Legion development, I'm just going to briefly say, living on Portland Avenue here, we don't need more traffic. I'm not against development, but I would like to see that scale, that project scaled back. Thank you very much, and thank you for everybody that spoke here tonight.

Thank you. Tammy Kronerich, and I apologize if I said that wrong.

Okay, so my name is Tammy Kramarik. I have lived in Richfield areas for about 11 years since I moved to Minnesota. I have spoken to some of you people about block cameras before because this is not new to me. And I'm just gonna kind of state what everyone else has mentioned. These are not normal times. This conversation a few years ago would have been a lot different than it is now. We all lived through these last seven months. The other thing that I want to say on that is Since this isn't my first time talking about flock cameras, when I was at the Richfield Human Rights Commission meeting, I found out in the month of June, for the 30 days that flock kept the pictures, in Richfield with 10 cameras, there was 1.8 million photos taken. 1.8 million with 10 cameras in Richfield, Minnesota. That's another 120-some thousand across the nation. So this is not a Richfield thing. This is a step back, and we have to see what this problem is. Has Flock done anything about the murders in broad daylight? Flock did nothing for that. The other part of this is cops love saying the excuse of, well, you have nothing to worry about if you're not committing crimes. I don't know if anyone's familiar with the Minnesota 15. That was neighbors talking to each other and protecting children, feeding children, keeping families from getting terrorized. In what way is Flock going to make any of that better? Sorry, I am very passionate about this. I am so pissed off. But okay, as long as you're not breaking any rules. Trump's government does not care about that. They decide what's legal and not. And the other part of this that I'd like to point out, 2013. Edward Snowden released the files letting us know that every single thing on the internet, everything has a backdoor. Everything is built for the feds to be able to look and see into it. That was 13 years ago. No one got punished. Nothing happened. They've only gotten more funding and more corrupt. Do we absolutely believe for a second that they cannot access everything? Do we really think those photos get wiped out after 30 days? And again, 1.8 million photos in Richfield from 10 cameras. That is insane. And you told me that directly, liaison officer, so definitely flag check me, but I remember that. I wrote that down. That's insane. And it hasn't stopped the terror that we're still experiencing. The other point of that is, and I hope you didn't show the sign, ICE gets to drive around with no plates sometimes, or a single plate. Even that's illegal. Their front plate that we all have to freaking get clocked on, they don't. And sometimes they have no plates at all. I've talked to the mayor about one specifically that has a novelty plate. It's Cleveland Brown says number one dad. He's been cruising around for months and months. Why do they not get pulled over? Why does that get to keep happening? And yeah, that's pretty baseline compared to like the executions. But how about we start small and say, fuck, fuck cameras. And sorry, I probably wasn't supposed to say that. Times are bad. I'm disabled and I have a quarter of a spoon.

Thank you. Is there anyone else who wishes to speak? We've got about five minutes left on the time we set aside. Anybody else? And Clerk Friedrich, did anybody send anything in?

We did not receive any emails, Mayor Seppel.

Okay. Well, it looks like no one else wishes to speak. I have another two minutes. I can just stay here. All right, thank you everyone for your comments I know there had been a number of people that have been emailing us and asking questions and so The Public Safety Department has been putting together a frequently asked questions document, but they wanted to wait and see what people said tonight in case there were additional questions. So hopefully that'll be coming out on the website in the next few days. But it is in progress, but we wanted to hear what people had to say tonight to see if there were additional questions. So thank you all so much, and you're also welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting. All right, so next there are no proclamations or presentations, so we're going to move on to the consent calendar. So I'm going to turn it over to City Manager Rodriguez.

Thank you, Mayor. The consent calendar contains several separate items which are acted upon by the City Council in one motion. Once the consent calendar has been approved, the individual items and recommended actions have also been approved. No further Council action on these items is necessary. On tonight's consent calendar, Item A, approve disbursements claims. Item B, consider approval of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehensions, BCAs, Master Joint Powers Agreement with the Richfield Department of Public Safety Police for access to the criminal justice data communications network and the court data services subscriber amendment to CJDN subscriber agreement. and c consider approval of an agreement for prosecution services with the city of richfield with each j law and indeed approval work order in the amount of hundred eighty nine thousand fifty dollars with hdr engineering inc for a water treatment plant feasibility study and i submit these items for your consideration as part of tonight's consent calendar sir motion to accept the consent calendar items motion to approve

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any comment? I did want to draw the public's attention to the engineering study for the water treatment feasibility because I think that's going to be an important topic and we're going to need feedback from the community as well. So I'm glad that we're doing the study before there's a crisis so that we can plan ahead. But the treatment plant is older than I am, so I think it is time that we start looking at the feasibility. With that, any other comments or questions? All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed? And we have approved the consent calendar. Moving on, we'll go to item 10A, Council Member Christensen.

Yes, this item for consideration is to consider the first reading of an ordinance approving changes to subsection 400.21 and the addition of subsection 400.22 to the city code pertaining to fire prevention. The fire department is requesting changes in the city code that correct references to the adopted state code and adds language that allows the fire department to take on delegated plan review and inspections from the state fire marshal. Does the city have any further comments?

We're available for questions.

Are there any questions?

No.

All right. With that, have you made the motion then? By motion, we need to approve the first reading of the ordinance to adopt changes to subsection 400.21 and the addition of subsection 400.22 to the city code pertaining to fire prevention.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed? and we have approved the first reading. Next, we'll move on to the city manager's report.

Thank you, Mayor. Our last meeting was, regular council meeting was July 28th, and we had three speakers at open forum, and there were no questions, so I don't have a further report tonight.

Thank you. Moving on to council discussion, Council Member Christensen.

Yes, the only thing I have coming up is the reminder that school is starting next Monday, August 31st, for the 6th through 12th graders. So we need to be aware of school buses and extra vehicles around in our neighborhoods. And the younger grades are going on September 1st. So that's it.

Thank you. Council Member Hafer-Leary.

No items tonight.

Council Member Burke.

I want to encourage people to go play golf at Richfield and go to the pool and go to the farmer's market. Why do I bring all these up? I did a stay vacation and really been to these places before. It was kind of nice in the summer to go to all three if you can. My only concern is that the hole number 60 on the golf course, there's no way anyone makes a par three. So that really needs to be fixed. I'm telling you, no one can do it. But regardless, I really encourage people to go out and experience these things if you can before the summer's over. So that's my hats off to Hometown Hits. We're also doing council liaison, is that correct?

Yes.

I'm the liaison for the Human Rights Commission. And at our last meeting, we did have, and the Human Rights Commission did invite the chief of police, and the deputy's always there for all the meetings, to talk about FLOC. Unfortunately, there were no members of the public there. So definitely encourage members of the public to come to the Human Rights Commission. That is the best place, I think, to not only voice your opinions about flock, but to get some direct answers and some dialogue with not only representatives from law enforcement, but also representatives from the city council, because I will be there. Part of that discussion was we've heard a lot about the challenges and concerns about flock. I got to tell you, one thing that was expressed was concern of at least this city council member of if the flock cameras go away when it's been demonstrated that it has helped with important serious crimes, I would have a hard time having to look to the parents of a child who was kidnapped or murdered or something horrible happened And to have to explain to that parent why we didn't have that system when it could have solved the crime. That's the one thing that I haven't heard tonight and I haven't heard from anyone. The ramifications of giving up a system that has been proven, at least to this council member, that it does help in solving crimes. I really hope that the public comes to the Human Rights Commission to engage in these discussions. My mind is certainly open to change, but that is where I'm standing on this right now.

Thank you. I wanted to do a couple of shout-outs to say thank you. There are a lot of volunteers that helped at Unity in the community, and I believe it was over 850 backpacks that were given out for kids. So thank you to everybody that helped with that. Also, the Minnesota Arc and the Richfield Disability Advocacy, it's RDAP, and I'm forgetting what the P stands for, so forgive me. They worked really hard, and we had a Disability Pride Festival, and that was the first annual one, and we're hoping it's gonna continue into the future, but it was a really great event, and I wanna thank all the participants and all the volunteers. And I also wanna thank everybody that spoke tonight, want to continue the conversation because there's a lot to be talked about. And I'm hearing from people in all parts of the community on both sides of the issue, but I do think we need to talk about this and figure it out. So thank you. Is there anyone else that has anything they would like to add? All right, then a motion is in order to adjourn the meeting.

So moved. Second.

It's been moved and seconded to adjourn the meeting. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed? And we stand adjourned. Thank you.