Note: The agenda and transcript indicate the meeting occurred on January 6, 2026, but the provided date for this summary is January 21, 2026. This discrepancy is noted below.
The Moline City Council met on January 21, 2026, for a Committee-of-the-Whole and Regular Council meeting. Key actions included approval of an intergovernmental agreement with the school district, a substitute ordinance changing the definition of “family” in the zoning code, selection of a public art installation, and approval of a new UAW labor contract. Public comment focused on concerns about surveillance technology.
Note on Date: The agenda and transcript both list the meeting date as January 6, 2026. The summary date provided (January 21, 2026) appears to be an error. All actions described occurred on January 6, 2026.
Good evening, everyone. I'll call our uh committee of the whole meeting to order at 6 p.m. in council chambers. Roll call, please. Alder Person Murphy. Present. Messias. Razak. President. Timmy and present. Finch. Present McNeil. Present. Castro. President Schmidt. Present. All right. There's no remote electronic attendance needed. Is there a public comment, Chief? All right. Just a reminder, you have three minutes. Okay. And do you have the clock going? Thank you. Hello, everyone. My name is Tom Keith. I'm from Holine. As many of you know I'm an activist trying to stop the spraying our skies called climate engineering. I have flyers back directly to the clerk if anybody wants one. Uh or two. Um, Milo Anderson's got a proposal before the Senate right now on trying to stop this too. And it does trying to stop the spraying of our skies with climate engineering. So I get some of the people maybe to talk to them and encourage that bill to go through. That would help. Um my other concern is a new technique to spy on Americans called Palenter Galtham. Police departments across the U.S. are using the software to aggregate and analyze massive amounts of civilian data. With a single search officers can access and infer past addresses and known associates. Vehicle movements via automatic license plate readers and flock cameras. We've got three of them up here at UG, I see them. Photos, tattoos, scars, prior arrests, and field interviews. Social media and financial data immediately obtained for subpoena. Algorithmic risk scores that flag people based on patterns, not convictions. Now you call that the pre-crime or minority port. Anybody remember that movie? This is sold as crime filing, but it creates centralized digital profiles of millions of Americans, many never charged with a crime, often with mental public transparency or oversight. Now the knee-jerk response is if you're not doing anything wrong, you've got nothing to worry about. But you know, that's what the Germans said. And Martin Mahler, he's a minister at Germany, said first they came for the socialists, but I wasn't a socialist, so I said nothing. Then they came for the trade units and Jews, and I said nothing because I was neither.