Note: The agenda and transcript list the meeting date as February 3, 2026; however, the provided date for this summary is February 9, 2026. The following reflects the content of the February 3 meeting as transcribed.
The Moline City Council held a Committee-of-the-Whole meeting followed by a regular City Council meeting on February 3, 2026 (per agenda/transcript) to address a wide range of items including federal grant applications, zoning amendments, a temporary winter shelter lease, police officer oaths, and public concerns about automated license plate reader cameras. All votes were unanimous except one resolution concerning executive session minutes.
Okay, that's meeting. I hereby call this meeting of the committee of the whole to order on February 3rd, 2026 at 6 p.m. in console chambers. Madam Clerk, roll call, please. Color person Murphy. President Messias. President. Rosak. President. Time. Present. Finch, present. McNeil. Present. Castro. President Schmick. Present. Next is public comment. Chief Galt, is there any public comment? If there is just as a reminder, public comment, you have three minutes to make your comments. It is our protocol here at Council that we do not respond during that time. But if only if appropriate, and we can arrange follow-up communication outside of this meeting. Good evening, everyone. I came uh and saw you all in your December meeting and talked about the need for doing some quotes for something for our uh unhouse votes, and I was glad to see that there's some progress there. There's always room uh for improvement and like further in uh investment in that. Um, I think there's some other stuff on the agenda tonight around uh the Moline shelter, so I'm glad to hear and see all that. So kudos to you all for making those steps. I appreciate that. Um also wanted to talk about um the flop cameras that are all uh kind of I'm sure you've seen the uh uh online you know footprint of these things and the concerns that we uh do have around that. Um I saw the information that you posted on the city website, appreciate uh a lot of that, but I'm not sure it defin uh really addresses some of the current concerns that I have. Um I think there's precedent that's showing that um ICE has been able to illegally or legally get access to that data one way or another. Uh so that's obviously a concern. Um I think there's other people hopefully tonight that are talking uh about that that know more uh and are more invested in that than I am, but um definitely a concern that I have. Um I spoke about ICE. I do want to uh I guess put it out there and get some sort of response or at some you know someday um about what the city uh what our local police uh department and our uh elected officials uh what their plan is to protect our neighbors um and keep uh federal overreach out of our community and um yeah again protect the people that we live with and the people that make our community uh what it is and how we function uh here in Moley. So thank you. Thank you. All right, David Stoner. Hi everybody, I'm David Stoner from the Fourth Ward. Um I wanted to echo what's the sentiment that I'm really glad that Moline put together that winter shelter, like super important, and I'm proud that we're in a city that can take care of our most vulnerable. Um I'm also here about the uh flock cameras a couple weeks ago. I was in speaking about them and the privacy of our residents at that time. I presented a petition with 250 signatures from people in the community. Um today I'm back with an updated petition that has uh 425 people from the Quad Cities signing on to voice their concerns and ask for the removal of those cameras. Um the concern comes from that this technology isn't just catching criminals, it's documenting daily movements of law-abiding citizens, including everyone in this room. If you drove a car to get here tonight, it's all but guaranteed you've been logged by a flock camera. Um we currently have nine flock cameras according to the city's website, which doesn't sound like a lot, but according to that website, those nine cameras are logging over four million records a month. And we're often told that Moline owns that data, which is comforting, but the reality is we're feeding the community's private movements into a massive centralized database, and that network isn't always secure. Um recently it's been discovered that Flock, uh the way they handle their data transparency, millions of the uh search results from police departments across the country have been exposed to the open internet, so just open a browser and you can see the results. Um when we feed our cis feed our data into that system, we could lose control of it.