Meeting held on Wednesday, November 12th, 2025, commencing at 6 30 p.m.

Council members, I will call roll because I'm not certain everyone who's here.

So council president Kritzer.

Here.

Council Vice President Forsyth.

Here.

Council Member Stewart.

Councilmember Nueva Camina.

Here.

Councilmember Anderson.

Councilmember Fields.

That is everyone.

So we have four in attendance this evening.

This special meeting is being held to discuss AM number 25165 suspension of Flock Automated License Plate Reading System or ALPRS.

Is there a motion?

Council President.

I move to suspend the use of the city's uh flock automatic license plate reading system pending further discussion.

Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Is there any discussion?

Any comment?

Council President, would you like to speak to this item?

Thank you.

At our um city council meeting last week, the council um was interested in being able to take action to suspend use of this system so that we would allow for more discussion.

We've scheduled at our committee of the whole meeting next week on public safety to be able to look at more details around the future of the city's use of that program and any implications to ending our contract.

Um and so uh the action tonight since the action last week was um was a recommendation to the administration uh strongly from the entirety of the council to do that.

And uh the mayor and police chief did oblige in turning off the system.

We did want to formalize it by having this special meeting tonight um to take a vote by council.

Thank you.

Any other discussion?

Council vice president.

Thank you.

And I just want to add for the record that this is a continuation of a lot of thoughtful conversation that we have been having throughout the last several months, and we had a lot of deep conversation over a year ago when we um implemented these cameras and implemented our data privacy.

And this is really a continuation of uh a lot of the concerns that many of us shared throughout the over a year's worth of conversations, and um appreciate the opportunity to continue the research and the study.

Thank you.

Uh Councilmember Stewart.

Thank you.

Uh, like my colleagues before me, I uh will be voting in favor of this motion tonight.

And I do want to thank the chief and his team for their swift action last week.

Um I'll be voting yes to affirm this decision, and I believe it was the right decision to make at the time.

Um there's been even more news breaking uh, you know, recently with uh more court rulings and things like that that really just cause call for a moment of pause.

So to the community who was caught off bar guard by the implementation of the license plate readers, um, I hear you, and we did, as my colleague mentioned, wrestle with this a lot before we accepted the grant dollars.

That's why we uh required the stricter data governance controls and tried to make a decision that captured the nuances of community uh sentiment on this.

So far, those controls have kept the community safe from outside agencies accessing the data, which again I do thank the chief and his uh team for their attention to the details on this.

From my perspective, the vendor has not proven trustworthy in other uh areas around the country and does not have the the trust of our community, which is something that I heard so loud and clear, so a little bit more scrutiny is needed here.

Um I also this is in uh concert with my vote for the legislative agenda that we passed, the state legislative agenda, which also calls for more support for vendor accountability in these emerging public safety technologies.

It's also clear to me that we, the council, need a fresh community conversation on emergency emerging technologies that the city is interested in ahead of our upcoming budget cycle next year.

Um, the body worn camera program, the license plate readers that we intended to help deter and solve crime, the drone as a first responder, the school safety cameras.

We actually have a lot of uh feedback that we should get from community so we can give really clear direction to the department going into next year.

So once again, I'll be voting yes on this measure.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um and Councilmember Anderson has joined us.

Councilmember Nueva Camina.

Thank you.

Um I'm um I'm going to be supporting uh and voting yes on this, and it's because I think that while Redmond were known for our innovation, our technology, um, and and how to leverage that, and we we can be a city that is both um head smart as well as heart smart and remembering our humanity along the way.

And I think that our city does a phenomenal job of doing that, and this is another way of us taking that pause and saying, let's let's take a second to make sure that both sides are honored.

Thank you.

Any other comment on this item?