The Yakima City Council held a regular meeting on May 19, 2026, at 5:30 p.m. in City Hall Council Chambers. The meeting included public comments on surveillance cameras and reentry housing, approval of the consent agenda (with one item removed for discussion), a presentation on Opportunity Zones 2.0 nominations, and updates on Franklin Pool repairs and lifeguard training. All votes were unanimous.
Okay, here we go. All right, I call this uh regular uh council meeting to order of uh May nineteenth. Clerk, roll call, please. Here Brown here. Glenn. Here. Gonzalez, present Patrickis. Here. Roy? Here. All right. Join me in a pledge allegiance. One nation under our individual liberty and justice for our event. We have uh interpreter services. All right, next we have public comment. Uh, tonight we have thirty-five minutes allotted for public comment with two and a half minutes per speaker in order to allow as much opportunity as possible for audience participation. Written communication email messages are strongly encouraged. Just a reminder, state law prohibits electioneering at city facilities. During public comment, speakers cannot campaign for or against candidates or support or oppose any ballot measure in any upcoming election. According to the Sunca Daily in November two thousand twenty-five, a skadget county ruling established that flock collected data is subject to state public record laws. There are concerns regarding the lack of security and the possibility of AI misreading plates, leading to wrongful stops and misuse of data. The ACLU has recognized that Flock's AI enables racial profiling through the use of suspicious vehicle algorithms and analyzes driving patterns that can target low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. Diverting $270,000 annually to a flock subscription forces the city to neglect public services like pools, community centers, and local fire and police protection. Flock's widespread and warrantless vehicle tracking is an invasion of privacy and violates the Fourth Amendment. Flock creates a searchable database of vehicle fingerprinting, allowing for daily monitoring of habits without a warrant or probable cause. We're seeing mass surveillance prioritize over community needs as well as concerns over privacy and public data access. Regardless of the intent, adopting automated surveillance creates a digital police state where suspicious activity is defined by discriminating police policing patterns. Remove all flock cameras and stop additional funding towards new contracts and equipment and put the money back into our community. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next is uh Noemi Sanchez. Hi, my name is Noemi. I live in District 2, and I'm here to tell you not to renew the contract with Flock that you have that expires June 16th, which is next month. Through public records requests that we have submitted to the city, we attained copies of the contracts and agreements related to FLOC because we wanted to understand exactly what council signed our community up for. What we found was deeply unsettling. This is not a small camera program, it is a mass surveillance system. These cameras are not just tracking people who are suspected of serious crimes. They are collecting information on everyone who moves through the city. They can track where people work, where they get their coffee in the morning, where they take their kids to school, who they visit, and what neighborhoods they're spending their time in. What it does, it creates a copy and a map of what your daily routine looks like. That is a huge amount of power that the government has over community members who have done nothing wrong. We also know these systems have been used for ICE enforcement and information sharing with outside agencies. In a community like Yakima, we have many immigrants, mixed studies families who already live in fear, and who are the backbone of our community. The flock cameras are creating more distress, more distrust, and makes people less likely to seek help, report harm, and engage with local government. But let's talk about the money, because that's really what you guys care about. The city has entered into multiple agreements related to flock. A total of six contracts exists currently. One of those contracts is a total of over $67,000 for the platform, 22 cameras, and an advanced search software that goes with it. That is the contract that expires June 16th.