City Council Work Session — May 12, 2026

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one minor adjustment that I want to clarify on the agenda. So we did make note that the FLOC item this evening, discussion on FLOC and ALPR cameras, is a discussion item. So it's not just a staff report. It is a discussion item. So we modified the agenda to reflect that. We will then move on to a conversation about Vision Zero. And finally, our third discussion item this evening is the role of community engagement in policymaking. So if you're ready, we'll go ahead and dive right in. And I am going to turn it over to our chief of police, Jeff Swoboda, to kick off this item.

Good evening, Mayor, remotely, Mayor Pro Tem, city council members. I'm Jeff Swoboda, your police chief. And thank you for allowing us some time tonight to have another discussion on FLOC and probably at some point ALPR, automated license plate readers. And just truly appreciate the follow-up. This is, it was February 24th when we were last here that we had this discussion. Since that time, there have been a lot of questions, been a lot of feelings shared, been a lot of opinions shared. And I know there have been people who have come out from the council to actually sit with our officers to look at the system and see how it's working. So just really appreciate the engagement. I would also just like to say thank you to our community members who, as we talked about last time, I know you all have echoed your appreciation for people feeling that they can come forward and tell you their thoughts and where is technology going too far and what are the safeguards that we have as a community. And so truly do appreciate all of the dialogue that's going on. Before Deputy Chief Yeager goes through a very short PowerPoint, I also wanted to level set with some things that are just facts about the system because there have been so many comments stated over the past few months. There have been people saying how they feel or their opinions on things, I thought it would be really important just to also level set on some of the facts. And first of all, Flock has only been used in Fort Collins Police Services, only been active with all the cameras up for a year thereabout. And so as we're talking about it, you know, as far as if there's a way to bring the temperature down, this is not a make or break thing. We have amazing police officers who solved crime before Flock. And if there was a decision in May to go away from Flock. We'll have amazing police officers do it. We'll do it a little bit differently, and we'll have discussions on technology. But I just want you to hear it from me. We've only been using it a year. It's not as if there's a tool that we've built our entire profession on that you're trying to strip away. So I think that's an important fact to have. Secondly, ALPRs have been utilized by the city for over a decade. That was in the first one. This isn't something new. This isn't something that was sprung upon. We have had ALPRs generally. Also, ALPR is part of our system with speed. It's also part of our system with red light cameras, which I know you'll hear some more things tonight in the next presentation around Vision Zero. And I'm very proud of the work this city has been doing to drive down deaths on our roadways. But ALPR is a part of those systems. Next, ALPR is not a violation of anyone's civil rights. it's just a matter of fact courts many courts appellate courts have ruled on this people can have their own opinion and think that it is and i perfectly respect that but just as a fact it is not a violation of anybody's rights a licensed car a license plate on a public roadway there is no expectation of privacy for anyone on that we register our cars exactly for that reason and FLOC is a secure system. Point four I want to raise. The FBI sets the standard for the technology we use, CJIS compliant, criminal justice information system. FLOC meets that FBI requirement. Secondly, and we all know we live in a very intelligent community and there are experts in various fields and people can disagree with that, but what we set our technology, the standards we sign up to that we must hold ourselves accountable to are the FBI sieges compliance and flock meets that. And then secondly, locally, the city hires one person who's our technology expert, Kevin Wilkins, who's been part of this whole discussion, and he can answer for himself. But flock is a secure system. And then my last point before I turn it over to Greg, if flock goes away, we solve less crimes. It's just a very simple fact. Criminals operate in patterns and the quicker we can identify a pattern of who is committing the crime, the less victimization they can cause. If someone is breaking into cars, there's been great publicity out there about how Colorado has really driven down auto thefts. The quicker we can identify who is committing a crime and the quicker we can arrest them, the less times that they are able to go out and victimize our community. And so that is not just my opinion. I know the district attorney sat here in this very seat a few weeks ago and said very clearly, and I wrote down huge setback to community safety if there was no ALPR. So I just, this is not the police chief or the police department working on it. It is just as we have been asked to be more efficient, we all know we're up against tough budgets, things like drones, things like ALPR are assisting our officers daily in how they're doing their job. And if we wanted to go away from that, we would have to have serious discussions about personnel. And so I just wanted you all to hear that. I know there might be some questions on that later But those are the five facts that I really wanted to level set us with they're not really in dispute Again people can have a different opinion about it, but each of those are factual statements

And without further ado, I'd like to introduce deputy chief Yeager who will go through it and I also Adam Adam Cambridge our assistant chief over patrol will also be speaking up from time to time as well. So Greg Thank you chief

So, Mayor and Councilmembers, I know that you always have the opportunity to see these packets prior. The first part I just wanted to go over is just a quick recap of where we've been. As the Chief mentioned, February 24th was the last time that you had us in front of you to talk about the utilization of the system and its design. On March 5th, we were able to produce a document for the Council that was responsive to your questions as well as those from the community. the next couple of things are an awareness for the council so in this legislative session which our colorado legislative session which actually ends at the end of the day tomorrow we had two bills this session that came up one of them in the senate one in the house and both of those had specific implications to this type of technology while both have been postponed indefinitely which means that they will not move forward during this session we've already spoken to the sponsors and we know that those will likely come up in the 2027 session where there'll be more dialogue about those but one of those affected the purchase of historical data for government organizations purchasing historical data and one was about I just like on that

one apologize one is about the historical data and one is about purchasing the private data from a third party there it was so we do know that there's a potential for those to come back. Also, it's for an awareness on April 23rd,

a very similar bill was introduced to the U.S. House. We don't know the status of that right now or obviously what the outcome would be, but it would have implications in regard to like search

warrant requirements and some of the other measures that were addressed in the proposed bills of the state legislature. And then finally, I think we're all aware that there is a local petition that if that measure moved forward to our ballot it could have implications for

our immediate community so both so the state and the local level as well as our u.s congress will be addressing different matters related to this technology

so the purpose why are we here when we had the discussion with you previously you all asked if there could be some options generated. You will see four options that we have laid out there. And what I want you to hear very clearly is that this isn't us trying to prescribe anything. We're simply giving them as prompts. Obviously, the council has the discretion to make decisions about individual options or to add to or take away from them. So please understand that this is not us trying to drive any particular discussion. We just wanted to give you some opportunity to think about some of the things that could happen as we move forward. So with that, I'm just going to go into these options. The very first one is the least immediate impact to Fort Collins Police Services and our partners that we work with. And so basically what it's designed to do is keep the existing system in place. We know that the contract ends in April of next year, so we would keep the system in place while pursuing an RFP for a new vendor. That's very normal anyway for us whenever we reach the end of a contract for any service in the city we'll go out for rfps to see if perhaps somebody does it better if they do it more cost effectively something to that effect and so it would be very organic for us to do this rfp it is worth noting because we've heard from some members of community that they don't want flock to be considered we do not have the ability to remove them from submitting a proposal if they chose to it doesn't mean they have to be selected but they do have the ability to submit under that RFP process. And the other thing this does is it allows some stability in the operations that we're doing right now, what the officers are accustomed to doing, but it gives the council time to consider other proposals as those come through the city and also to pursue the council's potential technology policy that you all referenced in the past.

Waiting for the delay. I apologize. There it comes.

I realize this is a busy slide, so I'll tell you what this is. This one is also maintaining their existing system, but implementing some of the controls that the council and community members spoke of.

So one of the things that you'll remember is that this data, which is the license plate and vehicle images that are retained for 30 days by FLOC. There's no other data in there, but those two things are retained for 30 days. We did hear that there might be an interest in reducing the retention of that, the retention timeline. So one of the things that we considered is how long it takes for cases to come through our organization. So if you consider that sometimes

there's timing delays from a victim to report something, then a patrol officer gets that, there could be a delay before it goes to a detective, and then a detective finally has a case, and when they're working through all their cases, they say, okay, now I'm ready to look into

this and sometimes to develop those investigative leads can take nearly 30 days so that's one of the reasons that we had started this with 30 days we recognize that there may be an appetite to change

that so our our first proposal in this was that well what if we just shorten that by a week just

take seven days off of it um 23 days is somewhat responsive to some of the concerns while still allowing the officers the opportunity to generate those investigative leads we also know that there

are other things that we can do. We've heard different comments about the language in our contract, what different terms mean and what the city might feel is appropriate. So in talking to

Flock, we know that without reopening the contract, having to renegotiate that, that they are willing

to add city-specific language. Obviously, it depends on what that language would be, and our city attorney's office would be wise counsel in this space. But we know that, for example, Commerce city just was able to do this they had language that their council wanted to add and flock was able to put that city preferred language into the existing contract so we could do something similar and then the last thing is you know we talked about having our audit done on this and we do

that every month so at the start of one month we have a supervisor who's looking back at the prior

month they're looking for all that information such as our only authorized users using the system

Are they using it for authorized purposes? Are all the elements put into that system, the case number and the purpose for it? And then how was it used on the outcome? Was it actually used to generate investigative leads or did it not go anywhere? And so we're already doing those things, but we recognize that there might be a desire to have some more to the audit.

We could post a version of that audit to our transparency page. You also heard about that in our first presentation. For a long time, the police services has had a transparency page. We added a flock component to the many other sections, and we could add a version of the audit to there for folks to see.

We also know that there might be a body that the council deems appropriate to review that. As an example, our citizen review board is appointed by the council. It's not currently in the ordinance that they would review things like this. But again, with the wise counsel of our city attorney's office, we could look and see if it would be an appropriate use of the citizen review board to receive those audits as a counsel appointed body. They would have the opportunity to look at that for the appropriateness. If for some reason we needed to add language to the ordinance, then again, we'll rely on our friends with the law degrees. um and then the uh the last component of that one on the audit is just that we have already built in as the chief talked talked about the maturation of this you know at like any new product we went into it with certain language certain practices in place and as we've learned either on our own or from community comments or from the council's comments we've made adjustments uh i would tell you that when we look at this third bullet about stronger audit and accountability language we have these things in our practices now but i wanted to point it out that this is a this is being

responsive to the concerns okay two more options here comes three all right but nicely three and

four fit on one page a little more digestible so um of course if if we you know the first option is

keep it and and do some practices to to work towards a different solution ! The second one is keep it but have some additional controls.

! The third one is we can discontinue the use. ! Obviously we could discontinue the use. ! Obviously we could discontinue the use. ! This was the council's wish. The council's wish.

year, which, as I mentioned, expires in April of 2027. So that money is not recoverable. If we turned it off, we would be acknowledging that that money is just not going to be

used for a product that would help the officers in their investigations.

But we can stop that. And then it just, it creates a little bit of an investigative gap while the city goes through the RFP process and looks for both the new vendor, potential new vendor, and a funding source in the new year. So whatever day that turned off, you can imagine what the gap would be between there and April or May of next year. And then the last one, the chief spoke to this as well. If the council so wished, we could eliminate automatic license plate readers in the city of Fort Collins. That is a broad statement. ALPRs affect our photo radar,

our red light intersection cameras. They affect many things that we do. our chief information officer produced a document for you previously that talked about the many things that are affected by technology changes and while that was not specific to this statement it

did list several of the systems that are used by the city that if we went away from alpr those

would be lost we've given you very very many examples of the successes assistant chief McCambridge mentioned in the very first presentation, we had some of those examples listed out in just short narratives so that you could see everything from maybe a minor traffic violation to the arrest of homicide suspects or the recovery of a lost child. But there was also a table in there that he spoke to that showed more than 30 categories of crime that FLOC has enabled us to investigate. Every flock use is then documented in a police report, so we're able to very easily track, well, here's where flock was used on a theft. Here's where it's used on a missing juvenile. So we do know that it has a broad spectrum of uses in our community. And if we eliminated that, then we go back to what the chief said, that that will affect certainly the speed of case resolution and potentially whether a case is resolved at all.

And so we'll be opening up here for questions. But before we do, so our recommendations for Council Police Service and regional partners agree that retaining the use of ALPR systems is extremely beneficial.

No surprise there that it's not just us, it's our partners.

And we recommend retention of ALPR technology while adding through, I won't read that to you, but we can do any of the four that we talked about.

Mix and match. obviously we're here to answer any questions you have or tell us go forth however you want us to through obviously we can work with the city manager so we'll really just move on to questions I think that's probably where the meat and potatoes of this will come from so any questions yeah great thank you all

right who would like to start us off oh do you need a clarifying yeah just one

I'm clarifying question. So option four, I had not understood that previously to mean that we could not make a distinction between ALPR cameras for speed and red light, other kinds of things like that, and the more like network system like a Flock or an Axon or Motorola. Is that the case?

I guess I don't know if that's for y'all or for the city manager.

I'm sorry, just for clarity, you're asking if we can distinguish?

So when you were outlining question or option four, it sounded like you were saying if we say look no ALPRs we can we can only

We have to say no no to all ALPRs including like red light cameras speed all that kind of stuff But I'm wondering from the city attorney or for you guys if we can set a policy

That would get rid of say like a flock type system, but keep the speed cameras the red light cameras

Yes, Councilmember Conway. I apologize if I misrepresented that or caused a misunderstanding You could certainly say all a LPRs go away, but you could also be selective And so you could say to us we just want flock a LPR this this license plate reading in this case to go away without the others So thank you for the question and hopefully that clarifies and then yeah, okay. Thanks. Yeah, and go ahead

Another clarifying question you mentioned commerce city implementing some additional guardrails in their contract What were those specifically? Do you know?

I don't know exactly what language they utilized. They asked Flock if they could have some of the language that their council thought was more appropriate. I don't have that wording to tell you exactly what those words were. But I believe in this case it was more about the clarity in the wording rather than setting specific guardrails. I know we have talked about guardrails that we could implement here, and I'm not aware that they implemented guardrails more about clarifying language.

So I'll jump in on that also. For additional context on Commerce City, they actually expanded their FLOC program. They went and included both point-to-zoom cameras. The drone program spent about $4.5 million on their FLOC program. So their language includes all of that technology.

Okay. Who'd like to go next? Go ahead, Josh. I guess this isn't so much a question for you, but I think some of my colleagues have

seen a demo of FLOC, and I'm just curious if maybe we could have a discussion where

you kind of relay what you saw and to help drive the discussion and the questions, kind of what are some of the things you notice about how FLOC works that you saw I think would be helpful for me?

I can start or Amy if you want to.

So, and Assistant Chief for Cambridge,

or you can jump in if I get something wrong.

So basically what I saw was, you open up a webpage,

there's two factor verification for each user to get in. And you basically have a page where you can search.

and so then you have to enter a license plate number or you can enter a partial

license plate number there's also options to include like there other kinds

of information about the car like it's black or it has a bike rack on the back or some other kind of series of options like that do you you don't have to have

a case number is that right for us we do okay yes we need a case number or an

incident number or an incident number. Okay, so you need a case

number or an incident number. And then you'll basically you'll

set a certain amount of time you're interested in looking at. So it could be 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours, 30 days, that's

the entire historical search. And then when you enter that

search, it will come up with a list of hits that are basically like boxes that have a picture of a license plate, a car with a

license plate in the back. And then you're kind of like looking through to see if that's the right car. So the example we had was a police car, obviously.

And some of the things that were interesting to me were that

you also need to select a network, like which network you want to search. So Fort Collins is one network. So you could just search Fort Collins. You could search one of the other default options was like Colorado, and another default option was like all networks, right? And so Colorado was about 300 odd networks.

We share with 67 other agencies in the state of Colorado. But there are

some agencies have multiple networks within their

I see within their own. So yeah, there's various numbers of networks, right? And when you

look at the national networks, it's many more than that, thousands of networks, right? And so

one thing that helped clarify, one thing it helped me see is that when you're looking at these default options, it helped explain why there's so many searches of, say, Fort Collins, right? Because oftentimes when officers are searching through them, they're looking at, they're just putting all Colorado networks that are linked together and then searching through. There's not too much incentive to search for a narrower network than a broader network from what I saw. Then the other thing was the audit logs were quite eye-opening as well, where there's an audit log of every search. Oftentimes, there will be a handful of searches together where somebody is looking for a partial license plate. They don't get what they want, so then they are adding another detail or taking away a detail and looking for that, hopefully finding something where they think the car was or something like that. Then the other thing is there's these hot lists that you can use.

So that was helpful.

But the audit was helpful for me because you can see all the information that is recorded in the audit and is reviewed monthly by a supervisor. What was eye-opening for me was that there's about, I believe, 40,000 searches of our system from outside of Fort Collins.

each month. That's a good number. That's pretty close. Yes, sir. So that seemed like shockingly

high to me. But then when I understood that it was a default option to put Colorado as a search for all over the state and there's not much incentive not to, then that made more sense to

me in certain ways. Now, the audit from outside of our network does not put an officer name.

and that's redacted. And then also there's no case number from the other agencies for various

reasons that I think these guys can explain better than me. So anyway, that was interesting

to me to see some of the capabilities. There was no bulk download function, which was

something I was interested in finding out about. Yeah. So that's where I'd start. I'd love to hear

what other people have to say too. Rook, before you go, Melanie, Amy, did you want to give your impression of the, um, the, I was, oh, you were there too. Oh, I was in the same session. Okay.

Sorry. Please continue. Yeah. So something else that was interesting with the, the number of searches, um, was officers had pointed out too, that if you have like a detective who's doing, doing a search and they're adding different criteria, trying different configurations, that those all count as separate counts or separate searches. Um, and if you've got, you know, the refresh, you know, where you're checking to see if something new popped up. So I just thought that was interesting because when you look at the number originally, it's like astounding how many searches there are. So that was helpful. And then the other thing that I was unaware of, I was unaware of many things. So it was so helpful to sit down and look at the technology, but there's no direct link to any sort of person data other than your license plate. So I I was made aware, we were made aware that you can use the license plate data as kind of like a tap on the shoulder, but they have to go into a completely different database to actually get information about who the car is registered to, who might be the license to drive the car. So it's multiple steps. I kind of was under the impression that, you know, it would all be linked and you could dive in in the FLOC platform, but really it was limited to pictures of the backs of cars, license plates, and it was helpful to see, too, that you do have to enter why you're looking. I mean, the one thing that I still just kind of worry, not worry about, the one thing that was unclear to me was there is still a piece where it's a human auditing it, and, you know, there obviously are legal consequences if you were to abuse the system. But it would have to be something that looked weird on the surface for it to get flagged as an atypical search. And so I'd be interested in just learning more about additional, you know, auditing strategies. But it sounds like once a month every single one of those is looked through to see if there's anything that looks unusual. And then they can dive in deeper.

Yeah.

And I think they've described it really well. I think understanding that how Fort Collins Police Services can only use it, it serves as a pointer system that can only be effective with other systems. And understanding the systems that are searched are the federal crimes and the Colorado crimes, which that information is already accessible by officers. I'm not saying that part well, so help me.

Yes, that's correct. So let's take a stolen car, for instance. An agency anywhere in the country, frankly, can enter a stolen vehicle. If an officer goes out and takes a stolen vehicle report, they will then enter that vehicle information into the National Crime Information Center database. In Colorado, it will also go into the Colorado Crime Information Center database. And then that information is fed, or FLOC gets that information multiple times a day. In fact, CCIC, which is the Colorado Crime Information Center, is updated every three hours in the FLOC system, while the NCIC system, the national version, is updated every five to six hours. So it's repeatedly updating all of the information that comes into FLOC. So FLOC literally draws the information out from the separate system that if we don't have FLOC, that is still the same system that we use in terms of if I do a traffic stop on an individual, I enter the license plate into that system, and it will come back and tell me if there's a stolen, if it's stolen, or if there's a wanted person associated, or who the car is registered to. So all the PII data, the personal identifying information data, is held as you... the personal identifying information data is held in as you aptly stated in those separate systems. !

And I would just so go to the next step. ! So as we talked about it the first time. ! So it's in this big database. ! It's in that database. An officer has to say ABC 123. I'm making a traffic stop. What the next layer is what Flock does is you all saw just the picture of the license plate. So it's a ding. As Deputy Chief said, you know, look over there. over there there's a stolen car over there can be parked right next to a stolen car it's in the database but if i have no reason to run that car i won't but the system automatically picks up on it says there's a stolen car right next to you that's all that's doing it's not a separate database it's not you know there's been examples of people with the database and wrong information and being stopped multiple times that's not a flock issue that is an ncic that is wrong in the main system somebody put the wrong information in there that's not flock that is an issue that's been happening in policing when you have 18,000 different police departments, different people entering things. That is just a shared database where sometimes bad information gets put in. And not that that doesn't mean devastating consequences and it's a problem for people, but that's not a FLOC thing. All FLOC is saying is, hey, you guys are looking for this car over here. And so people point to FLOC saying, well, that person got stopped multiple times. Well, that's because the main database has bad information in it. So just to set that clear.

I appreciate that too. And I think what would also be helpful is to reiterate the sharing who we do and don't share with and why. I think that might be important to hear also because it was, and I don't want to misspeak in that regard at all.

Yeah, it would be challenging for me to list all the Colorado agencies, but just for clarity, we only share with Colorado agencies. And you may remember from our first presentation, the reason for that is because we're all subject to the same laws. Literally, over the Wyoming line, different laws, different rules, we cannot guarantee that they would put the same protections in place that we do. And so what happens is we only share with Colorado agencies. they have to request access and we have to manually grant it and so again we have supervisors who manage the system by auditing it they also look at every single one of those requests and if any of those organizations ever betrayed our trust we simply remove them from that i'm saying you know what for whatever reason you didn't uphold the standards that this city deems appropriate so we're not going to allow you access to ours anymore and if i can oh go ahead no please

I was going to say, and I could we could add to that as we talked about the menu of options you all have. We now share with all of Colorado. There may be an appetite to say we don't want all of Colorado. We want northern Colorado. We want Larimer County, that type of stuff.

That are things that we can go into the system and make it. You know, those are things that wasn't an option up there specifically, but that's what we meant. There are just a litany of things you all can say, go do.

And I apologize. But that list, although I can't recount it right here in front of you, is listed on our transparency page that I mentioned earlier. So if anybody was curious, you can go right there and scroll through them and see them. I just didn't want you to think that we don't know who they are. There's a lot of them.

Thank you. And if I may just ask a few more questions, just real quick. What is the penalty if FLOC makes an error or accesses? can they access this information without you knowing, or do we grant them ever access to this information?

So our contract forbids their use of this in any way like you're describing. So they can't do that, and the penalty, part of your question was what's the penalty? Well, the penalty would be severing the contract, or I suppose, depending on how they used it, if they did something that was criminal, then obviously there's criminal sanctions there. But one of the things that's important to note is that FLOC only houses an image of a license plate and a vehicle. There is no connection for an employee. So if you had an employee that was set out to do dastardly deeds, they cannot sit there at their workstation in wherever America and access that license plate, goes to this council member and tie it to them because that's the piece that they don't have

access to. Only law enforcement does. And that was the part that I saw too. I was actively looking for other cars, for other identifying information. And what I saw was the ground, the car, the back of the vehicle with the plate. I could not see in the windows and I could not see oncoming any identifying that was my experience that's all I can speak to but I was I was actively searching for that for whatever that's worth and I think my my last question was also understanding the contract and who writes it how much boilerplate of flock is in our existing or how much and how much can also be negotiated. So it's kind of a vague thing, but understanding how, well, I think hopefully, I'm sorry, I'm not articulating the rest, but I think I made my question.

So we do have representatives from our state attorney's office. If you would like, we could have Dawn Downs come up and she can address some of this, if that's okay.

Good evening. I'm Dawn Downs, Deputy City Attorney with our office. And to address your question, our office, a member of our office, was involved in the contract negotiations, and along with purchasing department. So there are members of the city and our office that negotiate those. There were some terms that were in flocks contract, but we specifically negotiated a number of other terms. So we did have that ability and we did in fact exercise that ability to do that

My last statement is I personally as someone who has served on the citizen review board previously and Understanding how much the community wants to be a part of this conversation and this decision the idea of a task force has been mentioned and I I would be in support of the Citizen Review Board being that type of task force and reviewing the audit logs and being our additional community members that are scrutinizing this service. And I understand how valuable it also is in keeping our community safe, but I want the community to also play a role in this very much. So thank you very much for thanks, council.

Yeah, okay. Anne? Well, I also had the opportunity to go to the police services building and see the plaque demonstration and wanted to circle back to some of the things that I haven't heard the other council members mention yet about that experience. And then I have other thoughts, but we'll start with CAPTCHA doing that. I think it was important to point out that there's sort of one-way access to other networks, right? So we can search within Colorado and we can search outside of state lines because there are certain municipalities that Don't have those guardrails, but they cannot search ours. So I wanted to make that clear and feel free to add in

anything. Thank you council member. I'll just kind of restate what you said which is As the deputy chief mentioned we share with Colorado agency. So Colorado agencies can look at our data Yeah, we can look at Colorado agencies data for the most part There are other places and nowhere else so nowhere else in the country can people look at our data However, there are places in the country that allow us to look at their data So we can do nationwide searches looking at other folks outside the state of Colorado. It's not reciprocal though

So just to yes, thank you for clarifying I think it might also be useful to hear a little bit more about the auditing process. From what I understand, there's a network audit that audits all of the somewhere between 67 and 300 networks that access our cameras. I wrote down 221. one. So any agencies who have searched for a plate within our system, there's all network audit and then also an organization audit. Both of those are looking for unusual searches and out of, well, I wrote down out-of-state searches, but that's not applicable obviously. I think the important thing about anything that would come up in either one of those audits is that that would warrant a phone call and direct,

like someone from your organization would be reaching out to that agency and asking specifically what is happening and why those searches were made, if they were unusual.

Do I have that right? Feel free to, I'll provide the outline and you can color in.

That's correct. And Sergeant Bob Younger is here who does our audits on a monthly basis. I can come up and add some additional information if you'd like.

I think that would be great for those council members who did not have the chance to be there rather than playing a game of telephone with my notes. It would be useful to have the person actually doing it explain what you do. Hi.

Hi. Good to see you. Thank you for having us here. Just a little bit of detail on how we do audits. There's an organization audit and there's a network audit. Organizational audits are specific to our organization. So people that are assigned user logins from our organization through our administrators and Those are less redacted in that they will have license plate numbers The names of the persons who are doing the searches and the reasons for the searches and so forth Those are specifically for us because that way we can monitor our users system use of the system and Make sure it seems reasonable and necessary and within laws and policy etc Then there's the network audit, which is an audit of anybody outside our organization. So the example given is all of Colorado organizations that we share with, they can also search our data. Those audits are a little bit less. They're more redacted, and the redactions occur for numerous reasons, but we redact license plate numbers, the searcher's name, and also the reason for that. So the reason for that is that there might be ongoing investigations in other organizations that we have no knowledge of that we should not be releasing that information if we are requested to do so, if we're released for a Freedom of Information Act, etc. And so we don't want to jeopardize anyone else's investigations. It might be ongoing, providing case numbers, names, investigators. Some of those investigators might be undercover, etc. So that information is when we do have that audit, we don't see that. But what we're looking for across both audits both organizational and network audits is we're looking for unusual or improper use So you might ask well, how does one do that? Well first thing I'm looking at I'm looking at who are the organizations that are doing the searching so easily for ours I can tell I can tell all of our usernames I recognize all the usernames I recognize the user email addresses if We saw something that was completely out of whack in there that wasn't one of our FC gov addresses or as a name like as happens often where's new officers who have much larger badge numbers than me i might not recognize your name so i'll do a quick search over on the email just to make sure they're actually a member of our organization right um but we're verifying that that's much easier when we go to the network uh search what i'm looking for is i'm concentrating on the organizations and making sure there's no organizations that are outside of ones that we recognize and that we've already alLod access through the Colorado State Organizations law enforcement agencies. So as I'm going through that with a fine-tooth comb and you saw how many entries there are, there could be tens of thousands of entries on that. I spent a lot of time going through that making sure that those are all organizations that we recognize and that we partner with and that we're okay sharing data with. On top of that, I'm one of the administrators that then approves organizations to have that search capability. So when those requests come in, I'm vetting those very well, too. I'm making sure they're a recognizable law enforcement agency in the state of Colorado. If it's for some reason something I wouldn't recognize, I would then research that and make sure that they are a viable vetted organization. That process is that that vetted process does occur at the flock level, too, because every organization that has access to that has to have what's called an ORI number or indicator that they are a law enforcement agency. So part of that vetting is done, but then it's also done on my end to to verify who is actually requesting access to that data

Excellent, I would just add one one quick one quick note that I

Recognize there may be a concern somebody may ask well How do you know if they if the from an outside agency on an organization? I'm sorry on a network audit?

How will you know? Who did that like if there's a problem? How would you ever know? there is a unique identifier associated with each with each transaction that is not redacted so so we have the ability to go back and find out through the originating agency who that who

that person is that specific search where that was done how that was done why that was done so

just because the name and the case number redacted from a network odd it doesn't mean it's completely anonymous that we have no ability to go back and find.

Josh has a follow-up. I cleared it with Ann. So in those 40,000 searches in a month, you are able to kind of get an idea of A, if all the organizations doing those 40,000 searches are in Colorado and you've alLod them to have access. And each each case or each line has a unique identifier that is for that agency or for that officer?

It's specifically for that exact transaction. So each transaction is marked. ! So each transaction is marked not just by the user and the organization but date and time down to the second and then other details. ! So, I don't know if this is possible, but if we had to contact Flock and say I need the detailed information, where we had a transaction here. ! Where we would probably start if we had a concern is we would immediately call that agency. ! And I would ask to speak to the administrator there. Hey, on this date and time we had a search done. I have some questions about that. that are you the right person to speak to where would i go for that further information what's a

sorry one more what's a what's a marker or something that would make a search or series of searches interesting or or stand out i mean in 40 000 searches i'm curious how you what what might make those stick out right um that's a that's a harder question so what we're

looking for is potentially a repetitive search by the same date and time over and over again. So we saw, and some of you saw, that one of the things that we've learned through this whole process is that it doesn't take much to modify or recreate a search and have an additional ping. So I'll give you an example. An officer puts a license plate number into FLOC because we just had an aggravated assault occur with a knife. And so we have a good valid license plate number. The officer puts that in there, and it may be entered into NCIC CCIC later on, but as they explain, that can be three to six hours later on before that gets entered. So the officer may be constantly just hitting that return button on that search, potentially trying to find that plate throughout their shift. So if I see the same plate number over and over again, what I might do, and this is an internal organizational audit, I might look to see, hey, what was that officer on at that date and time, and check in our CAD system and see what incident they were on. But, you know, I have not seen anything unusual yet, so I can't say what a distinct marker is. But things I'm looking for would just be things that would stand out that are different than everything else I'm seeing in that audit trail. That's one question.

Why wouldn't an officer in that case create like a hot list, put that on so that he'll get pinged rather than search over and over again?

It's a great question. And my guess to that would be time. And so creating a hot list can take time.

and space and so if they're like I'm on this call and I'm responding to this call I'm looking for the suspect I'm over here I'm looking over there they might have gone to PBH they may just continue

to hit that button as opposed to stopping pulling over opening up the hot list field form and filling

that out now that may be something that they do a little bit later on maybe after the calmness of

the call you know everything's settled down and now they're getting to where they're writing their

report, they might place it in a hot list then. But during the action of actually trying to find that suspect, it's just a lot easier to hit the return button on that search button.

So I would like to continue my summary of the visit, but what you're talking about has sort of prompted me to think that I might as well throw this question out while we have you there. And so during the audit process, and again, understanding that currently I believe under

Colorado state law, this would be illegal, but a side door search by an ICE agent who's using someone else's access, right? Again, understanding that there's so many concerns in this process,

and I will list them all later. But right now, how would you catch that? Can you catch that? So a valid user using it for nefarious reasons that are against the law.

Right now, there's no way to do that. And we've talked about what happens if you have a nefarious act or a person who's a bad actor. That could happen. The outcome from that, though, if it is found to be something nefarious, improper, criminal, is far-reaching for that person and that agency. So I'll give you a couple of examples. First of all, anytime you run a plate or a person in CCIC, NCIC, you have to have a lawful reason to do so. If you don't, it's a violation of state law. So it's a criminal act. Not only that can that person who does that be charged with a crime, but then the organization can be held accountable. They can lose their access completely to NCIC and not have access to be able to run places in people, which should make it very hard to be a law enforcement agency, not being able to determine if somebody had a driver's license or had a warrant, et cetera. So the ramifications of that are pretty great. But you're right. Just looking at that audit trail, there's no way to know if a user is using somebody else's sign-in other than we know we have MFA, two-factor authentication that comes back to our telephones that provides a code. But unless they're working in conjunction with somebody else doing those nefarious dates, there's really no way to know.

Okay. Thank you. All right. Back to the summary. So one of the other things that I noticed that we haven't talked about yet is that the cameras themselves in our discussion are only processing still images, right? And I understand that this piece of it might be in the weeds, but I feel like it's worth bringing up just because there has been a lot of community feedback about what these cameras can be used for, what they can't be used for, and to have an understanding in this conversation

of what that line is might be useful to address some community concerns, I hope.

So it's not a live stream. We had the discussion about a streaming service. If I want to opt out of ads on a streaming service, I don't get a new app. Like I change a setting on my phone and it just automatically makes that happen.

We cannot do that with the flat cameras that we have in the city. We cannot say we want live video, make it happen. We would have to replace all of the cameras with new cameras that have that capability, right? That's a very true statement. The one question that I should have asked and didn't think about it that day is where does that processing happen? Is that on premises? Do the cameras have that ability to like see that's a car? I'm going to take a picture of it and send it to the cloud.

Or is that processing happening in the cloud?

Like, that's the sort of piece of it that I guess it would inform both our relationship with Flock and then also might help inform an RFP process for what we would like.

Right. The hot list check, cross check with the license plate occurs in the cloud. The cameras themselves have technology that allows them to recognize that this is a car and this is a license plate, but that's it. So it recognizes a car, recognizes license plate, snaps the picture. It's immediately sent to the cloud.

It doesn't reside on the device. And then in the cloud, that assessment is occurring in that cross-check with that CCIC hot list, NCIC hot list is occurring in the cloud. Under a secure encrypted Amazon cloud service. Got it.

That is very helpful. So again, to reiterate, the cameras themselves have the software. So they're doing that on the premises. They're not offloading the video stream to make that assessment. It is assessing in real-time and then sending just a photograph. Yes. Okay. Great.

The only other thing I wanted to add to my summary of the visit was like Amy,

I was actively searching for people's faces.

There was at one point where I was like, wait, hold on, zoom in. And we, we couldn't see it. Um, so again, I, I will say from what I observed, there was no data or photographs of people that were, I mean, I, I just, I was really looking, um, and trying to have one of those gotcha moments and it, it didn't happen. Okay. I'll let other people talk and then we can circle. Okay. Um, I just want to ask two questions. You say in one of the options funding would be lost. What are we talking about as far as because was it $50,000 for two years

or per year? It's $48,000 a year. And so the second installment of the $48,000, of course, we're already operating on it here for about a month. So we had about a month's use of that $48,000. So the comment was just meant that on whatever day, if we chose to sever a service, that money's not recoverable.

Okay. Just wanted to put a number to it. And then I do also have a question. I'm not sure which one it was with. But there's something in here referring to a council technology policy. Why wouldn't that be just like a citywide surveillance policy? Like why were those words chosen? And it's that Kevin's purview.

So I'll, you want me to talk? Sure. Okay. So I think at our first session that phrasing came up and we already have a internal police policy that has been sufficient for our uses, but knowing that the council might want to provide some of their guidance. I admit I don't remember exactly who brought that up, but somebody talked about a council policy. and obviously that's within your purview if you all would like to provide that specific direction

and i would just add yet talking with kevin wilkins as well just this isn't going to go away with flock so just where are we there was some you know making the assumption like somebody missed this or the police department slipped this by and it's these are technologies and we're investing in technology all the time so at what level do we does the city manager want to engage the council. I think we talked about at one point, ring doorbell. And what about using the private ones at some of the big box stores? And can we, like, did the council want to be a part of that? But you're right. It could be a city policy on technology going forward or what have you. But I think it probably just came through that conversation.

Okay. And that's why I know we do already have citywide technology as well as data retention policies. But did you want to add something,

Kelly? I was just going to say, I don't think the language was particularly significant other than trying to address some of the requests we've had for more of a council oversight policy.

Okay, great. Just wasn't sure. Thank you very much. I think I saw Melanie first, or did I? And then Amy? It doesn't matter. We'll all have a chance. You may have, but it was about something before. Okay.

Amy? Thank you. And I know the mayor is probably, thanks for being so patient.

I think in that vein of a policy, though, how would we do some type of surveillance policy knowing that there are 50 other cameras from private businesses in the community? I know that Fort Collins Police Services has 15, but there are 50, do I have that number right, of private businesses that we, I don't think we have any control over.

Yeah, you're correct. I think the way I'm, so I'm thinking of this in two pieces. One, how do we want to address flock, which is in here, and a longer term conversation that I think we need to have over, I mean, because technology is moving so fast, we will never have a policy that keeps up with it. So I would love in somehow, somewhere, without having to sacrifice our priorities that we already have on deck, something that we come up with that talks about maybe the values we would bring to a company that we choose to do business with in the technology space. because because technology is moving so fast we don't want to spend every other week adopting new policies to try to like you know play dodgeball so that's just kind of where my question we're leading to I don't know what that looks like and I don't know if we're open to that but that's just something I was

gonna throw out there and I just had one follow-up that I'm curious has Fort Collins Police Services ever received a call from a resident who has had some kind of negative encounter with a business using their flock service?

I don't believe we have. None of us are aware of any such call.

Melanie? Okay. I just continuing on with what you were talking about, Julie, you're right that technology changes quickly. And I think that is my biggest concern because I felt reassured, I think, with seeing how limited the data that can be collected by this, and not limited in that it's a lot of data, but that it is a very narrow scope of the kind of data that they're collecting. But I do worry about the potential for creep or the changes in the kinds of technology. I know that the current cameras we have don't allow things like facial recognition or gait recognition or things like that. But if there are ways that we could write policy or a use charter that talks about, that makes it more clear, I guess, where we don't want to go and do some future proofing, at least to the degree that we feel like we can. I just am concerned with a portion of this being out of our hands a big portion with it being a company that things could be changed in the contract or adjustments could be made that we don't get to vet as thoroughly as we would like so i i think no matter what it would make sense for us to be considering do we need to add to clarify flesh out any technology policies we have and or have something that's specific to surveillance because it is moving so quickly. So, yes.

Yeah, Anne. First of all, I'd like to say that I support that idea, right, that it would be really useful to have this sort of more overarching policy, again, with being as sort of future-looking as we can be. And then also actually circling back to Council Member Hovind's comment

about the citizen review board being part of the oversight body of this i that was something i had also thought about and would like to

I think that's one of the things that folks in the public have asked us for

!

I would have thought about this quite a bit. I would not have guessed going into this partial term that I would spend so much time like going into this partial term that I would spend so much time thinking about flock. So I wrote a little intro to sort of capture all of my thoughts and I'll read that and then kind of move through the community concerns that I've heard. So first of all, no one objects to police using like squad cars instead of horses, right? Or dash cams instead of handwritten notes. as we've been talking about, technology and law enforcement is not new. So the question has never been whether to use it, for the most part, but how and under what rules and with what oversight. So I think that has helped frame my approach to this. And ALPR, so Automated License Plate Readers, sit in that continuum. So the underlying capability, which is just noting what vehicles pass a given point is something that officers have always done. What has changed is the scale, the automation, and the permanence. So a camera logging every plate continuously retained in a searchable database shared with 221 agencies, is not just a faster notepad, right? It has something that's qualitatively different. And I've been thinking about our community and all of the really amazing feedback that we've gotten and also thinking about how we recently had a concrete illustration of why that differentiation matters. Because there was a weapon or a resident in my district, in my neighborhood that was arrested on a weapons charge. And that resident was found just to have been systematically logging vehicles passing his home. So he was recording the make and the model and the color and the timing. And I don't think any of my neighbors needed a privacy lecture to understand why that felt wrong. So the underlying act that a flat camera performs is essentially the same thing the neighbor was doing. So the legal and institutional differences between that neighbor's log and a municipal ALPR system are real and they're very significant. So one operates under a contract with stated public safety purposes and oversight, lots and lots of oversight. The other was an obsessive project of someone who posed a genuine danger. and those differences matter but the underlying act which is a fixed point recording who passes retaining the record is the same so the discomfort that our neighbors felt is not irrational and I think it deserves a serious answer which I will say I think this discussion is providing but and I don't I haven't heard this but I want to make sure that people aren't Hearing from us, ah, don't worry about it Because we really do need a clear account of the governance Constraints and oversight that make this difference in practice and not just in principle so Again the community outreach on this particular topic has been I think very polite persuasive persistent lots of peas and I Appreciate it what I've heard and I categorized it There are those who are concerned with constitutional rights, the Fourth Amendment and the right to move freely. We've heard comments about a chilling effect, weighing safety versus freedom. We've heard concerns about flock as a company, so trust and maturity of a company, and this culture of a company that moves fast and fixes things only after they come to light. We've also heard about technical errors and civil liberties violations.

There has also been constituent feedback about data monetization, and that I'd like to come back to in a second because I feel like we haven't talked about that as much. Federal agency access including ICE, that's a concern that we've heard repeatedly, as well as data security and the risk of security breaches. So I think the one thing that we haven't talked about that I think is worth exploring or at least acknowledging is that at least, and I don't know if this is verified or not, but I would love to hear from you. if flock safety anonymizes capture data and then uses it as a revenue stream right so they they you have access to the the license plate photos but then there's additional data on top of that and I don't know what guardrails we have around that and if our citizens data is being used as I think essentially insurance company training so I think that's something that's sort of outside of what we would like to use this technology for in our community that that would be nice to first of all know if it's happening so it's question one yeah so

the first thing is in our contract it specifically states that the data is ours and that they cannot use it for any other outside purpose the only internal purpose when we hear about the anonymized information is it says that they can utilize it to enhance the system for us and so when they anonymize it for For example, this we've talked about in different meetings and in some of the memos. It is the technology that needs to learn to do a better job, just like anything. And so we heard early on about technology's difficulty in seeing an O versus a zero and categorizing it one way or another. So FLOC does clearly state in the contract that they would use our information anonymized to enhance the use to us. but it prohibits them from using it under circumstances such as you said, where they would sell that to someone else for some other monetary stream. So there would be contractual remedies if for some reason that were happening. Great.

So is that optional? So similarly to like if you install, say, a new operating system or something on your phone, and it says, well, no, can't do it on your phone because that's not optional. But I know I did something recently where it said optionally, would you allow us to enhance your experience or whatever by gathering your data for performance? And I said no. So is that something that's optional in this contract or is it just part of the contract that they can do that?

So I was not sitting at the original contract negotiation. So if anybody near me or behind me wants to chime in, and I would welcome that. But what I would tell you is under our current issuance of the contract, it is not optional. They couldn't just toggle it on or off. We have said no. So it would take a

reopening of the contract, a new contract. If they even allow that in their systems, it would require us to go back to the table with them, so to speak, on the contract. But

they cannot do it today. Sorry, so I got turned around. Did I have that right? So they can or cannot take our data and anonymize it to can can i just clarify i was your question julie

um is it optional for us to let them anonymize it for our purposes for all purposes okay all right so in that case um we have taken that out of the the contract so they are not alLod to just turn it on. It is a contract obligation.

The mayor has her hand raised. Yeah, I know. Are you done? Well, no, but if it was a... Yeah, why don't you go ahead and... Okay.

It's been up for a little bit. Sorry, we'll get to you, Emily.

All right, I'll wrap up. So I think the other question would be, and again, I was thinking about body camera data versus the Flock ALPR, and those are very different, right? But if you start comparing them, the ALPR data can sometimes be more sensitive in ways than the body camera. That's a point in time versus this habit tracking. You can piece together more of a person's life almost, from the ALPR data. So I'm curious if we're applying the same level of policy, rigor, and oversight to the flock data that we apply to body camera data. Can you compare those two? See, it's curveball.

So let me take the first swing at that, and I think others could maybe say something. So our body-worn camera data is governed very differently because the state law mandates their use. I have one on my chest right now, and it's turned on, and technically it's recording. I have to activate it for it to do the 30-second jump back and then actually catalog that. But as a digital device, it is always recording for the protection of our community as well as the officers. So we have state law that requires us to utilize these when we're acting in our law enforcement capacity. And there are several state laws that touch on it. But they also govern how we release it, when we release it, to whom we release it. There are a lot of different guardrails there or permissions, depending on how you want to look at it, that are written into the law. Its physical storage is in a CJIS certified server, very similar to the one that is utilized by Flock. So the same security protocols and things of that nature. I would argue that the body-worn camera is probably more intrusive because right here, I mean, it's not recording. I want to assure you it's technically recording, but it's not something that's going to be produced unless an incident happened. It is cataloging your face. It's clearly seeing the name in front of you. It's hearing our conversation. And in this case, we're in council's room. But what if I was in your door, the threshold to your home? So our body worn cameras are potentially far more intrusive because of the way that they are. We're required to utilize them. They hear interviews with victims and witnesses and they see crime scenes and things like that. And flock is not that. As we mentioned, it really is just the vehicle and the license plate on the public roadway. And these these go into private spaces. so um the the storage is very similar the release and how the data is managed is governed by state law and our policy we do have different policies for body worn camera and alpr data because where they're required to be managed differently yeah and if i could add to that because i think that's that's a super important point um you know we had 33 people come to city council to speak and talk about that they're opposing to it. Like all of you, I talked to many more people than that, still some opposed of it, some understanding it. It's been made very clear to me from some who are opposing it that red light cameras are next, body-worn cameras are next. That flock, as we're speaking about technology right now, is just the first one. But there is an appetite to get rid of any technology that the police department has as far as how we're utilizing the data. And so that has been conversations I've had one-off, And it'd be interesting if others have had that same conversation. But that is something that, as I've been talking with many people around the community, again, 33 people came in and said they don't like it. Many others understand it and want the guidelines and want policy and want to make sure there's oversight. I think that many people understand. But there's a lot more technology that we do have that I think will be very interesting to see what we do with Flock and then red light cameras next.

Well, I think that brings us to a good question to sort of open back up to other people, because I've been talking for a while.

But are we comfortable with the technology itself as a council? That I'm curious about. Because then, if we are, then the concerns become about how that data is handled and how we stop bad actors from breaking the law and catch them, I guess.

But really, it's those sort of oversights and that similarity to the body worn camera footage where we treat that with a lot of sanctity and respect for what it is and the power that it has. So in thinking about it, I think as a principle, I'm comfortable with the technology. and so I would be looking at option two probably with some caveats I think as well

but yeah I guess let's let's go there or I will stop there and all that other people talk you can always come back so thank you and I will all right Emily go ahead yeah thanks everyone um

also just a thank you to council for being so deliberative and thoughtful when thinking about this and to staff for providing information and community members for meeting and talking about it and voicing their concerns. You know, I think that it's fairly easy to be reactive in this space. And so I appreciate thinking through it and asking questions, showing up and looking at how FLOC actually works. And it is a real balance of providing officers with the tools they need to protect our community, especially giving shrinking budgets and other issues. And at the same time, making sure that our residents feel safe in our town under surveillance and different modes of that. So I think overall, if... Council. Ann mentioned if Council wants to continue using ALPR. I would be more in favor of adjusting some of the contract language, particularly short in the retention period. Even I'd be curious down to seven to 14 days unless there's an active investigation, which I think is a smaller window than what was recommended. I like having the independent audit board and I think we have a a board set up that could probably take that on. I do have some concerns with the automatic sharing. I was looking at the list of communities, and I would say that some of the communities we have automatic sharing with do not share the same values around sensitive subjects, particularly around immigration and reproductive access. And so I would be also looking at prohibiting that automatic external sharing. um and then i do like going through and creating some sort of surveillance policy or ordinance that just kind of outlines things like authorized use authorized use prohibitive use how we share when is council action needed um and items like that um and you know ideally we would have that before we go out for another rfp if council wants to keep alpr in our community I just think it makes it even more difficult, as some council members pointed out, that we only control a small portion of that. And to me, it's not about not trusting our four constantly services. From everything I've seen, they have the same values and are aligned with keeping our community safe and protecting data. It is an issue with whether or not the company that we're using has the same values and whether or not we're able to control that. And since majority of the flock cameras in use are not inside the city control, it's really how are we going to manage the system. So I think that's all my comments. Thank you again for the conversation and discussion.

Okay, thanks. Yeah, Melanie.

Thank you, Mayor. And I resonate with a lot of what the mayor said. I, Emily, am I remembering correctly that you did not get to do the site visit yet? Okay. And I also am in support of us not holding onto data for any longer than is absolutely necessary. But it was interesting to hear kind of why they selected the 23 days. So I'm wondering if somebody could speak to that because it sounds like very few cases are tackled within seven days unless it's something that's emergent. And so I think that was eye-opening to me that sometimes the data's trickling in and they may not even look at it within a week typically. And I'm not saying that we need to throw out any time limits, but it was just helpful to hear that.

No, I think that's helpful, Melanie. Looking at other communities, it just looked like some had that active investigation on there that would extend when you're keeping data to that 30 days and some would shorten it unless there is. So I'd be curious if the police presenting have any ideas or response to that.

Yeah, I think that would be helpful.

So I want to be responsive to your question. During the example sessions, we talked about kind of two different types of investigations. We talked about how a patrol officer on the street might utilize the system in a rapidly evolving unfolding situation. and then it's different use by an investigator who has is receiving has received a case and they are working their way through an investigation that oftentimes takes a lot of time so just to ground the conversation those are the two kind of distinct pieces that we talked about during the presentation and from an investigative standpoint I think the I think we use different examples for each group, but let's take a, we used an example of, say, a burglary where a patrol officer, a citizen reports a burglary, a patrol officer will respond, they'll do kind of an initial investigation, they'll collect whatever kind of data they can find. They may or may not find significant evidence at the scene, but they may find a small piece of evidence that is unique, let's say maybe a tool mark on the door or something that's unique to that particular crime that investigation very frequently will get passed to the detective bureau and be assigned to a detective to work because the patrol it's exhausted the patrol's capabilities at in the moment they have other other cases to go respond to and that's the and detectives have time to do that so as as happens especially with burglaries and property crimes they're not one-offs the the burglar may hit another house a short time later let's say another week goes by we have another report of a burglary again it repeats itself patrol goes out does an investigation find similar tool marks we'll send that upstairs maybe maybe at this point in time the the neighbor has a ring doorbell camera and caught some additional information so now you can see how the detective upstairs begins to start piecing together similarities and collects data from each each crime scene to put their case together again as luck would have it our our burglar hits another time several days later or even the next day here we are able to catch a license plate okay so now if you can imagine at this point weeks have probably gone by at least two maybe three weeks have gone by before we get to the point that we actually have enough information in this burglary series that we can utilize this tool um that's um that is why the retention periods are important to us um so that we have the amount of time to let these in to let these investigations mature to the point that we we have the data um to be able to use the system so um uh 30 days um you know seems like a reasonable option in a lot of instances again you know 23 days or or whatever the council may decide um we'll work with but but 30 days is is an option that we've we've uh we've looked at um that seems um that seems most beneficial to allow the investigations to to

continue so does that answer what's your your question i think that was melanie's question

oh go ahead emily sorry it was hard to know who adam was looking at um i guess i guess it does But my curiosity is, I think you could use that same argument to extend out of the 30 days. So what's the difference between 14, 23, and 30?

I think it's just, you're just trying to capture, you know, we can't go past 30. That's not an option. Nor are we asking to go past 30. Well, you technically can go past 30. believe it or not flock will allow communities to request a time past 30 days with council approval or their governing bodies approval so but that's what it takes for us to go to flock to ask for additional 30 days which by the way we're not doing so um so yes i mean you could make the argument that you know 30 is is adequate you could obviously you know from an investigator's perspective, they're going to say longer, longer, longer, because it gives, affords me more

opportunity as the data develops. So. And I would just add, you know, 14 is better than zero, 21 is better than zero. So yes, we'll work with one of the council. We're just giving you the, you know, our professional experience tells us to have the 30 days allows us to let things catch up with one another and then kind of figure things out. But if you said it's 21, you said it's 15,

that's that's what we'll do. Amy? Because I think in that vein I would just want to also be cognizant of victim and witness recall and how long that might take for a victim or a witness to recall the information that they or what they experienced and how long that might also play a role in the

investigation. Yeah, Chris, go ahead. I was just gonna have a follow up question. I'm also thinking, I think I'm also thinking a lot about how long we should hold the data and especially about how long we should hold data that we share with other communities. So one of one of my questions is,

you know, one thing we could do is just shorten the historical data like to seven or 14 days. Another thing I was thinking we could do is something like you keep the data for seven days, but you hold it for 30, and after seven days, you need a warrant to access that data.

Is there something you feel would, is there one of those, is 14 days better than seven days for crime-solving capabilities or whatever?

Or is seven days and then a warrant after that, and then you hold the data for 30 days better?

Or is like 14 days more advantageous for the police?

I think that would just give me a sense of where you guys would, that would give me a sense of some better options, I guess.

So I think it's a good question. One of the things, obviously, that you've just heard from both gentlemen next to me is that, obviously, more time is something that we would seek. because we've given you examples of why that's advantageous to us.

When we talk about things like warrants, this has come up at the state legislature. It's certainly come up now at the U.S. Congress. One of the things that's important to note is that the criteria for us to secure a warrant with a judge's signature, it's a pretty high standard. You have to have probable cause, and you have to have other elements in that that talk about you have a reasonable expectation of finding the information you're looking for in the place that you're seeking, that you're searching, that you're asking for the search warrant. And so with FLOC being an investigative tool, it's actually something that's earlier in the chain. It's a piece that helps an investigator, as the assistant chief was just talking about, it's something that's earlier in the chain of the investigation that helps establish probable cause. A flock notification might be something that goes into a warrant that allows a search warrant at a home. So it would be very difficult to ever get a search warrant for flock data because if you had so much information that would establish probable cause to look at flock, you're probably farther down the chain than where flock was needed. So trying to answer or both pieces of those, the additional days are helpful to us for all the reasons that the assistant chief talked about. Having a switch to a day when we go to a search warrant in regard to this technology is probably not helpful to us on the search warrant because it would be inappropriate for me to say you could never, you would never have enough probable cause, but it would be few and far between for us to have enough probable cause to say we need to look at flock since it's a it's an earlier investigative technique if i could just add

just more with the search warrant just to give a real an example this didn't happen but if it were a cul-de-sac a flock camera on the cul-de-sac you wake up you go outside your your car has been burglarized no idea who did it we would look at that flock camera we couldn't get a search warrant for the flock camera because we'd have no idea who would do it but we would be able to go and say let's see who drove by this place because there's a chance that we would look and no cars drove by and then we know the person's on foot which then changes how we would set a perimeter to figure out where's the thief but that's a perfect example of what we're looking for at times we wouldn't be able to get a search warrant because you have to say as deputy chief said what you're looking for and that you're pretty certain you're going to find it there and what flock allows us to do is to go and look at all the cars that drove by that inters or between that time frame where somebody had their stuff broken into or their car stolen, what time did that happen? We wouldn't be able to get a search warrant for Flock for that. So the search warrant really becomes a, so your first example would be much better if you're looking at kind of between the two. The search warrant would be a high bar that really would deem the tool to be somewhat useless if we had to get a warrant. I know that's not what you're suggesting, but if we had to get a warrant on every one, we would probably recommend just turning it off because it wouldn't be worth the $48,000. But the other one, shortening the time frame, obviously, as we said, that's completely in your purview, as you know.

Well, one of the other questions I had when we were talking in the station was about could we turn off access to other communities? I'm also worried about my main concern is with the ability to audit other community searches of our historical data. I don't think the people of Fort Collins are interested in having all their movements be available to all the police officers around the state who have a contract, who work at an agency that has a contract with Flock. And so I'm thinking about ways we can limit access to that as well as just cutting down the number of searches that we need to audit.

Right. 40,000 is just too many to be able to meaningfully audit, in my opinion, without some serious assistance from computer programs, machine learning, something like that.

But I guess one of my questions too would be, if we were to require, let's say we did something like we require communities officers outside of Fort Collins, they can have access for data that's in the last 48 hours, but they are not alLod access to data earlier than that unless they have a warrant or unless they make a particular request of our agency. Do you expect that other agencies would respond by shutting off access, our access to their data in kind?

Well, I'll go first. Right now, it's not a you have to show us yours in order for us to, you know, it's not reciprocal. And I was surprised to hear that when we're able to search other people's data if we want, but we don't have to share with them. That was an interesting thing. whether or not, and I don't know if we have an answer, that external searches get, you know, seven days and internal searches can go. External searches get seven days and internal searches can go 20 you can't do that getting a getting told no we couldn't do that so if we shortened it for us whether or not other people would then shorten it for us. ! I don't think so I mean the nice thing about policing is people are looking for the greater good with this and so if we got a case we understand you guys can only keep it this long but we're fine. If you need ours I don't see I would hate to think that departments would say well then we're only giving you ours for I don't see, I would hate to think that departments would say, well, then we're only giving you ours for 14 days. That's not how it generally works with policing.

Okay, so you're saying we can't have different rules for us and for other agencies in terms of how much historical data officers have access to when they do a historical search?

I've told, yes, it's the same. We either keep the data this long or we don't. Not different for different people. Bob?

I think we said it once. This is Sergeant Bob Younger. He runs all of our technology inside the police department.

Yeah, clarification point. There's one period of time that you can set for the entire system administratively.

So it's 30 days or less. It doesn't depend on whether it's an ongoing active investigation or a stale investigation outside, inside.

Whatever day that is, that applies to everybody who's using that system and our data.

And then Josh, is that a feature now that you've sat down? Is that a feature just within Flock or is that all, in thinking about all of the options and an RFP process, would that be something that I don't know if that exists, but could we add that to the list of requirements for an RFP?

Potentially. I don't know what the other vendors are able to do in that realm. My understanding is just from the brief look I've had at two other vendors is that it's pretty consistent across the entire industry. There's one retention period set for all of that data set. And mostly because you can imagine the complexity that it would have to be set up on the back end to try to figure out, well, what's your purpose? Who are you with? This agency is this, this agency is that. It would be very, very difficult to manage that and make sure that there wasn't a mistake being made. So it's one retention

period. And I would just add in through the work of Sergeant Younger, that is absolutely something though that we can talk about. A lot of the technology companies are looking for forward thinking departments that will work with them to come up with solutions. And I doubt we'd be the only one in the country that said, you know, we're comfortable with our officers using it for our investigations at a longer period than we are opening it up to just anyone else in the state. And so it is something we could carry back. And it sounds like maybe it's not an option now, but potentially in the future.

Yeah. I wonder how the three of you, four of you feel about weighing, having longer access for only the, what, 15 cameras within our jurisdiction or having a shortened access for further flung, the whole state, right? If you had to choose what's more valuable to you, having more time within a system that we all feel pretty comfortable with, right? You have done so much work on trust in this community, and I think you have the trust of the council with what you do with this data internally. I think the biggest concerns are both the vendor itself and then other agencies.

Yeah, and again, just to make sure everyone just hears us loud and clear, we hear those concerns and we understand them, And we're also just like you trying to balance a tool that's actually helping us solve cases where there are real life victims. And how do we do that and also continue to build trust and maintain legitimacy in a community that we've worked very hard to make sure that that continues. I think every detective would probably have there would have a different answer to that. So I don't think we're going to be able to give you as far as longer or just us. You know, really the system works because, you know, criminals do not just, you know, commit crimes where they, you know, within their block. Many do. You know, many walk around at night and just try door handles. And we know if that's happening, they're generally within a few blocks of where the crimes are occurring. Some of these bigger ones that we're dealing with, loss prevention and theft that people are just driving up and hitting different cities, they don't really have nothing to do with Fort Collins other than there's that store there. So having said all of that, I would think the sharing is the beauty of the system. And if we had less time to do it, we had less time to do it. I mean, I'm sure there are multiple cases where if we had 60 days for it, we probably would have solved more crime. And the fact it's always only been 30. It's not like 30 is the magic number. It's just what the system is set up as. And we went with what it was. But if you all say 21, you say 15, whatever that is, will we lose some information? Absolutely. Did we not have any of this information two years ago? Yes. So we would figure it out.

You want Melanie to go first? All right, Melanie.

I asked for permission because mine's related.

I was just going to ask, you know, I know right now you guys showed us that there's like a little, I don't know,

like a little statement of appropriate use that you're agreeing to when you sign in to flock but

i'm wondering with these other agencies and i i know that there's still always going to be people

who break rules and have nefarious intent but um could we put in place a separate written interagency agreement that's a stipulation that we have if we're going to be sharing our data

Well, I think anything's possible. We could certainly say when they request access, we could say, you know, in our jurisdiction, we have an additional step. You're going to have to sign this. And some of them might say, that's not worth my trouble. And some of them might say, absolutely, because we want to be able to do that. But I don't believe there's anything embedded in the system that does that. So it would just be maybe an outside agreement that we do. I think I used El Paso County as an example last time, so I'll continue. El Paso says absolutely. We value that access and so if you need us to sign something, we'll do that. The sanctions that come out of this really on the criminal side if somebody misused it are the biggest deterrent to another organization because they know what our state law says and that's why we restricted to Colorado, just so we're all playing by the same rules.

Yeah, absolutely. And I know that there is state law. I think it just for me if we are really trying to figure out

How do we do our very best to make sure that our data is only being shared with agencies that share our values? Having that additional layer of like if you want to be collaborating with Fort Collins This is what we're and it may have a lot of the same stipulations that are in that little lock screen And I don't think it it hurts

As we're thinking ahead to just maybe formalize that

We can certainly add that into the mix. Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

So I just wanna ask a couple questions from some of my constituents too that had some concerns about this. And I think, I thought I heard this and then maybe was contradicted, but does FLOC, do you have the ability when you go into FLOC to search for information about the vehicle's make, model, damage on the vehicle, bumper stickers, ski racks, what have you? Yes.

And then can the public access those search logs? I mean, without hacking into the system, there should be no way to view those logs? That's correct. There's no public access.

Okay. And then is there any, I guess, numerical cost-benefit analysis of the time that's saved, you know,

on the cases where you've used Flock, gotten those leads, made those arrests, or found those people?

versus the cost of the contract, the time that is spent auditing. It sounds like maybe that's a full-time job.

Maybe that's hard to quantify, but if you have or if it's obvious, can you just expand on that?

Interestingly, we've talked quite a bit about that exact topic and trying to figure out how do we come up with a number. And part of the problem is it's hard to prove what would have happened had we not had that information. I've used this example last time we were here we used the example of the kidnapping case that happened where the suspect vehicle with the kidnapped victim inside hit off a flock camera in Windsor shortly thereafter the Colorado State Patrol found that vehicle in that area the big question is would they have found that vehicle anyway or not was it the flock that put them there were they in that general area anyway it would have driven by two minutes later. So it's very difficult, and it's not for lack of trying or brainstorming ways to figure out how to actually quantify it. I will say that just this year, we have 76 arrests, citations, that are associated with FLOC. So there are 76 incidents where we have have essentially solved a crime that was committed that warranted the level of what level of an arrest or citation that block was involved in. So that's not an insignificant number of because generally in all those cases, there's victims associated with that as well. So can I put a number on it for you? No. So anecdotally, can I tell you that what the officers say, it's helpful and it helps speed our ability to find criminals after they commit a crime.

Thank you. I appreciate that. And then I think I heard, and I'm just asking specifically, the cloud storage that Flock Data is stored on, I don't think it's probably CJIS certified.

but is there some similar national level of certification that that has to be on or that they are on? No, as a matter of fact, it is CEGIS certified.

That's part of the requirement for this information. So very similar to the other technological solutions that we utilize, body-worn camera and many other things, the digital evidence has to be stored under CEGIS certification.

Thank you. That's helpful. I think this whole discussion has been really helpful, especially my colleagues who visited and saw the FLOC demonstration, and I still want to do that. I wish I could have participated. I agree with the mayor and others that they've said that, you know, our trust and I think our community's trust in the police and how you use this is high.

If this was purely a Fort Collins police issue, I'd say, sure, go on and let's move on to something else. But I think the trust in the company is lacking, is maybe nonexistent, and I think for good reason. I think many in our community kind of fear that this could be a situation like Doge where the data is gone. You know, they took it, they're out the door before we even find out, and now they can use it for whatever they want. And if they can't operate in Colorado anymore, they may not care. I mean, I wish I could say that that concern wasn't warranted, but I think it is in this environment.

So I want to recognize that. And we are. So I went into this kind of supportive of option three, to be honest, and I think I still am.

I think when it comes to the overall technology, we are asking you to do more with less and be more efficient because the city doesn't have the resources that you probably want or need to be your most effective.

But my concerns about the vendor kind of remain.

I think and it was put to me by some of my constituents that

Whatever policies we create whatever legal barriers we create to Flock using the data in a way we don't want to May not be sufficient, you know just at the end of the day for kind of the fear that's out there Um, I know that I just read last month the city of Oshkosh

approved Oshkosh, wisconsin approved a contract with

Flock and then the next day rescinded it because they felt they were lied to about Flock's capabilities so when you see those types of stories I think for me it's it's option three still as well I do you know just when it comes to any policies I absolutely agree I think we should perhaps have one of our advisory groups or citizen review board or some combination thereof create a policy and And I would like to see, or my thoughts on that are basically that says if surveillance data is going to be gathered and used in almost any way, shape, or form that the council should weigh in. And I think at the time that Flock was purchased, I think it just wasn't as big a concern because it hadn't arisen yet.

And in retrospect, that probably is one of those decisions that the elected body should make because it's so sensitive and such a big philosophical issue. And then that any contracts we enter into be very short-term in nature because the technology is changing so fast. I would hope that we would have the ability to constantly adapt and not be caught in a three- or five-year contract with a technology that changes in a way we don't like.

So those are my thoughts and kind of where I'm at. So thank you. I really appreciate it.

All right. Thanks, Josh. Yeah, I'll go ahead and weigh in, too. I, too, am in the camp of option three. I recognize that this is something that we really, you know, as you've said multiple times,

we're weighing the safety versus the surveillance aspect of it. As I've also said a couple times, I mean, with technology moving this quickly, I love Josh's idea of shorter contracts. But I also, and I know I said this at our last work session, I have to feel like we are at least doing business with a company that isn't directly going against our values.

And unfortunately, their CEO made some missteps last fall that really show that the community was not the first thing that came to mind when some things came up about their company.

I prefer option three, but even though I know, let's see, does this talk about, I do agree like some kind of surveillance, keeping it to the surveillance, some kind of policy. I think we have an idea of all that that would cover, which would be a lot. But keeping, it's possible, you know, keeping it in something that comes to council. I'd like more information on that, but that is a longer conversation. and I too was on citizen review board before I was on council and if we do I'm not sure where

this is going to land but if there is an option for the review board to help with the audit logs

I mean that is a community board and we put a lot of trust in them and there is a lot of training

that goes on to be on that board as well so those are just my two cents

I have just a few more questions too.

Last time I was here, I asked about convoy analysis, and I'd just like to ask that question

one more time because I know more information came to light after our conversation.

So could you just talk about convoy analysis, how it's used, how useful it is, et cetera?

Yeah, and again, I'll welcome input from others.

You're correct. When you asked that question in that first session, I responded to that and told you that I was aware of it, but that I didn't believe we were utilizing it. And then in the follow-up memo, I clarified that, in fact, we had used it several times. Several of our officers had utilized it. And this is where I'll ask for correction or guidance from others.

But effectively, you know, let's say we had suspects in drug trafficking.

We know very often that they travel in convoys with spotter vehicles or distraction vehicles that move in and around the transport vehicles. Those vehicles are designed to spot law enforcement and then get them off the highway or distract law enforcement so they don't actually intercept the drug load.

So there is an ability in this to utilize the descriptions or the plates of those vehicles to look for that convoy. So if we received information from a drug intelligence center or another law enforcement agency that said that we were looking for vehicles in a convoy, we can use that, and it has been used a few times. It is not different other than it's looking for two or three vehicles, or however many it may be, rather than just looking for the one license plate. If we said, I'm looking for this one stolen vehicle versus I'm looking for these three vehicles that are traveling in a convoy.

Okay, but are there other tools inside the FLOC system that utilize different kinds of advanced analysis to associate vehicles together or associate vehicles with places?

Again, our technology surgeon is going to come in and help us.

The only other thing that we haven't really talked about, it's not very different from what we were already talking about, is a geographical analysis. So let's say, for instance, you have an ATM that is burglarized or broke into in the middle of the night, and you know it's occurred between 1 and 2 a.m. And then three or four days later, a week later, you have another ATM in a different part of town, 2, 3 a.m., right? And by the third ATM that it gets broken into on the third or fourth week, now we're starting to pick up some geographical information about we have kind of a trend, a crime trend that's occurring. So we can say, hey, of these three locations, can you find plates that are occurring between 1 and 3 a.m. that are the same? So it's a geographical analysis. And again, that's that tap on the shoulder. It's the starting point for an investigation that you wouldn't have any other way unless you had somebody sitting there watching those ATMs and observing those cars going by each one of those and making that connection between them.

if an officer was to do that manually he'd have to search those different times do four different searches and then see if there's like look through the various cars and make that

connection themselves yeah and he'd have to look through a lot of plates to be able to figure that out so there'd have to be some sort of analysis done in the background where he would have to

look at this large list of plates that went by a particular intersection because obviously we're

not having to have a flat a flat camera right on that atm so it's maybe a nearby intersection and they'd have to look at you know thousands or tens of thousands of plates and make the connection between all three of those and those specific plates that may be matched at the same

time or same location okay that's helpful um i have to say i um i am wavering between option two and four. I think this technology, I think any company is going to have,

I think switching companies doesn't solve the problem necessarily. And I prefer developing a kind of thoroughgoing policy for this going forward, especially given that I think

technologies like this are going to continue to come up as tools and that we need to be willing

to make rules that fit all the different types of technologies that'll go forward. I'll say,

I think the audit board is a good idea to use the citizen review board as an audit.

I think shortening the days that we have is very important to me. I think,

you know, I would be okay with having it longer if we could shorten it for other agencies. I think

there's way too much data coming in to be able to meaningfully audit it without additional tools.

I'd also be interested in looking into ways that we could use our technical know-how or software capabilities to think about,

how would you go through a large data set like an audit log and flag which ones deserve merit further attention?

Right. I think I'd like to see more in terms of what consequences, like what would warrant us

eliminating somebody's access to our system, right? So there's been reports that Loveland

Police Department gave their access to, you know, ATF and threw them ice into some investigation.

I asked you guys about that. Maybe you want to speak just to that particular incident because I would assume that Loveland would be one of the police departments that you guys would be most interested in keeping their flock camp, like our relationship with. But at the same time, I understand when people say, when people hear us say like, oh, we'll sever our

relationship with any police department that violates our values. And then they hear about

this Loveland story and they don't see that anything's happening. Maybe you could talk a

little bit about what you have learned from Loveland? I'll just start. I know Assistant Chief McCambers has actually met with Loveland Police, and that's where the idea came up of actually maybe another MOU on top of this to say, how are you going to use it? Not just what FLOC says, but between us, you know, do you have federal agents that are going to be able to use this database? Do you have, like, and that is already a non-starter. So, yeah, you know, I would, It would be difficult with one because many of the people that we're dealing with and vice versa, there's also Loveland and us and the sheriff's office, as everyone knows. Fort Collins could go down the route of not having any, but as soon as you leave Fort Collins, you are going to be hitting on a flock of other agencies. And so, Adam, is there anything learned from what happened in Loveland as far as going forward?

Well, I know that, so you are correct, they did grant access during a specific investigation that they were working in conjunction with federal authorities. It happened to be the Tesla arson investigation, if you remember. That's 18 months or so ago.

And they granted, I was told, they granted specific access so that they could be of assistance on that particular investigation. one of the agents utilized it for a different investigation looking for a violent criminal is what I was told at behest of immigration and custom enforcement.

I don't know whether that was an immigration type investigation or specific to a violent, just looking for a violent criminal that I assume had a warrant. But that's what I was told how that happened.

And I know since then they have significantly locked down their system, and that's not the case that they don't grant that kind of access anymore. A little lesson learned for them at that point in time.

So that's where things stand now with Loveland. I know they are working very hard to maintain a very tight security around their system and have robust policies in place.

Okay. So that's the kind of example where like I have no recourse and the citizens of Fort Collins have no recourse to express their outrage, express their frustration with that kind of behavior from an officer in another department.

And even though I'm hearing you guys that the consequence for misusing these tools is criminal liability and possible policy violations that could lead to termination, it doesn't seem like that's happened in the Loveland case, right?

So I'd like to, if I were to support option two, I'd need to see a really specific policy about what would cause us to shut off access to other communities if they violate that.

um the other thing is i think we haven't one thing we haven't discussed that i'd like to hear from

other council members about maybe is just how comfortable are we with having um with letting

the police department have access to private cameras you you guys do have access to private

cameras is that correct or we have access to private cameras yes we do great so i guess

One of the things that is a step change, in my opinion, is if private cameras proliferated over the next several years,

I think we would need some kind of policy to make sure that it would be really different to say, like, well, Home Depot has one and there's one in another part of town. And so we're going to let the police department have access to those. It would be a really different thing if just in the private market now all of a sudden Flock is being sold inside of ring cameras or other kinds of security devices in people's houses. and now there's 500 around the city, right? That's a different kind of surveillance over time. So I guess I'm interested in hearing from other council members, especially ones who are thinking about option two, like what kind of policies we might have around private cameras and how we would bring those on or not bring them onto our system.

So I'll follow up with that because I believe you already do. People can opt in to sharing their ring camera data.

Isn't that correct?

Yes, that's correct. We can, people can sign up to notify us that they have a ring camera that

they're willing to share with us if we have the need, if there's an investigation that may,

that may fall like in front of their house or something. Okay. So I guess my question back to

you, Chris is, I mean, that's the choice of the private owner. So I'm not sure what you're looking

for here. Well, let me just ask, is that, is that ring camera connected to the flock system?

No, sir. So we don't actually have access to their camera. They have just given us permission in advance to say,

you can come knock on my door and ask me to look at my camera

if you feel the need that it's captured something out in the community.

Yeah, so what would be different to me is if it's part of these, they would be added to the system such that they would be part of searches

and hot list hits over time. So to me, it's different. Of course, if somebody says, like, if you guys go to them and say, can I look at your video recording from last night?

Of course, we would want to ask that kind of question.

Or if somebody's like, can we, if we ever need to ring camera footage from you, can we ask you guys? It's different to me to become part of the system that becomes networked. And then that increases the power of that over time, in my opinion. And part of the justification is that these are license plates on public roads. But once we get into the realm of a number of cameras in private spaces, I think that gets a little bit different. So I'd be interested in hearing counsel think about what would it mean if 50 more businesses got these cameras and they were all like, you should have access to these.

Well, so I do not anyone is free to answer if they want to. I feel like that may distract from what's in front of us right now and that that would be a bigger piece of if we have some kind of policy going forward, that would be something part of that discussion. But I don't want to stop anyone that may have wanted to respond. Yeah, Emily, go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. I had just a similar comment to you, Julie, that, Chris, it's a great question, and I think that that really fits under, you know, if we want to look at adopting a broader surveillance policy, and then we could kind of capture, because I think there are just, I mean, technology is just evolving so quickly between, you know, the access to ring and flock and some of our other cameras, drones.

So I think it would be helpful to have a kind of council adopted policy where we can really set direction and what we want under that. I'm curious because I've heard kind of some council members want option two, some council members want option three. I'm curious if someone can talk about the procurement policy and that process and how cancelling the contract right now and going back out to RFP with something without like a surveillance policy that's updated. how that would result in a different vendor being selected.

So we'll bring Kevin Wilkins, our chief information officer, up to speak to that. And as he gets ready to do that... I think it's part of the reason that we were trying to be really clear that our criteria have to be based on a very objective set of criteria and we are not to be a very clear to be a ! And we are not able to eliminate companies from participating in that process and then selecting them based on the objective criteria. But Kevin I'll let you add anything to that.

Yeah thank you and good evening everybody. First off when we think about the pace of change with technology we also have to take a step back. First off, when we think about the pace of change with technology, we also have to take a step back and look at not the product, but the principles of how we collect, monitor, share, and be transparent about everything we do. Because really, ultimately, this is all around data and the usage of data and the preservation and protection of data. So when it comes to our evaluation criteria, as Bob touched on as well, we will put a request for a proposal out to many vendors. We will cite the specific features that we're expecting, and we'll also put constraints or limitations around what the terms and conditions of those contracts are. One concern that we have in today's time with this pace of technology is what I'll call features creep that occur within those product suites that we have to be able to effectively manage and control, both at the start as well as have the ability to put the brakes on throughout the course of that contract. Oftentimes, a lot of vendors do things without our explicit permission or even our knowledge. So those are areas that both at the acquisition and selection process as well as ongoing monitoring that we need to do.

Thank you, Kevin. I think that's super helpful. That's my concern of just, because I'm hearing from majority of counsel that they're comfortable with keeping some kind of ALPR technology. And if that's true and that's the case, then my preference is to put those restrictions on our usage of the flock right now that we discussed, like the shorter periods, who's accessing our data, some of these other items that councils brought up. And in the meantime, provide more clear direction on what we want to see in a surveillance system and really like hone in on what those specific issues are that we could then inform the RFP. So then we're getting a bid that's more in alignment with what we're wanting. And then we can follow our procurement policy and process without any concerns. I'm just concerned that if we cancel it now and we go back out, we're just going to get the same result. And I'm hearing that council has some concerns about what that result might be. And so my preference would be to kind of shape what we're looking for and put restrictions. So kind of like a blend of two and three. But curious what counsel thinks.

Yeah, I want to see Josh and Melanie arm wrestle for who goes first.

When upper body strength is not my strength.

I'm not sure. Mayor, you made a great point. And I realized after I spoke that I neglected to say that specifically is that I would hope we would create that policy around the use of surveillance. have our review process ready, you know, those,

the specific scope that we're looking for and then issue the RFP so that that those responding companies could could talk about how they could fulfill those specific policies. So thanks for bringing that up. And I agree.

Yeah. And to clarify, I don't mean that we have to see out the end of the contract with FLOC that we would just hopefully create these things. And when we're ready, then we can go out for another RFP. my intention isn't that we just wait until the contract is over and then go back out. So I didn't want to clarify that, but thanks, Josh.

Okay. Melanie? Okay. Yeah, I agree with a lot of this. I've kind of been bouncing back and forth on which option I think makes the most sense. I think I've been pretty clear that regardless of if we keep Flock online for the contract term, if we discontinue now, I think we should start sooner than later laying out what are our values, what kinds of things would need to be in place to both address current privacy concerns, safety concerns, data sharing concerns, working on that interagency agreement, because I think we're going to need those things for an RFP and for any deployment of any future technology.

I think the thing I'm the most stuck on is how comfortable I feel with having a period without this kind of technology available.

And I hear the chief saying they will continue to pursue solving crimes and using all the strategies that they have.

I don't love this technology. Some of the things that Anne mentioned, you know, it makes me uncomfortable as well.

Just to explain the reason that I see some benefit is I work with students with disabilities every single day. Some of them are very, very vulnerable in our community. and when I hear about some of the crimes that this kind of technology has been

most helpful for it is locating people who are at risk in very dangerous

situations and I hear people saying those things don't happen very often and we're gonna have a few times where it doesn't work and I think about if one of

my kids with a cognitive disability were abducted and because we didn't have this kind of technology in place they were killed I would feel ethically negligent

you know we did it's so hard because this technology can be used for really ill intent and we also have some situations where it is the best tool to

keep somebody safe very quickly and so I have a hard time to putting aside the

kids that I work with who I worry about when I'm talking about turning off these cameras and I also know that there are some significant liabilities out there that could could happen so that's where I'm stuck so long story short I respect

this council this is a lot of smart people I respect our police officers you know whatever we decide as a group I can I can go with as long as we are moving forward with with future proofing with really making sure that we have the best policies and procedures and written documents and legal expectations around in writing. That's my hill I will die on.

Okay.

Can I just say one more thing? Yeah, go ahead, Chris.

Yeah, so I think I just want to be clear about what I do and do not support. So I think I support right now, and I could vote on at some future time, a policy that had a seven-day retention period for now, and then that could be extended if we could limit other agencies' access. I'm mostly concerned, yeah, because of the concern about we have recourse to misuse within our agency, but I think it's a lot harder when we don't have case numbers and officer names of folks that you guys have relationships with to audit.

it. And then I just agree with Josh and Emily that we should get these policies in place

as soon as possible, regardless of which vendor we end up going with. So I'll just end it

there. I would also say, to Kevin's point, I think we are going to need to revisit this

at certain times as more advanced analytical tools come online inside of these programs.

And so I think, to be frank, I think it's going to be hard to write a really, a law or an ordinance

or a policy that gets exactly what we're hoping to get at. And so I would just say to the leadership team in general, you're going to need to exercise a lot of judgment about when a technology is a step change such that it requires consultation with the community and counsel in general. And that's just, that's going to be, I just think it's going to be judgment more than it's going to be able to be encapsulated in a policy because of how quickly artificial intelligence is changing our software capabilities over time.

So that's where I'll stop.

Chris yeah and I'll add to what he was saying I think I see it just a little bit differently is that if it's a policy that's based in values and behaviors that it may be easier to get a hold on well it may be easier to encompass technology that we don't know what it looks like in the future but But that is for the experts to talk about out there.

So when I do my tally, I mean, I feel like option two is kind of where things similar to what Emily said. Is that where you guys are ending up?

Yeah, let me try and summarize what I heard. And if others heard differently, please let me know. So I'm hearing really strong support across the board for additional oversight from a citizen review board expansion. So I think without any further direction under other business, I've heard strong support for that. We could go ahead and get that work moving forward. I think the other thing in terms of a desire for an overarching governance policy is something that we have heard as well. And I want to maybe bring back to council a proposal on what that would look like just so we can make sure we're aligned on the scope of that work and the realistic timing of accomplishing that as well as what level of engagement we would have with the community and maybe if there were any external resources that we would want to support that work. So I think that is something that we can commit to bringing back to you. And I want to, you know, maybe a couple weeks to do that work, right? I don't think it's going to be by next Tuesday, but we can do that pretty quickly for the scope of it. If there are specific short-term contract changes that you want in terms of not 30 days, but something like 7 or 14 days, that I would ask that under, I didn't hear sort of a uniform necessarily approach there. I think that would be really helpful for staff that council could bring that up under other business next Tuesday night if there was a short-term change in either the retention schedule or access for other agencies Until we get the full policy developed I would I feel like that would be another business item to help bring clarity to that work so Team does that Seem consistent with what you heard and is there anything I miss same with council? Yeah

Just a clarification question. Is changing how long you hold historical data a contract change, or is it just a systems change?

It is a contract change, I confirmed.

confirmed. The only other thing I had with just for notes with this and where this would land, who we're sharing with and I heard, you know, sharing with those who share our values. And then lastly, the length of the contract, which would come up in the RFP. But I think those five things pretty much sum it up. Yeah. And I think I think I saw people writing down,

I want to make sure it's captured. And Chris's idea of if it's possible to have a longer retention period internally than externally would be a great thing to ask in an RFP just to let the providers know that's something that's of interest. Yeah, Anne, go ahead.

One other thing on the RFP process. And again, I think I can reiterate just my desire to support option two, but not necessarily the full length of the contract. And any of these additional oversights are just best practices that should be implemented, regardless of who we're using. But with the RFP process specifically, I wonder and I would love to hear staff's thoughts, not necessarily now, but in a follow up about how to shape an RFP process robust enough to evaluate vendor trustworthiness in addition to just the product features. right because I think that's that's quite a bit of the community's concern is not the product features themselves but the the actual company itself and what

additional things they could do with that to Josh's point especially so good

luck yeah again I think as we continue to build out this work on that's something certainly our team and our purchasing staff who aren't in the room tonight but we can ask them for some of their thoughts and maybe best practices from other places for that criteria

specifically around trust. Okay is there anything else? All right thank you. Oh sorry Melanie yes.

No I was just going to thank Fort Collins Police Services and staff with the number of hours you all have put into supporting our community and us is pretty outstanding. So I mean, I know how long this has probably taken and how many conversations you've had, and it's so helpful.

So thank you. I'll just say too that I appreciate the community bringing this to everybody's attention because I do think it's really important that this conversation gets had and gets started

in a very public way.

And so I think that's a testament to the work that's been done by the people in this room

who are not around this table because this was a policy that needed to happen.

And so that's a big step in the right direction, I would say.

Okay.

And for those of you playing bingo at home, I echo that statement.

All right. Well, thank you very much. and why don't we take a 10-minute break come back at 825

all right welcome back and the city manager we'll go on to our next item yes We've got a team here to talk about our Vision Zero efforts. And so I am going to turn it right over to Drew Brooks, our Deputy Director for Planning, Development, and Transportation.

Thank you, Kelly. And thank you, Mayor and Council in Fort Collins. We're very grateful to have the opportunity to talk about this topic this evening. From 2021 to 2025, 40... City Families Lost Loved Ones in Traffic Crashes and Fort Collins Streets. In that same time frame, 358 people experienced life-changing injuries and traffic crashes. The City's Vision Zero Plan adopted in 2023 is a road map for how we eliminate death and serious injury on Fort Collins roadways by 2032. While we've made progress in some areas, the overall numbers are still high. We will need to increase our efforts if we are to make significant progress towards our 2032 goal and the Council priority around Vision Zero will help us focus our efforts. It's important to note this effort will require trade-offs and rebalancing of some resources. We will have to make choices that may not be popular with all road users. This will inevitably mean that our community will experience sLor speeds and slightly longer travel times but our desired outcomes will be a safer transportation network for all users. With me tonight tonight are a broad cross-section of city departments that contribute to this unified effort and who can answer your questions. These include Fort Collins Police, City Capital Project Engineers, Transportation Planners, Traffic Engineers and others. We're all eager to hear your feedback on plans to accelerate this important work for our community. So our questions for you tonight or what questions or additional input would Council like to provide on the action plan for 26-27 and then what questions or additional information would Council members like regarding the impacts and trade-offs of Vision Zero.

So we wanted to start with the safe systems principles or the safe systems approach. I won't read all of these to you, but basically these principles acknowledge that humans are vulnerable

and we make mistakes, and there are shared and proactive measures we can take to build redundancy into our systems. So the Vision Zero plan, as I stated earlier, was by 2032, no one dies or has a serious injury while traveling in Fort Collins. We have adopted plan goals, which you see there on the right, with the overarching goal of focusing on vulnerable road users. If you don't know what a vulnerable road user is, that is basically anyone who is on the roadway traveling who is not in the protective shell, if you will, of a car, a truck, or a bus.

And what we acknowledge, too, is that if we do this focus on vulnerable road users, we will inevitably make the road safer for all users.

So again, those adopted plan goals are on the left, and then on the right are what we call our identified transformative actions that we've put in the plan.

I won't go through all of those, but just to give you an example,

for instance, that first one, supporting mode shift to reduce motor vehicle trips,

We have a focus on increasing transit ridership, increasing more folks biking and walking by improving that infrastructure.

And then if you look at, for instance, prioritizing safer speeds in multimodal places, that would look like doing things like road diets, protected intersections, studies to re-envision corridors, updating code standards would fit in that area as well.

And now I'm going to turn it over to Tyler Stamey, who is our traffic engineer.

Good evening, Mayor and Council, Tyler Stamey, City Traffic Engineer.

I'm going to share a little bit of data on this, on why we're focusing on the vulnerable road users in this work.

So the bottom left is a graph that shows general all crashes in Fort Collins trends over 10 years,

and we are seeing some progress over 10 years in reduction in total numbers of crashes.

The graph on the right shows by vulnerable road users, so motorcycles, pedestrians, and bicyclists crashes. These are severe crashes, so injury or fatal crashes in those years.

One point I want to make is that of these vulnerable road users, they're involved in

about 7% of all crashes in Fort Collins, but about 50% of all the injury and fatal crashes

in the city.

And so, some good news, we have seen a couple of years of improvement in the total number of severe crashes.

And so in the last two years, we've seen a reduction in 2025, a 20% reduction in the total number of serious injury and fatal crashes over the prior year.

So certainly hoping to see a positive trend that continues down as we do this work.

Total cost of society, we try to estimate the cost of the crashes that happen within the community. It's estimated around $211 million.

This is based on guidance from FHWA and tries to quantify the cost of any damage that happened within the crash, lost productivity, future insurance costs to the community or to the people involved in the crashes is where that number comes from as an estimate.

And this data that we do, that we put together, we do an annual crash report, collect all the crashes that happened within Fort Collins. we used this work to input into the Vision Zero Action Plan in 23 to help identify what's shown

up here as the high injury network. I think you all have a map to see this easier. The high injury

network makes up about 8% of all of our roadway miles in Fort Collins, but it's about 60% of the

serious injury and fatal crashes in Fort Collins. And so that's why we want to focus our efforts

on that high injury network. And then the map on the right is the speed corridors or the automated

enforcement corridors, which we have adopted through Council the ability to use our automated

enforcement tools on those corridors. And you'll see a strong correlation between the high injury network and the speed corridors. So we are using those on the high injury network.

And then taking this down to the human level, so you see some dot like a big, if you look at the high injury network on the left, Shields Prospect, you'll see kind of a concentration like a heat map of a bigger dot. What does that look like to on the road from the user? And so picture on the left here is a picture from Southwest Corner Shields and Prospect. And just context for where this is, we're probably familiar with this location. It's northeast of this intersection is CSU campus. There's a school nearby. There's a Walgreens right here on the Southwest Corner from kind of where the vantage point of this

picture. A lot of activities happening here. We've got bikes. We've got people. We've got a lot of traffic volume coming through this and it's this mixing zone where we seem to have all these things coming together that contribute to that big dot that you

see on the map there and so what can we do to fix this a couple things one right now we've got a capital project in the works that's intending to redesign the intersection with what's called a protected intersections a different concept design for the intersection we can circle back to that if there's

questions about what that might look like and then the picture on the right

is a picture of collagen swallow so another highway 287 college kind of midtown area and

looking at the picture it just looks like a signal at an intersection what's what's important about

what you're showing me here just wanted to highlight this one as an example of some work that we do

regular on a regular basis with some of our traffic signalization so this is an intersection

we rebuilt the signal we were able to get a left turn signal out over that left turn lane we can change the phasing with how that left turn works, made it a protected only left.

And we can achieve a measurable reduction in injury crashes. So since we did this, before we did this work, we're averaging about four injury crashes per year at this intersection. Since we made this change, we're down to about two per year. And so real measurable impact.

Some of these can be minor changes that we can do with some signal timing efforts. We've done a lot of the low-hanging fruit where it's just change the head, change the timing, and do this kind of the next phase of these or more we need to replace some

masked arms and some other equipment to pull it off so the cost gets a little bit bigger from that perspective but still a very measurable high-impact change that we can do as we do this work

and I'll hand it off to Aaron Iverson

thank you Tyler Aaron Iverson with a manager FC moves tonight I'm going to bring the 2023 plan into the city council priorities so

here you all are at your council retreat talking about your priorities and we really appreciate

that you put vision zero as one of those priorities and made this really strong statement about why it's important and from that council identified sort of four big group areas

that we want to focus on. Safe speeds implementation, resourcing strategies, school safety assessments,

and street design standards. And for the rest of the presentation, we're going to talk about what staff

is suggesting goes in each one of those bigger buckets to accelerate this work.

And I'll hand it back over to Tyler to start with the safe speeds goal area. Yeah, thank you for that. some of the actions identified through this work effort we talked about you'll see them up there targeted enforcement so we'll work closely with our our partners and police who are at the table

here and have some have a slide coming up work with them to help identify any hot spot item location someone calls in i think we had one today about residents saying we've got a project a lot of speeders in my neighborhood so we often on those we're able to work with pd and say can we get some support for this ongoing current issue. We'll work with PD for community engagement. I think PD had some programs that will slow the FOCO down in the last year, so those efforts will continue. I'm not going to go on every one of these, but then talk about automated enforcement. That's a program that we believe has been successful and hope to continue doing. Updating speed limits, we think, could be effective. With a bit of a caveat, we think that just changing speed limit signs alone, if I go out and change all the speed limit signs we might not get the behaviors we're looking for so i just want to do that in context with probably some other changes to to get the behaviors that we're wanting to do so it's speed limit changes and some design changes as we look to do those but but we think we can find some successes in updating speed limits there's been some changes in the last handful of years about how giving some more flexibility and setting speed limits than we've had historically and then obviously continuing to work on infrastructure countermeasures, kind of the higher cost changes that we have with projects. And I'll hand it off to Christy.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor of Pro Tem and Council. I'm Christy Valeski. I'm an Assistant Chief with Fort Collins Police, and my division is the Special Operations Division, which encompasses the traffic unit and actually several more. But specifically, I'll talk about the traffic unit tonight. because in alignment with Vision Zero, the traffic enforcement unit took on a lot of responsibility as far as trying to impact fatalities in Fort Collins. And one of which was an important look at making sure we were fully staffed in the traffic unit, and that became an important goal for us. And we're happy to say that we are fully staffed and have been since 2023 with six officers, a part-time corporal, a sergeant, and then we also have a professional staff manager who manages 12 camera radar operators. And we only had about eight camera radar operators until last year, and then we were able to bump that up to 12. Those are the operators that ride around or drive around in the mobile vans, mobile vehicles, and set up the camera radar in different areas in the speed corridor to capture speeders who are more than 11 miles over the speed limit. So one of the big things that we have done, in addition to the automated enforcement, like the camera radar vans, or vehicles, I guess they are, the red light cameras and the speed cameras, and then just last year we brought on the transportables, which are the kind of like the little R2-D2 trash cans that are able to be moved around the community. They're set up for about 30 days in one location. We started with them. They went live last July when we did warnings for 30 days and then started issuing citations. Those are moved on a monthly basis, like I said, and they're all within the high injury network and near intersections, not in intersections, because we're trying to capture people that are going into the intersections at high speeds to hopefully slow them down. We also manage and work with Vara Mobility with the camera radar, the fixed speed in the lights, and the red light cameras. And we have six intersections now where that technology exists. And so going forward and looking at our camera radar program, we are currently with Vara Mobility as our vendor. And at the end of this year, in December, our contract expires. So we are getting ready to go out for an RFP for a new vendor, and we're looking to make sure we're using the right tools and able to have a little bit more flexibility in our community. And so that is one of the things we're looking for. On the right, it talks about some of the improvements and changes that we're hoping to see, which is a little bit more about flexibility. And so Tyler talked about the email that I think you got today, Council Member Fudge, about the frustration from a resident around the, I'm trying to remember where it was, Southridge. Thank you. Southridge Greens, where the construction is occurring. Right now, we can't move a transportable that fast over there. It takes about the 30-day time period before we can get it moved on. And so we're looking at having the flexibility of deploying them in construction zones, school zones, areas where we're having problems or foresee having problems so that we can avoid that altogether. And so with that concern from the community member, which I will answer tomorrow, the answer won't be to move a permanent kind of fixed enforcement tool, but we will do instead some extra patrol as patrol officers are doing, are available, I mean. and then we will have our traffic unit officers spend some time down there because we know it's a concern but um to be realistic we have probably 30 40 areas every week that people call in and say this is an area of concern so we clearly with people we can't be there all the time so we would love to grow the program we'd like to be able to have some more of the impact from um technology to help us with that now my traffic unit members would kill me for saying this but right now Now, this year in 2026, we have zero traffic fatalities, which is huge. And it's a really, really good thing because we would love to go the rest of the year that way. They will say I jinxed them, and I know I did not. This time last year, we had, I think, Monterey Park. Our next year was about I think was about four or five this time last year and last year and last year. Oh, I'm sorry, not that many that was a year before last year total we had six fatalities and we had a couple by this time and so we usually don't go this many months into the year without a significant crash. We did have a crash today but it was not a fatality or one that that would rise to that level but it was on one of the smaller motorcycles and with a person that was not with did not have a motorcycle endorsement and had hit a pothole or something like that. in the road and crashed after she stole that motorcycle. So there was a lot that went with that. So some of the things we're looking for, like I said, is the ability to be flexible and deploy. There's also different ways of our team's already gone out and talked with several vendors. And so there's different systems that are out there rather than the big trash cans that are able to, that are a little bit maybe not as secure and can be vandalized or might be distracting to drivers, especially drunk drivers, especially with the flash going off. there is the ability from some vendors now to mount them on light poles and to not have the flash there is also so there's some hybrid options that we can use and hopefully make them a little bit more viable so that we can move them about this the city and a little bit more in an easier manner so all of that is with the end goal of meeting the council goals of vision zero we truly believe that slowing people down will help reduce or eliminate fatalities common sense stands for that. And especially when you have the vulnerable people in the roadways or walking or driving or riding their bikes, if we have less speed, then less severe injuries. So that's where we are from the enforcement side as far as technology goes. And like was already alluded to, we did a lot of outreach last year with engagement, community engagement. We were able to work with council and bring forward a couple ordinances to address unreasonable vehicle noise, which a lot of times when people are squealing tires and accelerating fastly that can result in crashes. We did campaigns on safe roads which included the bumper magnets of slow the FOCO down. And we had a lot of engagement activities at Coffee with Cops, Muffins with Motors, Hash Browns and Heroes. I mean there were a ton of different fun ones. We didn't do a donut yet but we should do Donuts for Donuts or something along those lines maybe this year. So we really love engaging with the community. Every opportunity our traffic enforcement unit gets to hand out cards and to talk about being safe, they take advantage of. And so that's kind of our role and where we've been in some of our next steps. So I'll pass it on. Thank you.

So continuing in the safe speeds bucket, which is one of the key aspects of Vision Zero,

So we talked about enforcement and other aspects like that, but changing the infrastructure is also very important.

So infrastructure and countermeasures are a key item that we've identified as the types of projects that we'd want to implement to slow traffic down. So you can see on the left the type of countermeasures we're suggesting, protected intersections. Tyler mentioned one of those.

Quick builds, roundabouts, are all proven countermeasures. The Federal Highway Administration has done studies showing that implementing these things, you get a measurable impact on safety. Quick builds you may not be familiar with, but just imagine, or not just imagine, but if you've been down Center Avenue, that was a quick build.

So the curbs and the mollards, they go in quicker, they're cheaper to build, and we can see how they work. So that's the type of quick build that we're talking about.

Moving into the second big bucket of council goals, resources and strategies.

We've identified several areas where we can provide or seek additional resourcing to move Vision Zero forward. Talked about the speed camera revenue.

We also have been pretty successful on seeking federal and state grants.

We're actually in the process of applying for another big Safe Streets for All grant in a couple weeks.

I'll talk a little bit more about that because there's a school safety assessment aspect of that.

We also internally reorganizing some of our staff to focus on Vision Zero and we're also looking at how can we do programs that we have. Can we shift some of those resources to looking at high injury network? so we're realigning service levels as well so those are that's the research and strategy bucket

school safety assessments was the third goal area identified the action there would be to

accelerate those we've completed 12 to this to date we started in 2022

First started in 2019 with Lopez. 2019.

Then we had COVID and we had a little pause.

And we have a program of which ones we're going to do every year. Right now we can do about four or five a year.

And our intent is to accelerate those. And we can do that a couple different ways.

One, put more people on them. Maybe streamline how we're doing those.

the other one is to to maybe seek just more funding and so we're applying for

safe streets for all grant right now that would allow us to complete the rest of the school safety assessments over the next couple years instead of it might take us up to ten years if we keep doing them internally which is okay it just takes a little bit longer so and then as important as completing the studies is what do we do with the outcomes the implementation plans so but that's sort of the second big action item identified in this bucket.

And the fourth goal area is street design standards. And we see that our street design standards are encompassed within our Larimer County urban area street standards, or we call them Lucas as fondly.

And so we're actually have a project right now

that is going through and reviewing well it's going to get underway in probably about a month or so we have another grant that we received to review all our street standards and other codes and understand how they align or don't align with vision zero or active modes implementation and recommendations and updates and those updates are policy and they would come to council and we're also looking at coordinating with other related code updates like the land use code work that's going on, traffic code, and we're also going to look at the

master street plan as part of this larger effort as well.

And then the last item is, it doesn't necessarily fall neatly within one of those four goal areas, but we saw they were important to include, and they overlap, obviously, but more improvements on the high injury network, similar to

what Tyler was describing as, are there places where we can see if there's fixes

we can do within the system or on the system or are there quick fields we can do on the high injury network. And just as important, I think, is to have additional awareness and

education efforts. It's great that we're doing all this work, but I think it's also good to bring the community along in terms like this is important and why it's important. And we need you to be part of the process as well. So there's the efforts that the police department is doing FC moves we have a number of classes like bicycle friendly

driver that we offer and we want to expand that as well within within that

within our programs and with that I'll turn over to Drew to kind of summarize the action plan and where we go from here so this last slide is really just a

summary of what we what we just talked about those highlighted elements there are the areas where we specifically, due to the council priority, would look for ways to accelerate in each of those spaces. But what I want to point your attention to is this bottom half of the slide where we think there are a lot of city council inputs. There are some very obvious ones, such as the updates that will need to be adopted to the street plans or the street standards. But then there are a lot of places where we know that some of the work that we're going to do is not going to be very popular with every road user. When we do road diets, where we might have to require sLor speeds, where we might have to do parking removal to increase space for active modes, infrastructure, and those things, those are probably places where we're going to need your support because some of our community members will probably give you some feedback on that. And we're hoping that you will be able to, you know, kind of articulate some why we're doing these things. I would also say we intend you to use any of the input you provide us tonight to kind of finalize our work plan, how we do this resourcing and the timelines. So any of the input that you give us tonight, we're going to go back and refine what we've presented to you tonight and get that work moving forward more expeditiously, I should say. so returning then to the questions that we had for you and that's that's the end of our presentation for the evening we welcome your discussion great thank you so much let's start

with Melanie yeah thank you so so much as you said this is something that we've prioritized I think at least the two cycles of priorities I've been here it has been on the docket so thank you and just so you know you certainly have my support for strategies I do know some of the things that we are charging you with are unlikely to be popular around certain road users. And I just don't know that there are more important things than making sure people don't get hurt or killed on our roads. So you'll have my backing. I have several questions that are kind of random. So first, I was just wondering what the best avenue is for residents to report specific smaller scale safety concerns because I know that we've got you know large-scale plans I'm thinking of an example of something that I've observed on Overland Trail where folks who are turning left to go up to the reservoir in lieu of waiting for the person to turn left people are passing on the right in the bike lane which I could see just being incredibly unsafe so I know long term we will have a paved trail along Overland but when people notice things that are not major infrastructure concerns or have ideas what's the best way to communicate that to city staff there's a variety of

ways obviously our traffic department takes a lot of those calls and can kind of be the I guess you would say the kind of the clearinghouse for those kind of they can they can send them over to PDE if it's an enforcement issue if it's an issue where maybe signal timing or striping issues those type of things that are really I guess you would say more traffic oriented they'll handle those type of issues but they'd be kind of the the clearinghouse I guess you would say for that and of course you can use kind of our access Fort Collins type any of those type of venues as well will get to us in the right way okay well this is an

Amy's district but I will send you a concern about overland trail and you

could always just call us or send an email as well also let me see here I have

a couple questions for officer Valesky so first and foremost I know that there are divided opinions on speed cameras. I heard you saying that we think that they're being effective with slowing people down. Can you speak to any of the other reasons that we might choose a speed camera versus more officers out doing traffic stops? Because I've heard the argument of like, I shouldn't get a ticket unless there is a human being pulling me over. But I'm wondering if you

could speak to the benefits of cameras. Absolutely. Fair enough. I think probably, I think there's two really good reasons one is staffing ability we have officers go to calls based on priority if there's a life such a life or death situation we have a safety concern clearly the higher priority calls would take precedence over doing traffic enforcement but I think maybe even more compelling and one of the bigger reasons is cameras are cannot discriminate They don't know if it's a male or a female or a white person or a person of color or a person who is disabled driving that vehicle. They measure behavior. And if people are speeding and there's a pretty large buffer, if they're going more than 11 miles over the speed limit, they are getting cited to hopefully slow down that behavior. We do have officers that, and we do have a specific traffic unit that does go out and do enforcement. But as you all know, it's a large city and there is a lot of there's a lot of road traffic behavior that we would like to, you know, change and address. And we're not able to be everywhere at all times. And so the patrol officers, while they try to do as much enforcement as they can, they're often more proactive or more reactive. Our traffic unit does try to be proactive and we do targeted enforcement. We do events coming in and towards the end of May. We are they the traffic enforcement unit is doing a multi-jurisdictional event where we're targeting cruisers and people that are driving motorcycles and speeding at night To kind of start the season off the cruising season off by showing we have no tolerance for that and targeting the people that are Are taking off and speeding down college exhibiting loud noise? That sort of stuff. So we do do we do do some targeted behavior and targeted enforcement to address behavior but I also think that having the component of the technology there that takes away the bias and some of those issues and is always running as opposed to officers who may not always

be out there is is beneficial awesome thank you so much welcome and then my last question I love that you guys are doing so many educational efforts and I like the alliteration that you're putting in there too like a hash rounds with heroes and whatnot keep doing that keep that up I'm curious what educational efforts have been integrated into the schools. I know Safe Routes works a lot with younger students around bike safety, which is wonderful. But I'm a lot of the issues that have been brought up to me about unsafe behaviors on the roads have been the age group that I work with. So, you know, I work with high schoolers. So they're racing, they're cruising, they're riding those stupid e-moto's. And they're just teenagers. And so they're just learning to drive. Do we have outside of, you know, folks who take driver's ed, do we have some educational efforts integrated into the schools or they're focused on teenage drivers?

Well, from a law enforcement perspective, I can tell you we don't have, like, specific classes, but we do have a lot of outreach. So just this week we completed a flyer that's going home through the school district to all parents of students that are actually speaking to those pesky e-bikes that you talked about. Sorry, I didn't say stupid. Oh, yeah, those e-bikes that you spoke about. And also giving some tips and information on that. I also know FC Moves has a lot of information on the wheels and which ones are alLod where that I'll let you address. But our SROs do a lot of that kind of individual work in schools, especially as we get to warmer weather and the time when we have more pedestrians out, more bikes out. We do a monthly, I talked about the upcoming event with our traffic enforcement unit, but we do monthly operations. operations and so twice last year during the school year we did the pedestrian areas around the schools to target not only the pedestrian not only the drivers who are not obeying the law and speeding and not slowing down for school zones but also pedestrians who are crossing in the middle of the street and not following their rules as well so we really just want to get out and do some of that education while we're doing enforcement when we can but we don't have a specific curriculum that we're teaching in the schools.

And that's okay. I think it's just, you know, I think it's wonderful to teach people to be defensive, but I think sometimes it's tough for adolescents to realize that as you get onto a vehicle, you become a dangerous agent in our community. So I just appreciate any education, whether it's in the moment or during enforcement. I just, you know, I think that extra support is needed. But I think I really support all of the strategies we're moving forward with um you know i know that and i appreciate that it's delicate like for me i would love to just see us move speed limits down like immediately and i do understand too that that ends up with a lot of blowback but i'm just glad that we're looking into these strategies i'm glad that we are kind of shifting our mindset with our infrastructure towards sLor more careful driving and more focus on active modes so just thank you for the holistic approach and for the hard work

I just want to let you know that our traditional air safe rest of school has been elementary and middle school But over the last few years we've started to expand into high schools And so we're slowly adding curriculum there as part of the safe rest of the school program as well

That's wonderful. Thank you. Yep Okay, Josh and then a hand

Thank you. This is great information and I'm supportive of everything that you've talked about the strategies laid out I think they'll be really effective and obviously they have a huge impact economically and morally obviously. Just a couple comments and then some questions. One is when it comes to late night activity, cruising, I don't know that it's drag racing because I'm never up late enough, but Twin Silo Park seems to be a magnet for that I've heard. So I don't know if you do patrol down there, especially on weekends and the evenings, if you're aware of that.

we are that's one of those areas like i said we get we get concerns from community members regularly but that is one of them and that is one of the areas where we will target especially kind of going into the warmer season when we start seeing that both with a patrol from a patrol enforcement look at it as well as from traffic enforcement thank you thank you and thanks for

mentioning Southridge. It's an interestingly long detour. It's a residential street that actually goes some distance, and I've traveled it a couple times, and I'm not surprised at all that it's turning into an issue because it's a residential street, and now it's basically substituting for LeMay. So thank you for dealing with that. And then just a couple of questions. I noticed on the heat map that it appears Harmony and McMurray are an area that has a lot of accidents and it sounds like correct correct if i'm wrong but with the power trail underpass going there and then i think there's going to be some subsequent signal work that will help with that

issue presumably as part of that yeah you're absolutely correct on that i think the the heat map the big dot there was there were some pretty bad crashes there we had a real we had a bike fatality there and some other crashes there so you're absolutely right that hopefully that power trail will provide that alternative for the bike facility and the signal improvements we're making similar to what i described it college swallow will have kind of that compounding effect of

multiple strategies for that location cool thank you and then on the flip side i noticed that harmony and lameh seem to be one of the brightest spots in the map um which is kind of surprising me it doesn't strike me as a bad inner badly designed intersection um but i it i don't think there are any projects envisioned for that area in the capital plan that we looked at is is that maybe envision further out I know there's lots of capital projects that need to be done but is that kind of on your radar we've got a project going out for some

work on harmony yeah so we were another grant that we received we're going to do

a quarter study on harmony road so we're going to look at the entire quarter from from the freeway all the way to right now to JFK. We wanted to send that to Mason to look at all those issues in more detail and every single intersection in more detail than what is shown on that high-end network. So the focus will be out in active modes and vision zero. But that is also going to go out for requests for proposals here in the next few weeks. It'll be underway during the next year or so. Cool.

And then I assume that we'll also look at speed limits on Harmony. Yes. I've heard comments, you know, the speed limit is somewhat high on Harmony relative to other roads. I'm actually one who personally favors higher speed limits, but I'm taking this job now. I understand the need for Lor speed limits, so I'm one of those people you mentioned, Melanie, that probably needs to change my driving habits. So thank you. I appreciate all your hard work.

All right. I have a lot to share and I'll probably just throw it all out and then you guys can respond and we can have a conversation or have a larger conversation. And I will say that I'm professionally adjacent to a lot of this stuff. So if I'm and explaining, get it? I'm sorry. Okay. So I think you mentioned it in your presentation briefly. And I just want to really highlight that the framing that I think that we should inform just everything that we're discussing tonight ties back to our council priority on affordable and sustainable growth. Because that requires a city where more people can live and work and get around without every trip requiring a car. Right. And that's not just a value statement. That's a math problem. You cannot grow Fort Collins cost effectively on a car dependent model, period. The land cost, the infrastructure cost, the congestion don't pencil out. And so I think the only sustainable path forward, and I feel that in your presentation, is mode shift. And that means that everything we're discussing tonight, so vision zero, active modes infrastructure, street design standards is our affordability and growth priority expressed in asphalt and paint and signal timing, right? So I do want to name the design standard that I think that we should be building to. And my partner is so glad that I actually buy these books and fill our house with them. um nacto and he's not watching right now so nacto's urban street design guide is the national standard of practice that's this is where the ansplaining comes in but not everybody knows this um it's the national standard of practice for urban streets so it reframes what streets are for it challenges the car throughput assumptions that are baked into our current standards and it provides the professional legitimacy, I think for every countermeasure on the trade-off slide that you showed earlier. And the urban bikeway design guide, which I also purchased, is the companion implementation document for protected facilities, which goes back to really prioritizing mode shifting. Finally, and I'll talk about this in a second, But designing streets for kids reframes the design question in the most honest way possible, which is if a street is safe and comfortable for a child to use independently, then it is safe and comfortable for everyone. So I would really like the LUCA standards updates, which is in this work plan, to explicitly adopt these as the design standard for Fort Collins streets. and that I think more than anything else tonight would be the ask that I would personally come back to. I think the other thing that I noticed in reviewing all of this data, which again, thank you so much. The 20% reduction, if I didn't say this already, in serious injury and fatal crashes in 2025, that's real progress and the staff and the police deserve credit for that. And we appreciate that as a community and as a council. But the dashboards that we were looking at, those show they track crash trends, the high injury network coverage, project completions, but they don't track active modes participation or progress towards that 50% mode share, which has the same deadline as Vision Zero. By 2032, we want to have, what, 50% mode share. So switching away from a car. And I don't really have a good sense of where we're at with that deadline or that deliverable or that metric in our community. So I'm worried that a goal that isn't measured isn't managed. I'm sure that's not the case. But I would really like to have active modes trip share added as a primary metric alongside the crash reduction with some sort of baseline and annual tracking. Because if we reduce crashes but active modes participation stays flat, then we've just made our car-oriented network slightly less deadly.

And we haven't really built the city that our growth strategy requires. So that's where it all goes back together towards this sort of coordinated priority goal.

So two things I would add. One thing that you'll be happy to know is that there will probably be six more people sitting in these chairs behind us tonight, but they're all at the NACTO conference right now. So we heavily use that conference and those guidelines. And then I'll turn it over to Aaron to talk about kind of how we track active mode share. that may be just maybe an oversight on our part to put those two together because we obviously do track those things and and putting those on the same dashboard makes a lot of sense so go ahead yeah first as a transportation

nerd I just love that you have those and brought those with you that's wonderful but yeah we we conduct a travel survey every couple years we switch between households and employers and we just completed the employer survey last year and then in that we're looking at mode shift and that's so we measure that that's what our measures now we could put that data on the dashboard which I think is really intriguing to kind of show the correlation there so we are measuring that because it's super important to us as well because the mode shift is there's so many things connected to that including vision zero our climate goals, etc.

Great. Yes, I would love to have that data more front and center.

So a couple more things. One, and I'm sorry that I wasn't at the work session a couple of weeks ago, but I think we talked about this a little bit, or the other council members did, but the Vision Zero checklist, list which I looked through and again, some really good stuff there. So again, want to emphasize that we see the work that you're doing and we really appreciate it. It asks whether mode shift alternatives have been considered before adding lane capacity, which I think is a good prompt, but I personally would like it to go a step further and be a policy commitment. So on our growth corridors, mode shift is our congestion management strategy. and every lane we add, as you know, really just generates enough new traffic to return to the same congestion within a few years. So that's, I mean, that's very well established. And I don't think that we're buying relief, but we are suppressing active mode use and justifying the next street widening. So I think again, if especially it sounds like you are on the ball with the NACTO standards, but if we use that as our explicit reference standard, then I feel like it gives staff and then developers to a clear expectation.

Two more things.

I think that there's a cost effectiveness argument that's built in to this conversation as well, and it deserves to be mentioned. Protected bike lanes and quick build improvements just cost a fraction of arterial lane expansion to build and maintain.

So if we're looking at budgets and looking at the best use of our funds and our long-term goals for

the city, then I think we want to go with the things that require less money over time to maintain. So pavement maintenance scale. So pavement maintenance scales, or excuse me, pavement maintenance scales dramatically with vehicle weight. ! Again, I'm so sorry if this is ! I really like the term and explaining so we'll keep using that. ! Active modes just simply don't wear out roads. And every person making a trip by bike or foot is a car trip that didn't happen, and a parking space that didn't need to be built. So in thinking about where we're really putting our money and our time. thinking about where we're really putting our money and our time and our commitment as as a city I mean transportation is the second largest household expense and so a network whose daily trips are generally genuinely feasible by active modes is just a direct affordability benefit for

residents and so I think again that financial piece deserves to be really promoted as a metric to to evaluate our long-term investments from Howard

changing our infrastructure over time and then also to connect it back to the benefit that our own residents would see which you've mentioned equity a little bit this last point which I think designing streets for kids goes beyond safe routes right and you've mentioned that centering equity is a stated goal area of the plan. But again, as I mentioned before, if a street works for a child, it works for everyone. Kids can't just be told to be more careful or to take a different route. It has to be inherent within the design. And that means choosing design strategies that are really equitable and safe for everyone. I mean the data that you put showed that 84% of youth bicycle and pedestrian crashes occur at intersections or driveways, which is exactly where our countermeasures are targeted. So I think the populations who benefit most from streets that meet that standard are also the populations that affordability is supposed to serve, right? People who can't afford cars, people who can't drive, youth, older adults. So I think if we're serious about equity as a goal, designing to something that is akin to standards that are suitable for a child really has to be one of the more direct interventions. So that's some very detailed, specific feedback.

But again, it takes a counsel. And this is something that I feel strongly about. So thank you for listening and welcome your feedback.

I don't know where to start, but you're speaking our language, so I appreciate all that.

I guess a couple places just to maybe build on what you were saying.

The mode shift is important for lots of reasons. We're mostly built out as a, I mean, we're not going to widen our roads anymore

because most of the city, we're not going to make College Avenue

8, 10 lanes. We're not going to make Shields. So how do we keep the city moving? How do we add capacity as we add people? And biking, walking, and transit are way more efficient ways to do that. So that's another aspect. It's a capacity thing. We want our city to be moving and efficient, and even those who aren't interested in biking or walking will see the benefit, like you said.

And then I couldn't agree more about the building for kids. We've long talked about, and you might have heard of this, building for 880, right?

So if you build it for all users and the most vulnerable users, it's going to be good for everyone else. So I couldn't agree more.

Okay. And anyone else? Chris?

I'll just echo everything Anne said.

I think what she said was spot on.

And I'll just add a few other things.

I think we need to take a look at our capital improvement plan.

I think this is an interesting thing to see a couple weeks after seeing some of our capital improvement projects.

I'm thinking specifically of the Taft Hill Road expansion. I think that's the kind of project that we need to seriously reevaluate and think about, like, how did that come up? and then we label it vision zero. Like when I look at the high injury network map,

you can see that on Taft Hill at Horsetooth,

there's a high injury network. You know, that's the end of the high injury network.

And now we're expanding the road south of there, almost like we want to invite more crashes south of there

because it's not fast enough for cars.

So to me, slapping like vision zero on that and then acting like it's going to help us with our climate change goals or our Vision Zero goals is really counterproductive. And we need to really allocate those funds in a much different way.

I think, again, to Anne, like nine and 10 foot lanes, like when I look at that, that Taft Hill Road schematic, right? You got 13 foot lanes on either side, you got 13 foot lanes on one side, bunch of 11 foot lanes, too. And I believe the new NACTO standards are calling for nine and 10 foot lanes. Right. And expanding a two lane Taft Hill into a like, I think it's five, like two lanes going in each direction and one in the middle. Like that is just not going to be more friendly for somebody on a bike. Right. And then in doing multimodal transportation.

And I just think we need to invest in making our neighborhoods, you know, places that are good places to live and be not like places to rush through as fast as we can.

I think about this a lot in my district in particular, because it's like one of the last areas of town that's not fully built out. And I really think we need to rethink the way that we're planning our arterial roads in particular.

So like to me, a really strong example is like Old Town North is a really interesting, vibrant neighborhood with these smaller streets.

And then Suniga, in my opinion, is a really harmful road project that goes through the middle.

It's really hard to cross as a pedestrian or anybody that's not in a car.

It's really meant to bring car traffic as fast as possible east and west.

and the plan to extend that further east as we develop i think really needs to be rethought right

like i think people get around old town like the west part of old town fort collins just fine with

narrower roads that are that are calmer and more friendly to bike traffic and so i would really

like us to see instead of like shrinking shields with a road diet and then expanding um taft hill

and planning these giant arterial roads to like cut through parts of um the northeast part of town

I'd like to see that change. And even if that means like, re-evaluating like legacy capacity projects that have already been in the works.

So, yeah, like, and I think about it the other day, I was just visiting the police services department on my bike to go get the flock demo.

right and i'm on i take the there's the power trail behind epic right and then i'm asked to

get in a bike lane on an eight lane road on on drake to get across the rise and vine and it's just like it is not safe on a bicycle and i refuse to get in that bike lane that is on the eight lane basically a highway that's going through the middle of our city and so that's the kind of stuff that I think needs to change because it's in favor of this Vision Zero goal because reducing overall vehicle miles traveled is going to be the quickest way to get us to fewer deaths on the road,

I think. Yeah, I guess I do have a question in terms of the on page 18, it says balance council

priority with affordable and sustainable growth what is the can i what is the balance aspect of

that is there some trade-off we see here or and seem to be saying they seem to be in line or are

you guys seeing a trade-off of some kind specifically the balance would be as we look at what the code or standards updates are making sure that we're not making things more expensive to

build in terms of the land use side in terms of what we're requiring in terms maybe it's more right-of-way or frontage improvements.

So being very careful about not putting additional things that would be counter to achieving the affordable goal as well.

Because land use and transportation are intrinsically connected, and you can't separate the two. So that's the balance we're talking about. Okay, great. I appreciate that.

But I think they should be able to go together in certain ways, in the ways that Ann was

talking about, I suppose. I guess one of my other questions is, which department or which group of people decide

on speed limits?

Where do we make that decision inside the city?

So per code, that's delegated to the city traffic engineer. So I'm tasked with that responsibility.

And then how do you, like, is there a consistent process by which you make those decisions?

Or sometimes it seems like some of the speeds are different in places that seem very similar, I guess.

I'll say Councilmember Conway. So historically, I alluded to a little bit earlier, but historically traffic engineers have said we've used what's called 85th percentile speed. We throw tubes out, we measure how fast cars are going, and we say, you know, 85% of the cars are going that or faster that's the speed limit. I don't want to say that's the way all of our speed limits here have been set historically but that's been kind of a common rule of thumb. Approach to that is certainly changing and I did a lot of work about two years ago on kind of revising how we're looking at those speed limits incorporating more of the human elements I like to call them like the roadside activity, the pedestrian volume, the number of access points, driveways, crashes within the corridor and incorporating that into that decision so all these factors come in to kind of help guide that decision and it's not based solely on that 85th percentile speed and we have a lot more flexibility and coverage with the manual and uniform traffic control devices which changed 2021 that says gives a lot more engineering judgment and flexibility within those decisions okay i would love to see some of that

sure just so i could look over how you guys make those decisions would be really helpful to me

And I guess one thing real quick before we go there, I would say it's not something that we've done a full citywide evaluation.

Like we've updated our methodology.

It's not something that's been applied citywide. So a lot of the speed limits that are still out there have been there since maybe the roads were built.

All right.

Well, as much information as you can give me would be helpful. I would lastly just say I think some of these micro projects can be really impactful at low dollar. So like, um, there's a bunch of little, I get, when I was on the campaign, I got a lot of comments about my kid can't get across LeMay to get to Tavelli Elementary School or Willicks, or, um, we can't cross Mulberry, um, to get to the Poudre Trail from Mosaic and things like that.

So I would favor trying to figure out ways to get our, um, whatever methodology we have to get our, um, capital improvement plan through figuring out ways to do the small stuff that gets people to the, to the multimodal.

Because a lot of times I feel like the, the, the bike lanes, I bike everywhere.

So a lot of times the, the bike stuff feels like if you can technically get there by some path, then it counts as like being connected to the network. whereas like a car if it's not directly to the spot then everyone's like up in arms and so I'd like to see yeah us figure out ways to get those connections

together so you don't have to go like a mile around somewhere my fit my least favorite example is riding down East you know I'm riding down LeMay from like Stewart Mulberry to get to Walgreens as I often try to do from work and then I'm to be in this little like lane that's in the gutter, you know. So I guess I'll stop there. And I appreciate all your work and I'm excited. I think we can really move in a more productive direction and I'm hopeful to see that. Emily. Yeah, thank you. I'll just add my comments.

It's great to see all the work being outlined. I would just echo that for me, prioritizing the updating the street standards is my priority and I am concerned as some of the other council members said about how many projects we have in the pipeline that won't be then in response to these updated standards so I'm not sure how we are anticipating managing that and so I think it's not only just about reducing reducing the width of the lane, but also the entire right-of-way road section and reducing that. So I really want to make sure that we're accelerating that street standard use and then also the road diet work. I think while there are many people who have to rely on a car to get around and don't have an option for active modes or to use alternative transportation, I think we still can de-center cars in our street planning going forward.

And so I like that. It does seem kind of counterintuitive that we're using the 85%.

And I know that you said we're updating that, but especially on these high injury networks, because that's where people are speeding the most. And so I am curious also how we're going to look at the speed limits and kind of reevaluate

how we're approaching that. And then also, I'm just curious, I know that the neighborhoods aren't really where most of our accidents take place with vulnerable road users, but there are lots of communities that have reduced speed limits in neighborhoods down to 20 without doing studies. And that's kind of now a more common approach. And I'm just curious if we're looking at that. I was in Boulder last month and they have around their 16th Street Mall area. I was in Boulder last month and they have around there 16 street mall area it's 20 and they ! actually have vision zero on their speed limit signs which I thought was interesting so I'm

! just curious if we're I know we're starting with the high injury network but are we also looking at neighborhood reducing the speed limits in neighborhoods

! Not currently in our in our current work program but something we could certainly look at and I think ! certainly have some context for the boulder and how they did their work program I think feedback I've gotten from their city staff was that you know they did the signs they made the changes they didn't I've gotten from their city staff was that you know they did the signs they made the changes they didn't measure an actual benefit But I think the the perception really helped or the people living in the neighborhoods really felt like it did something like it was good Might not have been backed up with data, but I think it was a good Overall well received by the community there

Yeah, I'm wondering if it's a more cost-effective approach than Putting in speed bumps in neighborhoods is to just reduce I know that's a lot of signs to change but I'd just be curious as a follow-up, you know, and if we can put that in the work plan, if it is helpful, and if it costs less than the radar and the speed bumps. So other than that,

thank you for your work on this. Okay. Thank you. I'll just agree with what everyone said so far, And I just want to add, yes, like I think it was mentioned, yes, come to us for support. Absolutely. This is a policy decision. And so what would really help me when it comes to talking about the tradeoffs to the community is like as an example, when we were accelerating our school studies, you know, there was a little boy on his way to kindergarten who loved to wear different colored socks. and that is a big reason why we want to accelerate this or when it comes to the underpass you know there was a gentleman he graduated from the Air Force Academy my dad was

going to go to lunch with him the next day like knowing that there is a person behind every dot and every data point is so important in this work and I know you guys feel and see it every day I don't want to make it morbid, but it is the reason. And it would be helpful to me if when you are coming to us with a project to let us know a story of someone in that area and why we're doing the work there.

So that is my main things. and I think unless anyone else has anything they want to add okay I think

oh yeah I'll just echo Julie's sentiment that I'm happy to be the be the face of this too and help you guys with outreach in any way that I can so appreciate the

work all right so thanks so much do you have everything you need I think so

thank you very much okay do we want to power through you guys want another

break all right let's get move on to our third and final item all right we'll

give just a couple minutes for our staff team to switch out here

Get all of our name tags picked up. Get all of our name tags picked up.

All right, are we ready? All right, are we ready? Okay, wonderful. I am going to turn it over to Amanda King, who is our Chief Communications and Engagement Officer, to get things kicked off. And she and Heather will be here for this presentation.

Thank you, Kelly. Mayor, online, still, hopefully. Members of council, good to see you all. Amanda, our Chief Communications and Engagement Officer. Looking forward to chat with you tonight a little bit about public engagement and aligning on our community engagement strategy, particularly as it pertains to policy development. While this didn't bubble up quite to a formal priority level in your council retreats, it was mentioned multiple times. And so given that and some of our previous feedback that we've gotten from council, we've wanted to have a little bit of a deeper dive into our engagement strategy across the whole organization. And really the goal is to have a more focused strategy that's budget neutral and leveraging existing resources to ensure that we're actually doing things a lot more efficiently and effectively. So with that, I'm happy to introduce Heather. She is leading this more centralized effort, and I'll let her introduce herself as well to kick us off tonight.

Great. Thank you, Amanda. Heather Young, Senior Community Engagement Manager.

Good evening, Mayor, Council members. I'm glad to be here with you this evening.

And yeah, looking forward to continue the conversation that started with your priority conversation.

As Amanda mentioned, really the goal is to share some definitions, let you all know what our process is,

and then hopefully some of this shared language can help us with all of the different topics that are coming to you all as you're making decisions.

So, I'll give a brief overview, also reflect back what we've heard from you all through

your priority setting and some of your sessions that you've had so far this year, and then

how engagement really fits specifically into the policy development process, but also many

of our programmatic processes.

Some discussion questions that we'll come back to in just a little bit.

Does the role that engagement plays as represented here align with the feedback that you've provided and what other feedback do you have about this process?

So first I want to start with the engagement triangle. So when you hear the word engagement, you might have a certain idea in your head. And we all think of different things as council members, as staff, as community members. And so we've been using this engagement triangle to kind of capture what we mean when we say engagement as an organization. And I also want to mention that engagement is contextual. So what we mean by engagement really depends on the project that we're working on. And so first is informing decisions. Engagement can be used to help make decisions, to collect input from the community so they can weigh in and we understand what those perspectives are. Engagement can be used to build capacity. So education, outreach, increasing knowledge or changing behaviors. You just heard about Slow the Folk Go Down. Our City Works 101 program is an example of building capacity.

And then strengthening relationships is something that happens in an ongoing way outside of specific processes, but also helps us with different policies, processes.

And so, CityGive is a great example of this, our philanthropic part of the organization,

as well as our economic health office that maintains ongoing relationships with businesses. And so, understanding that relationships can't just be developed for a specific topic, that they really were part of the community in an ongoing way.

And also wanted to revisit this, the public participation spectrum from the International Association of Public Participation. And so really, these are ways that we decide how community voice is represented in a project. And so the first is informing, so keeping people informed. And so really there might not be a role for community to influence a decision in every project But the work that our communications team does is really important here in communications to campaign So we can communicate what decisions have been made and what the city is doing And then as we move for the right on the spectrum having more Input from community so consulting such as city-led surveys or listening sessions So hearing what people think and then we can understand how that input is used in decisions. Involving is a little bit more, so like a task force or an advisory group. Collaboration, a great example of this is our civic assembly that we had for the Hughes Stadium project last year where you all heard from community members and then they brought a recommendation and then council put that recommendation forward. And then empowering, citizen initiated ballot measures are our kind of most common way we empower

community members in this space and I also want to mention that so the IEP2 spectrum is our city adopted framework so staff are typically trained in this

and the IEP2 has several different versions of this training they actually one specifically for elected officials that's more about what your role would be in this process as well.

And then a brief history. Engagement has evolved over time for us as an organization, and a lot of that has had

to do with the input that council has provided over the years.

So, in 2012, we had our first engagement strategic plan, different guides that help our community

understand and our staff participate and be consistent with how we deliver engagement. There was a specific council priority in 2019 and 2020. We've done some assessments as well. So we just completed a public engagement assessment in 2025, as Amanda mentioned, to better understand how we're conducting engagement as a city and to level set some of our guidelines and frameworks.

And then hopefully to be more effective and efficient because we all serve one community.

And so how can we present ourselves in that way and then listen and build trust to community members as we're having all of these different moving pieces?

Some of the guiding principles that emerged from the assessment that we did that I want to touch on because they really influence how we're approaching things. One is that the city is a part of the community organization. So how can we partner with community members and listen? Starting with what we have in this budget-constrained environment, how can we utilize the staff resources that we have the tools and the technology that we have instead of adding new and additional also focusing on culture so engagement is very much guided by principles and values and so with

all of our different engagement practitioners how can we make sure that we share those values that they're reflected in our community values and the city values that we hold and then that can help us

build capacity in this space as well. A focus on relationships, a focus on simplicity as well. So, not adding a bunch of new layers of complexity,

but really level setting with some of these frameworks. And then also using the data that we collect from community members, the census data that we have available, etc., to make some of those engagement decisions as well.

uh feedback that we've heard from you during your priority setting exercise um as well as as you've been meeting this year are that engagement should be deliberative thoughtful and strategic and so how do we give a place for some of that more robust dialogue and conversation um how do we represent larger community perspectives and so maybe it's not just one neighborhood or one situation that we're hearing about but what is this how is the whole community impacted and how can those perspectives be represented building trust with the community and then making sure engagement is happening at the right time in the process and so sometimes that means moving it upstream and making sure it's right size for the specific effort and so acknowledging we're talking about each specific project is different. And so what I'll show you is kind of a framework on how we approach it in general, just so we can talk about that. And then we could tweak and right size as we address different topics. And so this process you'll see in the blue and the green there. So the blue are the more council touch points, and then the green are where we typically have community touch points. And so the first step in this process is around issue identification. And so what needs to be solved? This sometimes comes from council, it sometimes comes from community, it can come from adopted plans, like we just spoke about the Vision Zero Plan. And then we take that issue and then scope problem statement and how we're going to go about approaching. And so what we're just doing tonight as part of that through work sessions and through different conversation how can we go back and forth to make sure that the issue are identifying in the problem statement there's agreement around what you all feel is the problem what our community feels is the problem and what staff is doing to approach that the next step is policy option formulation so what options do we have to solve this problem and this is typically where we do engagement as a city and so we might present alternatives to folks who can then evaluate help us evaluate those alternatives and weigh in and then also there's some back and forth here with council deliberations through work sessions and regular meetings to refine what those options might be after that we move to a final proposal there can also be some public comment at this point usually this is more at the consult level of the spectrum if we've

gotten to this point we say hey this is what we think the approach is this is what we've heard this is what we're moving forward with council comment and

sort of thing here in these meetings can be part of that community comment. And then we move to council decision. After that, as we move into implementation, that's more in the capacity building space, and so we might move more towards education and outreach and informing folks about decisions. And then as we move towards evaluation, that can be more where we start seeking input again to make sure that the policy is actually meeting the needs that we set out. and then that might start the process all over again. The policy is actually meeting the needs that we set out and then that might start the process all over again. ! A few key pieces of information just to kind of level set that you might be hearing from staff and that are really important in the engagement space. ! The top three are regardless of the project. ! So what project or policy problem are we trying to solve? ! What decision are we making and who is the decision maker in this case? What is our desired outcome for engagement? And so that really goes back to that level of the spectrum and what the community's role is. And so that really goes back to that level of the spectrum and what the community's role is. Being really specific about who our audiences are. And those can be segmented out so we can talk about specific parts of the community or people of specific backgrounds and how they might be impacted differently by decisions. And then our engagement strategy at the high level and some timelines and how that fits into the overall project timeline. And then once engagement has been conducted, we can share what we heard, who did we hear it from and then how that feedback has impacted the decision being made.

Okay, so that was the short and sweet. I know that there is a little more background information that you received as well. But again, just wanted to kind of share some definitions, get on the same page, and then also ensure that our approach is reflected in what you're hoping to see as well.

Okay, thank you very much. questions, comments? Well, I can start. Thank you for laying all this out. And I know slide nine is a generalization. That's the flowchart. I think we're, and you've heard me say this before, like I think where my concern comes in is that we are all on the same page of what kind of engagement should happen. So I'll use like as an example, prior to this council, when they came to us and said, okay, we're going to go to downtown to talk to them about paid parking. And I asked, talk to them, inform them, look for the input, like be very clear about what is happening at that point. So I guess I just have a little bit of concern that step three, that maybe some of that has already happened. And so it may not be necessary. So can you talk a little bit about either how that may shrink or expand or move or not exist in the process?

So how like community input may or may not be sought at step three in the process? Yeah, just kind of depending, like something just may be purely a policy decision. I'll give another example from way back when there was a priority to just start calling it a an environmental climate emergency to move from climate change to climate emergency. And there was a lot of stress and stuff about, oh, no, we have to go, you know, do all this engagement.

And council was like, no, just do it.

And the world didn't end and we didn't solve it either. but I'm just trying to think of the, there's these, like that's one end of the spectrum and then there's this other huge end of the spectrum. So like, let's like the Hughes stadium engagement, you know, that is the extreme almost in community engagement. So I just need reassurance

in how your office like deals with the different projects. So, yeah. So I think actually, again,

and this is a very high level simplified version in the problem statement and scoping. I think that's where we would want to identify and align with you all. What role does the community actually have in decision-making? And if there isn't a role for them, and sometimes there isn't because it is truly just a policy change, then yeah, that, that deliberative process looks different and probably wouldn't involve that same level of engagement because we don't want to create the sense that the community does have a role in the decision when they don't. And it would really go more into that informed level on kind of here's the final proposal. If there is any role for engagement, maybe it is the best way to implement it. Like this is happening. So how can we get your input on how to best implement it? Or going straight to that implementation and like here's what it's going to look like for you. And just making sure people are really well informed of what that new policy looks like. Yeah. So I agree. I think we do need that. That's part of like in that scoping. Like we do need to have that clarity of council's expectation of the community's role in that decision making.

So that's perfect. Thank you, Amanda. And then I guess my follow up question then, let's say you skipped a five, you're going to the community, this is how we're implementing it. How often does that go well?

It depends. I think I feel like trash contracting is another example where there were a couple of attempts earlier in that project endeavor. that we weren't aligned on kind of the community's role. And then this last time around, we had better alignment. And so while there were probably some frustrations, I think largely it was just giving people the information they needed to know. So we had a very robust outreach and education plan rather than soliciting feedback.

Okay, thank you. Yeah. Does anyone else have questions or feedback?

Okay, you guys get off easy tonight. Thank you so much for hanging with us till the end here.

And do you have what you need, I guess, from me?

I think so. And I think we'll just continue to maybe use this framework to vet with you all as we do new work together.

Yeah, go ahead, Chris.

Sorry, I wasn't quick enough there for a second.

I'll just say I appreciated this presentation.

I will say, I think you have this in your presentation and I recognize this, but just remembering that when you hear a certain number of people, 10, 15, 20, 50, that you don't confuse that with the voice of the community writ large and that that is one element of the community is my main concern. My main concern is around equity. And we know that if you know when City Hall meets, how to figure out, like, how to participate, you're already in, you're already likely to be in a relatively privileged position, just statistically speaking. and so that the process of developing a policy that serves everybody in Fort Collins is is involves a little more work than that and finding out what everybody, you know, thinks in Fort Collins, even those people who don't vote at all or do any of that kind of stuff.

And so I think to me, that's a really important value that we carry forward.

And it's really easy to hear 15 people say something and think the community has spoken. And I think it's just a little more complicated than that.

Since we know like probably the folks who come in and speak in front of council are not demographically representative of the city of Fort Collins in terms of like race, single moms, students, young people, et cetera, et cetera. And so just keeping that in mind is of great value to me.

And just remembering that there can be equity concerns with giving too much voice to a certain type of person right at times as well.

So that's more of a general thought. I think it's already in your presentation to be honest, but I just want to say it because it's really important to me.

Yeah, no, I think that's really important, Chris.

And I don't know, it was in your last slide that was the appendices slides.

Can we just pull that up? Because I think that's really an important piece,

the informing decisions and what the different places are,

the building capacity and then there's strengthening relationships. Just these are all,

so keep going to the end more. It's number 14 on my,

so it's after all those. Yeah, yeah, that one. Just for the community that's watching, like this is just an example of the different inputs for policy and I really appreciated seeing this especially because that final bullet under informing decisions like i've used that many times

with people that are like you know you're just not listening or whatever and i'm like look we disagree on this one thing and you too could run for office and then have a little bit more say as well so thanks for providing that all right anything else yeah and go ahead i'll jump in and

Council member Conway, thank you for mentioning that. I think if more than anything else, to give the feedback about the role of engagement in council decisions, it would be representing the voices that are not in the room with us. And that I think is more valuable than anything else is trying to get a sense because we were all talking to constituents and reaching out to so many people and these people are our neighbors, right? But at the same time, each one of us represents a lot of people. And having a sense that we are truly representing a cross-section of our community is more valuable than just about anything else. So however you crack that code, I think that would be the most important thing to me.

Okay, thank you. Thank you all. Thank you.

All right, and so that is our last item. Does anyone have any announcements?

All right. Well, with that, we will see you later for comments.