Tuesday, February 3, 2026, 9 a.m. (Austin time), Austin City Hall
0:04 You are watching a meeting of the Austin City Council with Mayor Kirk Watson, Mayor pro timm cheadle,
0:13 Vela. Council members Natasha Harper Madison, Vanessa Fuentes, José velazquez, Ryan Alter, crystal lane, Mike Siegel, Paige Ellis, zoe
0:36 cadre, mark uchin, city attorney deborah thomas, city clerk erica brady, and city manager tc broad.
0:55 Good morning, everybody. Uh, welcome to the, um, City Council work session.
1:00 I will call to order the Austin City Council work session.
1:03 It is nine o'clock in the morning on February 3rd, 2026.
1:06 We're meeting in the City Council chambers, which are located in Austin City Hall at 3 0 1 west second
1:12 street in Austin. We have a quorum of the Austin City Council present, and two members of the
1:17 council, uh, Mayor Pro Tem and Council Member Velásquez are joining us virtually.
1:22 Um, we have speakers that have signed up to speak, and so what I'm going to do is
1:28 I'm gonna go to, um, the city clerk and ask that the city clerk, um, uh, help us
1:36 navigate that and call do, do as we do during our, um, meetings, uh, on thursdays, and just
1:44 go through, uh, and call based upon the order of the, uh, of the agenda.
1:50 Thank you, Mayor. First, uh, we have remote speakers.
1:54 Aaron pierce.
2:02 Aaron, please unmute.
2:10 We will try to get her back.
2:12 Next we have Austin wright.
2:21 Hi there, everybody. Um, my name is Austin wright, and I'm speaking on, uh, I'm with you and speaking
2:26 on behalf of hands off central texas.
2:28 Um, to come to the heart of the issue, uh, the concerns of agenda item three I have
2:33 here, uh, and a lpr is boiled down to two things.
2:37 Um, one is the right for taxing citizens to participate in public life without opting into a tool
2:41 that could very well be used for mass surveillance.
2:44 Um, and what we mean with that is just the fact that, uh, you know, you're, you're gonna
2:48 hear a lot about this today.
2:49 Um, if you go to a public park or a pool or anything like that, uh, to participate
2:53 or not, you will have to, uh, part, you know, opt into this program effectively.
2:58 Uh, the other side of this, uh, and that's what I would like to speak more broadly on,
3:01 uh, is the concern over handing over data to a private company, uh, and, and that being in,
3:08 in, in their, uh, in their hands effectively.
3:11 Um, the concern that we have there is that it allows for the federal government and frankly anybody
3:16 else to, uh, go into this system, uh, and be able to use the data there, uh, with
3:22 the pre-war process to go around a lot of the city, uh, oversight that we have, uh, and
3:28 access data that could lead to, you know, unlawful arrests or, uh, just, uh, overall just broader unlawful
3:36 prosecution of citizens. Um, we've seen concerns with I and how they operate nationally.
3:42 Um, and that's one of the major concerns that we have here too, uh, would be going after
3:46 citizens, uh, whether you are a citizen or not, um, just going after you based on your race
3:52 or your, uh, you know, whatever your activities are, um, and unlawfully, uh, prosecuting you there.
3:59 Um, the, the solution that we'd like to hope to see is that, uh, the data get moved
4:04 to the custody of the city of Austin, uh, in some kind of service that we can maintain,
4:09 at least in that way.
4:11 Uh, we can have oversight as a citizenry.
4:14 Um, we have another broader concern, again, over the right to participate in this program or not as
4:19 the, uh, tax paying citizen.
4:21 Um, but if that is to exist, then the minimum that we would hope to get thank you,
4:26 uh, is at least some bill.
4:27 Thank you very much.
4:30 Also speaking on item a three, haley campbell.
4:36 Hi, y'all. Thank you so much, uh, for taking public comment on this.
4:39 I, I agree with everything.
4:40 The prior speaker said, my name is haley campbell.
4:43 I live in Austin with my family, and I'm the mom of a two year-old little girl.
4:46 And so when I heard that often parks and rec, uh, the city of Austin is potentially going
4:52 to enter into a contract with my taxpayer dollars to surveil wol where I might take my daughter
4:59 in a bathing suit.
5:01 Um, and those images are going to be fed into an ai database from a company that I
5:08 have no power to, um, petition to remove those images from.
5:13 Uh, I was extremely concerned.
5:15 I don't know if you all have been following the news lately about what is going on with
5:18 elon musk grok ai chatbot.
5:21 The people are creating extremely disturbing images of children using that technology, and I have no way of
5:28 knowing or vetting the level of security that's going to be applied to images of my daughter if
5:35 I take her to a public pool or a public park, and this technology is put into place.
5:40 Um, I am extremely concerned about this.
5:42 I am strongly opposed to the city spending money using, uh, ai enabled technologies to do this.
5:48 And I'm opposed, in large part because I work with ai tech as part of my job every
5:52 single day, and I can tell you that the majority of these tools are untested, unreliable, and insecure
5:58 in the ways that they're currently being implemented.
6:01 Maybe in a decade or two, this will be an okay idea to consider, but right now at
6:05 the forefront of this technology, we don't want Austin children being guinea pigs for, um, the, the possible
6:13 security risks of what could happen with sensitive images of little children.
6:17 Um, so I would strongly, strongly oppose the city of Austin implementing this technology anywhere, but especially in
6:23 settings where high numbers of children and minors are gonna be present.
6:27 That's just deeply disturbing to me.
6:28 Thank you so much on item a three, linda bailey.
6:38 Good morning, Mayor, Mayor proam and council members.
6:41 My name is linda bailey and I'm here in support of item a three on mobile security cameras.
6:48 This item is narrowly focused on temporary targeted cameras deployed where crime is occurring.
6:55 It does not involve automated license plate readers or citywide surveillance, and I think that distinction matters.
7:03 We've already seen this work in Austin when mobile cameras were set up in covert park and mount
7:09 banal vehicle break-ins dropped by 60% when the cameras were removed, the crime returned.
7:16 That's a clear local example of prevention working better and costing less than repeated response.
7:23 In areas where I live, the pennyback or bridge overlook, which functions like a park, the increased visitor
7:32 traffic has brought increased theft and vandalism.
7:36 Apds online crime viewer map from past years noted that nearly 40 reported car burglaries in that area
7:44 in one year and other coverage describes at least a dozen vehicles broken into around the overlook in
7:52 a single afternoon. These cameras give parks a flexibility, data-driven tool to respond quickly within limits oversight and
8:01 short data retention. I urge you to support item a three and keep our parks safe and accessible.
8:09 Thank you. We'll now switch to in-person speakers on item a three, chris flores, tom smith, leaf brown,
8:23 hans maverick.
8:29 You'll have two minutes.
8:29 Please state your name and begin speaking.
8:37 Good morning. My name is hans maverick.
8:39 I'm a resident of, uh, council district 10.
8:42 Thank you Mayor Watson.
8:43 Mayor prote Vela, and council members for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you today.
8:49 I'm here to ask y'all not to move forward with item three on this week's council meeting agenda.
8:54 Please don't deploy any rental surveillance cameras in Austin parks.
8:59 Here's why I feel so strongly about this.
9:01 I first moved to Austin in 1989 at the encouragement of friends who lived here.
9:06 They described Austin as a place that was vibrant, hip, and diverse, where people did their own thing
9:11 and minded their own business.
9:13 And that was my experience of Austin back then.
9:16 Over time, however, what used to be a city of free thinkers and independent entrepreneurs has increasingly become
9:22 the playground of corporate tech bros.
9:26 I want us to restore that old freedom in Austin.
9:29 I want people to feel free to come and go as they please associate with whom they wish
9:33 and express their opinions, even controversial ones.
9:38 I want my friends and neighbors to feel free to participate in the life of our city, including
9:44 our neighbors who are unhoused or undocumented.
9:48 Item three is yet another example of corporate managed for-profit profit surveillance of ordinary people's lives.
9:55 Why you can make reasonable arguments about people's rights to privacy in public settings like parks gathering all
10:01 this data makes me worry about our rights under the first amendment.
10:03 If a person decides to attend a political rally at a public park or go to a family
10:09 reunion or just hang out with friends, the government does not need to keep a record of that.
10:14 The fourth amendment also comes to mind.
10:16 If a person has not been credibly accused of a crime, then the authorities have no right to
10:21 keep a record of their comings and goings.
10:23 We have already seen how ai cameras are racially biased and their data can be hacked and misused.
10:30 Why should we expect this time to be any different?
10:33 Surely there are other ways to reduce crime in parks that don't put our data in the hands
10:37 of unaccountable tech companies.
10:39 Thank you. Thank you.
10:42 Please. Uh, good morning council members.
10:45 My name is chris flores.
10:47 I'm a resident of district 10 commenting neutrally on agenda item a three.
10:52 I'm hoping to persuade you today to delay mobile security cameras in our parks by redoing the bidding
10:58 and the contract review process.
11:01 There's no doubt Austin has a crime problem in our parks.
11:05 There is no doubt the dismantling of the park police unit over 10 years ago correlates to our
11:11 crime statistics today. Um, there is no doubt that cameras do not replace police.
11:18 They do, however, offer a deterrent to about half of the wouldbe perpetrators, and most importantly offer evidence
11:24 to help police prosecute park crimes.
11:28 The problem with this contract in the current state of affairs in our country in 2026 is of
11:34 no fault of the parks department staff that put it together.
11:37 They could not have foreseen that the federal government would be on a shopping spree of technology that
11:43 surveils cities for target rich areas.
11:46 Today, the targets are one group of people tomorrow who knows who will be targeted.
11:52 We cannot, as a city pay tax dollars into the technology cloud surveillance machine.
11:58 That's a moral issue.
12:00 We can, however, solicit bids from a close circuit camera technology that saves the video on a self-hosted
12:07 local storage system that only our trusted Austin police can access.
12:13 That brings me to my closing point.
12:15 The Austin police department should bid this park camera contract and manage its key performance assessments.
12:22 Parks department staff have no expertise in this matter of public safety.
12:26 As a daily swimmer with a pool assault police case, myself, I can attest that parks department executives
12:34 had told me personally and other park crime survivors that the parks department has no legal authority to
12:42 ban people from parks and pools.
12:44 Only the police can do this.
12:46 Thank you. Thank you.
12:48 Next on item a three, lillian ortiz, marissa liper, eric greenfield, please state your name and begin speaking.
13:07 Hi, my name is lily.
13:08 Hello, members. Thank you so much for your attention and your time.
13:12 I would like to please, please ask the council to not enter into a contract with liveview.
13:17 At this time, it is a dangerous time for us to add more surveillance to ourselves and to
13:23 others. I understand that people deserve safe places to take their families to, to walk, to enjoy nature,
13:30 the sun and a place to rest.
13:33 What those same people also need is the right to not be watched and monitored and surveilled at
13:39 the park. Does the data really stand up to this immense need for cameras in our parks?
13:45 We have many questions.
13:47 Many of the places with high crime in the city are historically underfunded and are still being kept.
13:53 So, and adding surveillance cameras to an already underfunded overpoliced, which does not equate to a safer community
14:01 over policing, perpetuate cyclical poverty and mental illness is not going to make us safer in the long
14:08 run, mass surveillance does not equate friends to safety.
14:13 What we can do is find a way to work within the constructs of what we have already
14:17 built. We can encourage more community events, so the parks are being used by city and uh, city