The Finance Committee met 12/11/2023. It was a long meeting taking nearly an hour and a half, 40 minutes of which was taken up with discussion and a vote on Resolution 13-R-23. The resolution initially called for the reallocation of $25,000 of American Rescue Act Plan dollars to fund the lease of 10 additional Flock license plate reader cameras.
Per the discussion at the 09/27/2023 Safety and Licensing Committee meeting, between 05/01/2022 and 07/25/2023, the Police Department conducted a trial program utilizing 29 Flock license plate reader cameras. During that time, the police experienced 183 “verified successes” because of the cameras. Those included solving 30 hit and runs and 22 retail thefts, making 5 domestic violence arrests, and handling 19 major crimes including burglaries, weapons complaints, and fraud. They also recovered 30 stolen vehicles and 4 stolen license plates. During the September Safety and Licensing Committee meeting, Chief Polly Olson pointed specifically to the incident of shots being fired on Linwood Drive on April 14 and the burglary of Expert Jewelry Repair on July 2 as cases that may not have been solved without the use of Flock Cameras.
When the trial of the cameras ended, the Police Department wanted to continue utilizing the cameras. During the September meeting, Chief Olson said that if they could afford to continue using all 29 cameras, they would, but in order to be fiscally responsible they cut them down to 19.
This resolution would provide the funding to pay for an additional 10, bringing the number back up to 29. It would also allow the city to pay for the lease of the cameras before the price of those 10 additional cameras jumped from $2,500 to $3,000 which would result in some savings for the city.
When the resolution was first introduced, it had been thought that the only cost would be for the lease of the additional cameras and that the overall cost to manage the cameras would not increase. That, however, was not the case, and since the introduction of the resolution, the city had been informed by Flock that the cost of managing the additional 10 cameras would result in an increase of $100,000 for the life of the contract. As a result, the resolution was amended to bring the amount of ARPA funds reallocated for this purpose to $125,000 instead of $25,000. The money would come from ARPA funds currently designated for Community Wellness, Mental Health, and Violence Prevention. Finance Director Jeri Ohman told the committee that Community and Economic Development Director Kara Homan had indicated there was room within that account to cover the cost of this reallocation.
The motion to amend was passed by a vote of 3-1 with Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) voting no. The amended version of the resolution was, again, passed by a vote of 3-1 with Alderperson Fenton casting the dissenting vote and Alderpersons Brad Firkus (District 3), Sheri Hartzheim (District 13), and Chris Croatt (District 14) voting in favor of it.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download.
Although a majority of the Finance Committee voted in favor of amending and then approving the resolution, several alderpersons who do not serve on the Finance Committee were present and expressed some degree of opposition to the resolution.
Alderperson Kristin Alfheim (District 11) pointed out that the Flock cameras were all still operating even though the trial was over and a new contract had not been entered into. She thought that although some savings could be had by leasing the cameras at a reduced rate if the contract was signed prior to the end of the year, that savings wouldn’t actually mean anything if Flock was going to leave the cameras up for an indefinite length of time at no cost to the city. Flock had already left the cameras up for nearly 5 months after the end of the pilot program and had not given the city notice that they were going to take them down any time soon. As a result, if the city entered into this new contract, they ran the risk of paying for something that they were already getting for free.
Chief Olson noted that if the cameras were taken down and then had to be reinstalled, there would be additional costs associated with that. The installation fee would be $150 per camera, the Flock pole installation was $500 per camera, and if the city ended up signing a separate contract for the additional 10 cameras instead of including it in the contract they were signing for the other 19, it would cost $36,500 for the first year rather than $30,000.
Alderperson Firkus mentioned, “I’m not comfortable with kind of gambling and hoping that they don’t, you know, pull the plug, you know, until an extended period of time.”
There seemed to be some opposition to the idea of taking funds away from mental health purposes and directing it toward violence prevention. Alderperson Fenton was “violently opposed” to taking over a tenth “of what we have allocated for community wellness, mental health, and violence prevention, to put up 10 cameras. And I will absolutely grant that those are very useful in catching some people. […] I honestly think that those funds are better spent on things that serve the whole community in terms of domestic violence and just other things, more so than the cameras.”
Alderperson Alfheim felt that the much of the policing that was being done was in response to problems with mental health and that, rather than spending money to increase monitoring of the problem they should focus those dollars on addressing the underlying problem which was leading the city to need more cameras.
Alderperson Nate Wolff (District 12) said, “While, not formally obligated, we did pass a resolution this year, indicating how we would spend that $1 million in ARPA allocations for nonprofit organizations in our community.” He was referring to Resolution 9-R-23 which the Council passed by a narrow 8-7 vote in October of 2023.
Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) wondered if it was necessary for Appleton to have 29 cameras when there were other communities that had cameras which Appleton had access to. Additionally, part of the reason for the resolution was the desire to get a discount of the cameras; however “If I need a roll of duct tape, and there’s a discount, and I can buy six rolls, great, but I probably shouldn’t buy 60 rolls that are going to require me to buy an additional piece of furniture to hold them and compromise my ability to use a room.” Finally, due to budgetary considerations, the city had decided to drop from 29 cameras to 19. Given that there were opportunities to improve the range of cameras through collaboration with other communities, “I don’t think that leasing an additional 10 cameras right now, when we’ve already looked at our budget and said, ‘Okay, here’s where we’ve decided to draw some lines.’ It just doesn’t make sense to me.”
The arguments in favor of the resolution were, broadly speaking, that the Police Department would like to have more cameras in the future so it made sense to pay for them now at a lower price rather than wait and pay a higher price. Additionally, all ARPA funds need to be used up by the end of 2026 or they will be forfeited, and there were currently $1 million of ARPA funds designated for Community Wellness, Mental Health, and Violence Prevention.
Alderperson Firkus asked if staff had any ideas or plans for using those dollars. “Are you aware of any ideas? Is there any chance that if we were to go forward with this, that this would have impact on other potential programs or initiatives that have been currently under discussion?”
Director Ohman responded, “I did speak with Director Homan who’s kind of putting all the different projects together under the different buckets and she did say that there is room for this within that that bucket.”
This increased Alderperson Hartzheim’s interest in approving this resolution. “[I]f there’s not a better place at this point at which we should spend $125,000 of ARPA funds, there’s no reason for us to say ‘Nope, we have to hold it. And we have to keep it there until we figure out what we’re going to do with that.’ And especially because […] Director Homan said, there’s room for this. So, this makes it even more acceptable to me as far as a good way to use these funds.”
The committee voted 3-1 to approve the amendment to the resolution, increasing the amount of ARPA funds allocated and 3-1 again to approve the amended resolution, with Alderperson Fenton voting against it.
[I was a little surprised by how strongly some alderpersons opposed this as compared to how weak their arguments against reallocating these funds were. The money is sitting around not being used, and this would fall squarely within the designated purpose for those funds. In some respects, it seems like a no brainer.
The idea that this money would be better spent focusing on the root causes of crime did not seem persuasive to me. Back in September, Chief Olson laid out the types of crimes these cameras had helped them respond effectively to. They solved 30 hit and runs and 22 retail thefts, made 5 domestic violence arrests, and handled 19 major crimes including burglaries, weapons complaints, and fraud. They also recovered 30 stolen vehicles and 4 stolen license plates. None of those crimes seemed like things that have their root cause in a lack of mental health or community wellness services, and, at any rate, the people who are committing them need to be brought to justice regardless of the reasons why they might have done these things. Counseling services might, possibly, prevent some people from becoming abusive to their partners, but it shouldn’t be the immediate answer for those who have already become abusive. And maybe someone has a drug problem and could use help with their sobriety, but additional services aren’t going to help the person who is the victim of some drugged up or drunk hit and run driver. It’s actually quite hard to see how utilizing this money to catch criminals would not, in the words of Alderperson Fenton, “serve the whole community”.
Additionally, it’s not as though ARPA funds have not already been spent on mental health services and local community organizers. Back in March of 2022, the Common Council received an accounting of $250,000 of phase one ARPA grant distributions that were made to local mental health services providers as well as to Appleton Downtown Inc for its services to the local economy. Some of the organizations used the money to hire additional therapists or pay existing therapists to provide more counseling hours. Some used their funds to enhance their office spaces, improve their websites or apps, and pay for marketing.
It hard to see how using $125,000 (half of the $250,000 already awarded to local mental health and community organizations) to catch bad guys would be a reasonable way to spend some of the $1 million ARPA funds designated for such things that current sits unused. And there would also still remain $875,000 that could be directed to organizations other than the Police Department to be used for other purposes.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1138498&GUID=595541F5-451D-4F5F-A49D-F39674F7C1D5
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