The Common Council met 12/20/2023. The agenda item that took up the most amount of discussion was Resolution 13-R-23 which would have reallocated $125,000 in ARPA funds to pay for the 5-year lease and maintenance of 10 additional Flock license plate reader cameras. [The initial resolution called for $25,000 to be allocated, but that was increased to $125,000 after Flock got back to the city and informed them that there would be additional maintenance costs.]
The Flock license plate reader camera program was first reviewed and discussed by Council members at the 09/27/2023 Safety and Licensing Committee meeting. The Appleton Police Department had completed a pilot program testing the use of 29 Flock license plate reader cameras throughout the city. Per Police Chief Polly Olson, through 05/01/2022 – 07/25/2023 the Police Department had 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. The most common traffic enforcement issue they used them for was for hit and run investigations and identifying vehicles that flee from officers.
The focus of the discussion at the Safety and Licensing Committee meeting in September was a request from the Police Department to continue the program past the pilot phase for 5 additional years. At the time, Chief Olson told the committee, “we feel like this is just a critical safety item that we need for
our police department.” If the Police Department could afford to continue the program with 29 cameras, she said they would have requested to continue it with 29; however, due to budget considerations, they cut the number of cameras down to 19, but she told the committee, “We’ll continue to look for ways to add cameras as we move down, you know, the road.”
This resolution would have provided the funds to pay the 5-year lease and maintenance of those additional 10 Flock license plate reader cameras that Chief Olson had indicated the Police Department would be seeking to add in the future. Had it been approved prior to the end of the year, it would also have allowed those 10 cameras to be leased at the initial contract price negotiated with Flock of $2,500 per cameras as opposed to $3,000 per camera and it would have helped the city avoid installation costs that would come with having to reinstall the 10 cameras should they be taken down, then leased again and put back up.
The resolution was recommended for approval by the Finance Committee by a vote of 3-1, but it was clear at the time that multiple alderpersons opposed the idea of reallocating these funds for law enforcement purposes, and the resolution went on to be voted down by the full Common Council by a vote of 8-4 with Alderpersons Brad Firkus (District 3), Sheri Hartzheim (District 13), Chris Croatt (District 14), and Chad Doran (District 15) casting the 4 votes in favor of the resolution.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download.
Two members of the public spoke on the item. Patti Heffernan, the co-owner of Helios Recovery Services, opposed allocating funds for the lease of the cameras. She believed that Appleton was one of the safest cities in the country, having experienced no murders in the last year, and that the ARPA funds would be better directed toward Community Violence Intervention programs of the type that had brought homicides and non-fatal shootings down in places like Chicago and Oakland, CA and hospital-based violence intervention programs that focused on preventing retaliation in domestic violence situations.
Josh, a resident of Appleton, spoke briefly and said that he didn’t think allocating the funds for license plate reader cameras would address the root cause of violence and he thought the money should be allocated to some of the programs mentioned by Ms. Heffernan.
The discussion by the Council members followed a similar outline to the discussion at the Finance Committee meeting with various alderpersons expressing skepticism that 10 additional cameras were needed or that this was the best use of ARPA funds.
Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) said she had discussed the resolution with Chief Olson and had been told by Chief Olson that Alderperson Doran, the author of the resolution, had not spoken in person or at length with her about the resolution and that the request for additional funding had not come from the police department. Additionally, Alderperson Van Zeeland said, “I asked Chief Olson if these extra cameras were the top funding priority for the APD. And her answer was no. She went on to further explain that there are options for the addition of more cameras in areas that are at higher risk for illegal activity at no cost to the city.”
As was discussed later in the meeting, Flock did have an initiative to get businesses such as big box stores and banking institutions to purchase their cameras and install them in parking lots, and the Police Department would have access to that camera information through the Flock network even though the private businesses would be the ones paying for those cameras.
Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) said that 50% of ARPA funds nation-wide had go toward things like community policing, criminal violence prevention, and the expansion of jails, “but I do feel like this is not an appropriate use of those funds given what we really should be spending it on. And I know we have significant dollars waiting in the wings for programs or proposals to come forth. And I think we need to push our community to do that.” He though 19 Flock cameras was a reasonable number in addition to the other cameras the city had up, and that if they found 19 was not enough then they could increase the number moving forward.
Alderperson Hartzheim felt using funds for these cameras fit well into the category they would be pulling the money from which was for “Community Wellness, Mental Health, and Violence Prevention.” Additionally, it had been confirmed at the Finance Committee that ARPA funds could be used for this purpose. She also pointed out that the Police Department had only cut back the number of cameras to 19 out of budgetary concerns, not because they didn’t feel the full 29 were not necessary.
She also confirmed with Chief Olson that not only would the city be losing $5,000 by not leasing these 10 cameras now at $2,500 versus $3,000, but the city would also end up paying around $36,000 more in installation costs over the next five years should they get rid of the 10 cameras and then decide to reinstall them.
Alderperson Croatt was comfortable voting for this resolution because it was confirmed that this was an eligible use for ARPA funds and it did not take a large percentage of the funds that were designated for “Community Wellness, Mental Health, and Violence Prevention.” [There was currently $1 million available for those purposes, $125,000 would only be 12.5%.] He said, “There’s still money, plenty of money, available for those other important programs that were referenced during public participation.”
Alderperson Kristin Alfheim (District 11) did not like how the resolution had started out asking for $25,000 to be reallocated and that had now been increased to $125,000. She also didn’t think alderpersons should be the ones “who come up with solutions to problems that haven’t been identified by the APD themselves.” She would have preferred for Chief Olson to have come and suggested that the funds be reallocated for these purposes rather than Alderperson Doran do that proactively.
Ultimately, she preferred to use the funds not for catching bad guys after the fact but rather, “I do believe we should use as many of the ARPA dollars as possible in the community where it is needed in education, in reduction, in resources to reduce the issues before they start. If we’re going to spend money, I would like to help work on the problem not on another solution to catch it once it’s gone wrong.”
Alderperson Hartzheim disagreed. She noted the ARPA dollars had been put into a bucket designated for “Community Wellness, Mental Health, and Violence Prevention” and not one of those was more important than the other. Mental health was important but, community wellness and violence prevention were not unimportant. Additionally, sometimes preventing future violence started with catching a criminal at the end of having committed a past crime.
She finished up by noting, they would potentially use 12.5% of the bucket for community wellness and violence prevention which would leave the rest for mental health issues.
Alderperson Doran said this resolution came up based on the discussion at the Safety and Licensing Committee meeting in which Chief Olson had told the committee the Police Department had whittled the number of cameras down to 19 due to budgetary constraints. “So, this resolution isn’t me trying to solve a problem. This is responding to an issue that was brought forward. The police department originally asked for 29 cameras, not 19. So, this is an opportunity for us to fully fund the request that was originally brought forward by staff, not by me.”
He also pointed out, “We don’t have mental health organizations lining up to take the rest of those funds at this point. And if they do, there’s plenty of money left over after this.”
Alderperson Schultz asked Chief Olson if she had a sense of how much more effective having 29 cameras would be than 19; however, currently all 29 of the cameras were still operational, so she didn’t know what the impact of losing 10 would be.
Alderperson Nate Wolff (District 12) said, “So, on the ARPA money $1 million worth, I’ve established how I believe that funding should be spent. I believe it should be spent in grants to nonprofits who will come forward for that money once they know it’s there.”
Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) said, “I think that there’s been no dispute that Flock cameras are effective, but I haven’t seen a single piece of evidence establishing that we’ll get a better outcome from the additional 10 cameras. I also think that it is a disturbing sort of linguistic gymnastics to assert that crime solving is the same thing as violence prevention. It is not.”
The Council went on to vote 8-4 to deny the resolution.
[I thought there were some pretty major philosophical issues at play in this discussion. Many of these alderpersons seemed to think that violence is just the result of mental health problems and if everybody just gets the right counselling and takes the right medication violence would…go away? They seem to reject the notion that some people many be mentally ill and could benefit from counseling and medication but will refuse those interventions when offered and continue to act badly. Additionally, some people are just bad people who enjoy doing bad things. Surely community wellness and violence prevention are promoted when these sorts of people are identified and legally held accountable for their behavior.
It seems to me that the mental health and wellness of the community at large are indeed promoted when residents know that its government takes law and order seriously and is implementing reasonable programs to solve crimes and track down criminals. Was not the mental health of 30 hit and run victims improved by having their aggressors identified so that they could then seek legal and civil redress against them? Was not the mental health of store clerks and business owners who were victimized by 22 retail thefts improved by seeing that the police were able to catch the thieves and that some form of legal justice was possible? Was not the wellness of 5 victims of domestic violence incidents improved by the arrest of their abusers? Was not the mental health and wellness of 30 victims of vehicle theft improved by the recovery of their vehicles? It is foolish to thing that overall community wellness and the mental health of residents is not improved when they feel that the government takes crime seriously and the police are able to respond effectively when a resident becomes the victim of a crime.
Additionally, I’m taken aback by the Council’s unwillingness to use these ARPA funds to pay for the city’s core functions. We have already given $250,000 in ARPA grants to private organizations and non-profits promoting mental health and community wellness, and yet taking half that money to fund 5 years of 10 additional Flock cameras for our own police department is somehow too much? I just don’t see the reasoning.
And, frankly, my own personal mental health would be vastly improved if the city stopped giving money to any private organizations at all and just focused on its core responsibilities, a huge portion of which is infrastructure, utilities, and public safety rather than, for example, giving $27,000 to NEW Mental Health Connection to develop a new website and app and engage in marketing.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1134247&GUID=D40578C0-B765-46EF-BB73-46120EF3B292
I couldn’t agree more with the author of this post!
Why does our city spend so much time and our tax money on social experiments and programs, instead of just managing the city’s business and infrastructure.
Taxes, which we are forced to submit to them…are NOT voluntary…if they were, progressive liberals would not have such a huge fund to play with.
Law enforcement is vital to a safe community.