Good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome, welcome, welcome. It is time nown for city matters right here on okay, one the one you trust, and we have a city councilor Tim Shrick here with is today and returning for I guess twice now as a counselor three times altogether, but something like that. But my goodness, sakes, nice weather, we don't have the fires like we had on Friday, by golly, hats off to the Bartlespiel Fire Department. No
buildings were burned. We did have thirty fires though.
They do a great job, and we're so appreciative of all that they commit to the community and the sacrifice that they make to keep us safe.
Oh my goodness. Now, Tim, we've got a couple of things going on here. First, we've got a workshop coming out. What is that we do?
So coming up.
Just after this next weekend, we'll have a workshop. It's going to be focused on the next strategic plan. Okay, So that's basically time for the counselors to come together and talk about what their vision is for Bartlesville going forward, what we want to see accomplished, how we intend to achieve it so that we can submit that and then it will all kind of be brought together, coalesced, and put into a document that will vote on in a future council session.
So what kind of things are we looking at? We're looking at infrastructure, thing, quality of life, things, just about anything. Bartles Will all of the above.
Really, as I understand that, the next strategic plan is how we intend to move forward, and part of that feeds into the Endeavor twenty forty five. So we want to see certain things accomplished in Bartlesville.
We'll talk about our vision for.
That, how we as individual counselors see that happening, how we feel like our constituency is expressing to us that they would like.
To see that happen. If there's any specific.
Issue that is raised, and we always urge that, call your council member, Email your council member, let them know what you feel like is important so we can carry that forward into the council chamber.
Counselor, Tim Shirk, what are you hearing so far?
What I'm hearing is just a few little things so far.
People are concerned, for example, about tornado sirens that might need to be replaced sooner rather than later. They feel like that might pose a significant public safety risk, and so things like that are primarily what we're hearing so far.
Public safety stuff.
Public safety. Most people, I.
Think are pretty happy with the amenities that have been established already, probably don't need to spend a lot of time looking at those. Some people actually have complained to me that they feel like there are too many amenities and not much attention, not as much attention to detail given to public safety.
And you know, that's something that's going to be in the eye of the beholder everywhere you go. And I understand that it's like, wow, we're doing but what about that tornado siren? I get that, I really do. So it's going to be interesting to see what manifests from this.
Absolutely we're all, you know, we have two incumbents who've done things like this before, and from what I understand, the framework was established by the previous council, but they paused once the election happened and they knew that they had a sixty percent turnover, so that we could come in with the ideas that we're hearing from our constituency to hopefully carry that change into the next phase.
Very good flock cameras have been a big thing that's been coming up. We had a recent workshop on that, no decision made. I understand.
No, we at workshops, you know, the one coming up and the one that we've already had are not times to vote. They're basically times for input and discussion. We don't vote on any business or how we're going to proceed. We might say we need more information, we might request that certain pieces of it be researched.
But yeah, we don't vote workshops.
Okay, But with the flock camera where there was a lot of there was a lot of discussion, a lot of debate.
Correct, It's a very contentious issue generally, there have been debates all the way up to the state level.
We very much appreciate.
Representative Tom Gann from Iola coming to Bartlesville and putting on a workshop.
For us, yes last February, right February.
Sixth, giving us the other side of the coin, if you will. I think that there are some serious concerns that are around the flock camera systems.
We definitely want to pay attention to those.
I don't think anyone wants to live in an our welly and surveillance state. We understand that there were some arguments made. But this is one of the things and we try to even teach our kids at home, and I think it's important that we do that, that logical fallacies are important, and when you argue from a position of appealing to emotion rather than bringing.
Facts, that is a logical fallacy.
So if I came to you Tom and I said, you know, here's this heart wrenching story about something that was done as a direct result of this system, I'm appealing to your motion. I'm not telling you this might encroach upon your personal freedoms.
This might violate your fourth and fourteenth Amendment rights.
This might violate Oklahoma Title forty seven, and frankly, we believe Flock does all of those things.
So at least a portion of us.
Now, I've been questioned over what I mean when I say we before, so let me clarify that being I, myself and the people that I'm having personal conversations with, believe that this poses a serious risk to personal liberties.
Now I'm good play Devil's advocate. Here. You go into any store, not any, but most there's a surveillance camera. It's tracking you from the parking lot into the door. You've been times up and down the aisle. Is that an infringement or is that just protection since it's private property.
Those are on a closed system, inaccessible to anyone except the store security people.
Unless you have a warrant.
Yeah, there you go.
And they also provide for your Fourteenth Amendment due process rights by having signs posted. You know, some of them are even a little bit facetious. You know, smile, you're on camera, you know.
So it is there.
It's there, but your warning is there.
Then you make a decision as to whether or not you walk in the store and shop there, or if you park on that parking lot. And those are the kinds of things that you should be able to do. You can decide. When you put up cameras all around your city, you create a surveillance net that monitors your people as a pre gathering of evidence for crimes that may not be committed. And what was very interesting to me was some footage that is now available on YouTube
from body of ard More police officers. They were obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request and you clearly see the ard More policeman questioning someone in his vehicle from information brought up from flock on his laptop about data that goes back at least ninety days, which flies in the face of their contention that it's only maintained
for thirty days. I don't know why we're relying on anybody but Flock, who's trying to sell us the system for the information about what their stuff can do.
Either.
The vision of the founder of Flock is a crime free society with a camera on every corner, and it says so right on their website. I don't think anybody wants that. I think you want a crime free society. I think they do too, But I think we need to look at what we can do to better support our boys in blue. We need to back the blue. We don't need to black back the cameras. Okay, you know,
and these are also called a force multiplier. So anybody who understands what that means, especially if you've ever been through a layoff, mean you know, you should be nervous that they're going to put in more cameras and not more policemen.
Yeah, automation, it's played. It's played in this business at what you're talking.
About, And as generative AI and other things become more powerful, the system could be expanded to include facial recognition it.
We have that already in some places we.
Do have and that's one of the concerns.
The higher government agencies with which this data is shared do have those things, and there's no guarantees. See, there's no universal guardrails around this that says that if it doesn't receive a hit on an nc ICY hot list, that it will be deleted within three minutes. They're saying locally thirty days. Well, we don't know what might happen
in other venues. We do know that Tulsa has over two hundred cameras and that they won't even disclose the location of them, and that they also have a live crime center where they're watching these feeds in real time. That's not something I think Bartlesville has expressed a desire for. I think we probably should have had community engagement early on, rather than watching all these things bubble up here after we've already got stuff that would have to be undone.
But in our workshop session we did agree as a council to move this to a vote of the people. Now, what I'm hearing today is that there's an opinion that says we can't do that. Because it would be a strictly advisory opinion of the people that was said by
our city attorney in an open meeting. What could be done, though, as I read the law and as I'm having other conversations, is that we could pass a resolution to issue an ordinance that would amand the city Charter, and any amendment to the city Charter would call for a vote of the people. So I think that there is a way forward for the Council to do it. I'm still ex floring that, and I will continue to explore that.
It sounds like it may entail from heavy lifting.
There might be a bigger lift on this issue. But you know what, as I've said before, the people's voice needs to be the very loudest one in the room. And that's my job. I was elected by the people to carry their voice in there, not to argue for my preference or opinions.
But when people come to me and say, what are we going to do about this?
This is a clear violation of Title forty seven, I have an obligation to check into that and see if there is something that needs to be done, and then to carry that majority opinion into the chamber.
Very good, Very good. Other things that are going on at city Hall. Like I said, we're looking at the strategic plan, and we recently had the workshop here on the flock cameras. The other city business, it just kind of goes on at a pretty good click. It seems like our crash gets picked up on time. It seems like the streets get swept. I followed one into work today, Yes, right, And and I understand that once the weather gets better, we're going to start fixing Yale and a few other things.
And Madison, yeah, and Madison, oh yeah, yeah, we need that part taken care of too. But we've got the grass and leaf of free pickup coming up first week in May.
I do believe too, right that I may second maybe it's gonna be the first part of me.
Sure.
Yeah.
Now the other business is going along pretty well.
It's always the most contentious things that wind up in the news. Yeah, you know, I've had conversations with a few people, had a very nice reporter from Fox twenty three call me. And one of the things that I've shared with them Tom is also this this is a this is the letter from Sheriff Owen.
Oh okay, what's this say?
The letter is his rescinding his approval for the memorandum of understanding with the county commissioners and a few weeks ago, right right, So he basically says, since approving that agreement, additional information has been brought to my attention, ranging from legislative, legal and statueatory issues, coupled with a concern for possible constitutional rights violations which could possibly compromise certain cases during prosecution,
as well as infringe upon inalienable rights afforded by our creator and both the United States and Oklahoma constitutions. So here he says that he would like to rescind his approval for that memorandum. And then this is another statement that he gave to the gentleman Josh Locke, who has a change dot org petition.
We've had Josh as a guest.
Yes, he said, My position on block, after having looked at him for Washington County, is that with respect to the Constitution, I'm rightfully concerned with even the appearance of approaching Fourth Amendment boundaries. It's our responsibility to respect our citizens' liberties first and foremost above all. So we appreciate our sheriff, and we also want to say thank you to our county commissioners who have since voted to rescind
that memorandum of understanding. That is a that's an important step forward and it will keep it from expanding into the county level, but we still obviously need to get something done at the city level.
Tim jug It's it's been a little bit since I did the background on the flock cameras. As far as court cases are concerned, probably a good four weeks have any of these cases gone before judges were ruling has been made.
They're still being litigated at this time.
That's what I thought.
There was a case in McClain County where a certain piece of evidence that was obtained by using the flock system was thrown out of a criminal case. There is a very important case happening in Norfolk, Virginia that the Institute of Justice is litigating.
On behalf of their clients.
They deployed a large net of cameras and so they're they're basing that on some Supreme Court decisions as well as other president one of which says you can't use cellular tracking data without a warrant. You can't place a trace around a vehicle. Was another case without a warrant. So the GPS data that is used at times if your car has that feature, also cannot be presented for any kind of use in court without a warrant. So there's an awful lot of similar circumstances that say you
can't be watched all the time without cause. There needs to be probable cause issuing in a warrant or subpoena for you to be able to gain that kind of access and information about a person's life.
Now, this Norfolk case was the one that caught my attention a few weeks ago, and like you said, it's still being litigated, but man, there was just a whole pile of different things. They're going to have to take some time to short it all out.
They are as of February fifth, the ruling came down that the defendant's motion to dismiss was not honored by the court. So they are moving into discovery and all of the all of the things on both sides will be brought out soon.
So this could be the case that this all hinges on.
It very well could be a precedent setting case for the nation.
Absolutely well, we're going to keep our eyes on it and yours on it. As well too, anything else you like to bring up about what's going on and what we can maybe you expect from City Council.
Well, first of all, as you mentioned earlier, be careful out there, guys, the wind's blowing. Don't burn anything, you know, unless you need to in a safe way. I think if you absolutely had to, there may be some prescribed precautions you need to make sure you take, but generally speaking, don't do that. We want to make sure we keep our neighbors safe, and that's that's one reason that we also need to find balance on issues like this. We
want to back the blue. We want to make sure that they understand that we really appreciate what they do for our community, but we also aren't willing to surrender our liberty for security. Other things that will be coming up from City Council in the future will be once the next strategic Plan is completed and Nevor twenty forty five has been in reconcile, so they're reconciling all of the suggestions that were brought to them by the public, everything.
That we sent in from our constituencies.
And they're reworking that so that will come back to the Council for review and a vote in upcoming meetings as well.
Very good, very good, Tim. How can we get a hold of it? We need you. I think all the information they need is right there on the city website.
It is so for every council member. On the website you will find our name listed, a photo for most of us, and our email address. It's very simple. If you know what ward you're in, all you need to know is Ward one, two, three, four five and at Cityomartlesville dot org and that'll come directly to our official mailbox.
All right, Tim Sherick, thank you for being with us today.
Thanks Tom, always enjoy
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