Two companies, Axon and Flock Safety, are selling camera networks to the towns of Western North Carolina, one council agenda at a time. Asheville’s council approved a 7.5-year Axon contract before the document existed to read; Hendersonville, Henderson County, and Jackson County are deciding now, and Brevard’s police chief withdrew a plate-reader request on Sept 8 with the rest of the Axon purchase still pending. Our concern is not cameras. A camera used for accountability, under a policy the community chose, with an audit trail someone actually reads, is not what worries us. What worries us is what happens when a community’s cameras join large interconnected networks that nobody local controls: sharing defaults nobody here set, searches nobody here approved, and rules that change with a signature instead of a vote. When Boone and App State pulled the audit log, it found 1.5 million out-of-state searches its transparency portal never showed.
This site is kept by Asheville and WNC residents. We keep the records: meeting transcripts, the cities’ own videos and documents, the sheriffs’ policies, the contracts, the audit logs. Everything here is sourced. Quotes link to timestamps in the government’s own videos; documents link to the originals; you can check any claim yourself. We’re not neutral (our views are on the page), but the site is built to be useful whether you share them or not.
The calendar. Each body's next meeting, from its own posted schedule, and the election dates. Every county page carries the meeting after that.
- Friday, October 9: voter registration deadline for the Nov 3 general election; same-day registration remains available during early voting.
- Transylvania County: Monday, October 12, 6:00 PM: Transylvania County Board of Commissioners, 101 S. Broad St., Brevard, NC. Agenda not yet posted.
- Asheville: Tuesday, October 13, 5:00 PM: Asheville City Council, Council Chamber, 2nd floor of City Hall (in person). Agenda not yet posted.
- Macon County: Tuesday, October 13, 6:00 PM: Macon County Board of Commissioners, 5 West Main Street, Franklin, NC 28734. Agenda not yet posted.
- Madison County: Tuesday, October 13: Madison County Board of Commissioners, NC Cooperative Extension - Madison Center. Agenda not yet posted.
- Thursday, October 15: early voting begins; it runs through Saturday, Oct 31.
- Haywood County: Monday, October 19, 5:30 PM: Haywood County Board of Commissioners, 215 N Main Street, Waynesville, NC 28786. Agenda not yet posted.
- Buncombe County: Tuesday, October 20, 5:00 PM: Buncombe County Board of Commissioners, 200 College St, Room 326 (Commission Chambers, 3rd Floor), Asheville, NC 28801. Agenda not yet posted.
- Jackson County: Tuesday, October 20, 6:30 PM: Jackson County Board of Commissioners, 401 Grindstaff Cove Road, Sylva, NC 28779. Agenda not yet posted.
- Brevard: Monday, October 26, 3:30 PM: Brevard City Council Public Safety Committee, 95 W Main St, Brevard, NC 28712. Agenda not yet posted.
- Tuesday, November 3: Election Day.
Latest
- Jackson County's Flock costs released, $56,300 over five years
- Buncombe commissioners remove the sheriff's $290,000 forfeiture request for Fusus and Axon from their agenda
- Hendersonville council meets with no camera item on its agenda
- Jackson County sheriff's office answers a newspaper's camera records request after seven weeks
- Asheville Public Safety Committee meets with no camera item on its agenda
- Brevard council's Sept 21 agenda lists no plate-reader or Axon item
Every event, by date and place: the regional timeline.
Where to start
More than a hundred pages. Start with what you need:
Before your town's vote
Start with the basics
Who the networks reach
Where your officials stand
Asheville, 2022 to now
What one person can do
The region, right now
Each community links to its full area page: the local record, the documents, and who decides. On the board, green marks a full removal, amber a decision still open, and red a system built or kept.
| Community | Systems | Where it stands | Next |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transylvania County | Flock Safety Axon | request withdrawn Sept 8 by the chief; the Axon taser and body-camera purchase is still pending and was not on the Sept 21 or Oct 5 agendas or the Sept 28 Public Safety Committee agenda; next check the committee on Oct 26 | October 12: Transylvania County Board of Commissioners Agenda not yet posted. |
| Hendersonville | Flock Safety | contested; chief presented Sept 3, no vote | |
| Henderson County | Flock Safety | removal ask; 14 of 17 speakers against on Sept 8; the chair said the board will discuss it publicly, no date set | |
| Asheville | Axon, the RTIC contract Axon, plate readers Fusus, the county network Flock Safety | Axon contract signed Aug 4, 2026, to Dec 31, 2033, $6,955,559 of it city money; Flock contract terminated Aug 25, removal and deletion unconfirmed. Pending: the Axon quote, Policy 1703, any audit, a written answer on fixed Axon readers. | October 13: Asheville City Council Agenda not yet posted. |
| Buncombe County | Fusus (Axon) | expanding; no published audit. On Oct 6, 2026 commissioners removed a $290,000 forfeiture-fund request for the FY27 FUSUS/Axon contract and a camera project from their agenda, with no reason stated; next check the Oct 20 agenda, due Oct 14 | October 20: Buncombe County Board of Commissioners Agenda not yet posted. |
| Boone + App State | Flock Safety | kept the cameras, cut sharing 96% after pulling the log | |
| Macon County | Flock Safety | removed; network membership still listed | October 13: Macon County Board of Commissioners Agenda not yet posted. |
| Haywood County | Flock Safety | commissioners voted to keep them | October 19: Haywood County Board of Commissioners Agenda not yet posted. |
| Madison County | Flock Safety | contested; organizing active, records requests refused | October 13: Madison County Board of Commissioners Agenda not yet posted. |
| Jackson County | Flock Safety | under public review | October 20: Jackson County Board of Commissioners Agenda not yet posted. |
| Rutherford County | Flock Safety | no county process on the record; a removal petition was presented at public comment Sept 8, with no board response | |
| McDowell County | Flock Safety | no public review found |
Every event across the region, by date and place: the regional timeline. How it happened in Asheville, the region’s deepest case, is kept meeting by meeting: the full timeline and the Asheville area page.
What is pending. Each tracked issue still waiting on a document, a vote, or a step an official promised; each page has the record and the dates.
- Buncombe County Sheriff's Office Fusus access log, 2024 to 2026Buncombe CountyTwenty-eight months of the Buncombe County Sheriff's Office's own Fusus access records, released by public records request: 337,838 entries, 58 percent of camera viewing on public housing, almost all of it live, most of it by three accounts. The county withheld every timestamp.
- The Axon contract, as signedAshevilleCity of Asheville Contract 92700065 with Axon Enterprise, posted by the city in August 2026: the term to 2033, the $7,423,161.15 schedule, the termination clauses and the Fusus carve-out, the scope sentence that names Lightpost, the signature dates, and the quote the contract references but the city has not posted.
- The city attorney's constitutionality memoAshevilleThe city attorney's memo circulated the night before the Aug 25, 2026 Flock vote: what it says, and the two cases it does not mention, the Norfolk appeal in the Fourth Circuit and the Supreme Court's June 2026 location-data ruling.
- The Public Safety CommitteeAshevilleAsheville's Public Safety Committee, where RTIC oversight is assigned: members, schedule, and a record of each recorded meeting from May 2025 through Sept 24, 2026, including the March 26, 2026 meeting that advanced the RTIC grant with no recording published.
- The RTIC PolicyAshevilleSeven released records on how the RTIC's governing policy was written: what Policy 1703 says, what changed between its four drafts, and the emails dating the Axon contract's signature to July 2026.
The site, in five sections
Each section has its own front page with every page in it described, and every page shows its section at the top so you can step back up.
- Region: the twelve communities, each with its officials, tracked issues and meetings; the regional timeline; and the state laws they all run under.
- Vendors: Axon and Flock, their contracts, their sales guide, and the communities that ended contracts.
- Briefings: long-form explainers, one idea per page, written to be useful in any town before its decision.
- Act: three minutes at the podium, records requests, citable facts, the ballot.
- Reference: the primary documents and the full bibliography.
Or go straight to Browse Everything: every page, on one list.
Use this site as your notebook
This site is built to be used. For anyone who wants to go deeper than a headline:
- Verify anything yourself. Every quote links a timestamp in the city’s own videos; every document links its source. If we say someone said it, you can watch them say it.
- File a records request. Seventeen pre-written requests, with the exact filing portals, that would answer this site’s open questions. A refusal is an answer too.
- Cite the facts. Sourced, citable facts formatted for letters, op-eds, and petitions.
- Read the primary sources (minutes, resolutions, policies, contracts) and the full bibliography.
- See what changed. Every release, the pages it touched, and the documents behind it.
- Read what your neighbors said. Residents’ public comment at council, verbatim.
Share it
Follow along. We post the record where people already are: Facebook, Instagram, and Bluesky, all @wncwatch. Every claim on those accounts traces back to a page on this site.
Why we built this
We watched the May 12 meeting live, and it bothered us how hard the process made it for residents to know about the decision, comment on it, or shape it. The RTIC is expected fully operational by summer 2027; the contract runs to 2033; the oversight that matters (the audits, the policies, the promises about ICE and facial recognition, who gets hired to run it) is being decided now, in the years when attention usually fades. We wanted one place where a neighbor could understand the whole thing in ten minutes, check every fact behind it, and find a next step that fits them.
The record keeps showing the same thing: communities can tell the difference between a tool they control and a network they don’t, the moment someone shows them the documents. When a Super Bowl ad showed Ring owners what their own doorbell cameras could become on a shared network, the backlash was immediate and Amazon canceled Ring’s partnership with Flock within days; people hadn’t turned against the camera they chose, they had turned against a network they couldn’t control. You don’t have to share our view for this site to be useful. At a bare minimum, know what’s happening, know where the critical points of oversight sit (the audits, the contracts, the appointments, the votes), and know that at this phase of the rollout, communities still decide their own future together.
This is a living workbook: it updates as meetings happen, records surface, and promises get tested.