One day after Mayor Manheimer’s termination statement, and hours after the RTIC policy records became public, council held its agenda briefing for the August 25 meeting (city’s video, the Flock item from 50:01 to 1:13:24). No public comment is taken at briefings. Captions don’t label speakers and garble words; quotes below are from the auto-captions, attributions follow meeting context, and where attribution isn’t certain we say “a council member.”
What’s actually on Tuesday’s agenda
The last item under new business is a resolution calling for the city manager to terminate the city’s Flock contract (50:01). Manheimer, presenting it, went further than her Aug 19 statement in several load-bearing ways:
- The one-camera plan is dead, killed by Flock itself (52:26): “Flock has now changed their policy so that… [a] city has to have 10 Flock cameras in order to continue to have access to their system… I don’t think that’s going to be acceptable here in Asheville.” Flock turned the network-access-for-a-token-camera arrangement into a ten-camera minimum, and in doing so confirmed what this site has documented since May: the cameras were never the product; the network access was.
- Why termination is the only removal mechanism (52:50): “The only way to have the cameras removed is to actually terminate the contract, because the cameras are technically not ours. They’re Flock’s, and they have to come remove them.”
- The contract runs to February 2027 (51:53), confirming the end date this site had flagged as unconfirmed.
- The resolution asks for more than termination (53:11): it directs the city manager toward “policy recommendations… in terms of protecting civil liberties… and use of technology” generally, states that terminating means “we will no longer be participating in the Flock system,” formalizes that Chief Stepp is working with “someone with the ACLU” on civil liberties and privacy protections (53:59), and “continues to clarify that we do not use facial recognition software” (54:31).
- Her legal framing (51:19): “As an attorney… it will be ultimately for the courts to decide whether or not this kind of technology [exceeds] the Fourth Amendment protection for civil liberties and for your privacy protection.” And later (1:13:02): “this technology may be getting ahead of us.”
She also stated the city’s count plainly (56:37): 11 cameras, all stationary, in place “for some time” with no recent vote, alongside Flock cameras owned by “a university, or the sheriff’s department” and private parties that the city can’t control. Her summary of the company (58:45): “Flock has always kind of been an odd company… they’ve gotten some things wrong along the way… when you get things wrong, sometimes you lose business. And that’s what we’re doing here.”
The memo: the vendor swap, in staff’s own words
The briefing’s most important document isn’t the resolution; it’s a staff memo Kim Roney read from and asked to be attached to Tuesday’s public agenda materials (1:10:24):
“We are working to rightsize our Flock deployment while expanding and integrating Axon’s automated license plate reader capabilities based on our operational needs.”
That sentence, from the city’s own staff, is the vendor swap stated as an operating plan: Flock out, Axon plate readers in. Roney drew the conclusion directly (1:10:36): “if we cancel the Flock contract and replace [it] with Axon’s same functioning equipment, then we still have a violation of our constitutional rights problem… replacing it just with Axon is still a community concern.”
Manheimer, to her credit, engaged the point instead of deflecting it, and confirmed the pipeline (1:11:28):
“What Councilwoman Roney is citing is: if we were to move ahead with replacing Flock-style stationary license plate readers with Axon stationary license plate readers, the question around constitutional protection would come back into play… It could be that we land in a place where there’s not a resolution to a replacement that’s same-for-same… We’re not about to pull down these cameras and right at this moment put the new technology up. But it is something that is in the pipeline, and we need to have a discussion about it for sure.”
Put that beside the record: the Axon contract already pre-authorizes fixed plate readers with no new council vote; released emails show a never-announced contract for 20 Axon Fleet in-car readers and Axon’s rep marketing “Request a demo of our Fixed ALPR here!” in every message; and the mayor herself noted every APD vehicle’s dash camera “technically has a license plate reader function” (55:06). “In the pipeline” is not a hypothetical. Demand 7, a separate public vote for any fixed Axon plate reader, is the ask that meets this moment, and Sage Turner opened the door to it (attribution confirmed by watching the video) (1:09:32): “I did reach out to legal, I did learn Axon has ALPRs… maybe that’s a part of the contract we wish wasn’t there… I’m not interested in dismantling body cams and dash cams.” A member of the May 12 majority, saying out loud that the plate-reader component of the contract she voted for may be unwanted: that’s the opening for the carve-out vote.
Roney’s checklist for Tuesday
Roney’s other asks, each tracking a documented failure mode (1:02:05):
- Cover the cameras. “In cities across the country that are ending their Flock contracts, Flock isn’t taking the cameras down, and there have been some questions about whether or not they turn them back on. So cities are learning that they have to cover them up.” That’s the Evanston lesson, now on the dais.
- Publish the ACEIP documents (1:04:25): “the Axon Customer Experience Improvement Program documents… if it’s going to be available in a public records request… we just put it on the dashboard.” Those are the documents released the same morning.
- The RTIC isn’t settled (1:03:31): “The ACLU also has provided guidance warning against real-time intelligence centers and the combination of our cameras… So we still have some work to do there.”
- Plan for the crowd (1:04:46): at the May 12 vote “a large crowd outside… stood outside for hours without access to a bathroom”; she asked for multiple overflow rooms. Manheimer: “I’ll open sixth floor.”
One exchange to hold onto (1:03:49): asked about the advisory committee shaping policy, the answer from the dais was that “it is a committee of eight people and 16 people… we don’t know who’s” on it. Sitting council members, unclear on the membership of the body writing surveillance policy. For the concluded policy workgroup, at least, the released notes answer that question.
The rest of the discussion
- Everything else is Axon. Asked by Ullman what runs the body and dash cameras, Chief Stepp confirmed (59:56): “that is Axon, all of our other technology equipment currently… in-car cameras, body cameras are Axon.”
- Maggie Ullman drew the Axon line early (attribution confirmed by watching the video) (59:03): residents are saying “get rid of all surveillance… specifically, get rid of Axon,” but “the call for ‘get rid of Axon’… starts to hit a wall where I can’t fathom pulling back on our transparency tools.” These are her first public statements on the surveillance program since her May 12 yes vote; her page, which until today recorded only silence, now has a position.
- Ullman, continuing, said Flock cameras produced leads in a recent tragedy, that the neighborhood cameras residents asked to keep turn out to be county-owned and unaffected by the city vote, and moved past the old wind-down plan (1:01:47): “I was under the impression that 10 were coming down already and one would stay until February. I’m happy to move forward on just pulling them now, so long as we’re not increasing safety risks.”
- Bo Hess defended the RTIC at length (attribution confirmed by watching the video) (1:06:45): “the RTIC and Flock are two different things. RTIC is a real-time, emergency-activated system… This is not general surveillance… only activated when there is an emergency or someone calls 911,” praised the tours (“I’ve never seen a law enforcement agency open up the doors to the public like they have”), and closed: “I don’t think we should come up here and spin and lie, especially in a time when everyone is so anxious.” The description of the RTIC as emergency-only sits uneasily beside its own written policy, which assigns RTIC staff to monitor cameras “based on crime trends” and assist with “public events, large crowds, and special operations”; his page holds the claim alongside his record.
- The dashboard reappeared. A same-day check of APD’s Public Transparency Dashboard, which returned a 404 on August 17, finds it live with a working link to Axon’s ALPR policy page (the Flock portal link rejects automated checks). Row 10 updated accordingly.
- The briefing ended in closed session (1:16:10), on a motion read by Bo Hess (attribution confirmed by watching the video) citing among other things the personnel exemption for “conditions of appointment or conditions of initial employment of an individual public officer,” noted here without speculation, in the same window the permanent chief decision is expected.
The documents, as posted August 21
The agenda posted the next day with the resolution and the memo Roney read from attached. The memo is dated August 14 and signed by Jackie Stepp. Beyond the sentence above, it says: APD “is not pursuing a full transition away from Flock” and is “exploring transitioning from its existing Flock camera deployment to a Flock software license that would preserve access to the Flock network”; “by February 2027, APD expects to complete the planned reduction of its Flock contract and have the Axon ALPR infrastructure operational”; there are “86 Flock cameras deployed throughout Buncombe County, including 11 owned by the City”; the county sheriff “currently uses Flock ALPR cameras” and APD is “evaluating consolidating the BCSO RTIC into the APD RTIC”; and in August 2026 APD cut authorized searchers “from 18 to 12,” narrowed outside access from the 500-mile radius to four neighboring states, and cut retention from 30 to 21 days. It also dates Flock to February 2025 and Axon in-car readers to April 2024, and misdates council’s civil-liberties resolution to June (it passed May 12). The resolution’s seven sections, scored against the eight demands, are on Getting Flock Out: one demand met, one partly, six not addressed, and Axon absent from the text.
What this means for Tuesday
The vote is real, the resolution text is public, and the mechanics are now public: termination is the removal mechanism because the poles are Flock’s property, and Flock’s own 10-camera minimum forecloses the token-camera compromise. What the briefing put beyond argument is the follow-on question: the city’s staff memo describes expanding Axon plate readers while Flock comes down, and the mayor confirmed replacements are “in the pipeline.” Support the termination Tuesday, and put demands 2 through 8 on the record while the room is full: a removal date, covered cameras until they’re gone, written data deletion, and a public vote before any Axon pole goes up.
Related: Getting Flock Out · The RTIC Policy · Speak at Council · Promise Tracker · Esther Manheimer · Kim Roney · Sage Turner