u/jonathan4pf

UPDATE: Both items are being postponed for another two weeks and will no longer be on the August 11 agenda. Flock has come back to the negotiating table regarding their contract, and the City Attorney has asked to do some additional work on the enforceability of my governance proposal.

Tuesday’s City Council agenda includes two major decisions involving surveillance technology and data governance:

1. Whether to approve a two-year extension of Pflugerville’s contract with Flock Safety.
2. Whether to adopt my "Pflugerville SAFE Technology Governance" resolution & policy, which would establish citywide rules for AI, surveillance, biometric identification, data sharing, procurement, public disclosure, and oversight.

The proposed contract is stronger than the current one (that expired July 29th), including clearer language recognizing that the City owns its data. But several significant issues remain.

The agreement does not expressly prohibit Flock from selling, licensing, monetizing, or otherwise commercially using City data. It also leaves unresolved how aggregated, de-identified, and derived data may be used; what must be deleted when the contract ends; what records and audit information the City can obtain; and what remedies Pflugerville has after a security failure, unauthorized use, or other breach. The City would also have very little practical ability to exit the two-year agreement early.

My broader proposal is intended to keep these questions from being handled one vendor and one contract at a time. It would:

• Ban facial recognition and other biometric identification by the City.
• Require an inventory and public transparency page for high-risk technology.
• Establish review and approval requirements for acquisitions, renewals, extensions, and material expansions.
• Require written agreements and safeguards for outside data sharing.
• Require human review and prohibit automated systems from making final consequential decisions.
• Create ongoing Council and public oversight instead of relying only on internal personnel policies.

Residents (and y'all here on Reddit) have stayed engaged on this issue for months, and Council has received more public comment on it than any other topic this year. Tuesday’s votes will determine whether the Flock contract continues for another two years and whether Pflugerville puts broader protections in place for these technologies going forward, regardless of the vendor.

The meeting begins Tuesday, August 11, at 7 p.m. at the Pflugerville Justice Center. You can attend and speak during public comment. If you cannot attend, submit written comments ahead of time through the City’s contact form so they are included with the public input provided to Council.

If you cannot make it, you can submit written comments ahead of the meeting through the City’s contact form: https://pflugervilletx-city-manager.form.transform.civicplus.com/45145

The full agenda can be found here: https://pflugerville.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1431061&GUID=7A60FC72-8883-40E9-990A-E9D29D891799&Options=info&fbclid=IwY2xjawThaihwZG9mAWV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAGJyaWQRMWtWWHNsdFJlemNCMXZXeHpzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeilVTXMyNDfueWHBjrUesXb3wODXIJs4hwbpsEb9cXDltn3mJWBQ2M9WDUPg_aem_TsKE64fNK-J-2oDkZr8bpA

A few important updates from Tuesday’s City Council meeting.

Impact fees: finding the right balance

Impact fees are the one-time charges new development pays to help cover the roads, water, and sewer infrastructure that growth requires.

Staff brought forward an update to our roadway impact fees as required by state law. Council voted to hold the current fees exactly where they are for another year while asking staff to conduct a more thorough review.

The part I’m most glad about: Council agreed to have an in-depth policy discussion about the full slate of fees the City charges to build here. I’ve been pushing for that discussion, and several of us are ready to work through where the balance should sit.

Growth should pay for itself. At the same time, Pflugerville residents want more housing choices, restaurants, retail, and other businesses. Our current total fee burden affects whether those projects choose Pflugerville or neighboring cities. We need to work out a clear policy that protects existing taxpayers without pricing out the growth our community wants and deserves.

A new tool for a potential project on the far-east-side

A developer on Cele Road near FM973 wants to voluntarily annex into Pflugerville. The property is currently in the City’s ETJ.

The mechanism being considered is a Municipal Management District, which can help a development fund its own infrastructure. Pflugerville has not used one before, so Council did not commit to anything yet. We asked Planning staff and the City Attorney to continue working through the deal and return with a briefing on how MMDs work, its legal implications, and the potential benefits and drawbacks. More once we have that information. I'm always happy to see continued innovation in how we manage growth on the east side to ensure growth makes sense for the city.

July 4: The City dropped the ball

Pflugerville did not have its traditional July 4 fireworks show, and the City failed to communicate that change clearly. That was a failure. Council and City management accepted collective responsibility at the meeting. Fireworks funding is included in the proposed FY2027 budget, and staff committed to clearly documenting service reductions and removing budget items going forward to prevent these types of things from happening in the future. The (new) City Manager has also made process changes such as sending Council sub-committee meeting notes to the whole Council, and the Mayor has proposed that all sub-committees do worksession presentations to the full Council at least twice a year. These are good, practical reforms.

Charter election moves forward

Council approved the first reading of an ordinance calling a Nov 3 election on 14 proposed City Charter amendments. I’ll do a separate post explaining the full package soon, but I’m happy to report that two of my proposed charter amendments will be on the ballot: 1) Requiring the city to have a responsible AI and surveillance governance framework and associated policies, and 2) Allowing City Council to appoint residents who live in the ETJ to city boards and commissions as non-voting members.

Last night Council approved moving Pflugerville's ambulance service from Allegiance Mobile Health to Travis County ESD #2, our fire department. Allegiance gets 90 days' notice and continues running calls until the handoff.

I want to start with why this one mattered to me, because it's easy to get lost in the logistics and politics. When you or someone you love is having the worst moment of your life, a response-time percentage is meaningless if nobody can actually answer the call, or if the person who shows up doesn't have the training, experience, and equipment to save a life. That's the standard I judged this on. Not the spreadsheet. Whether the person at your door can do the job.

What changes for you: when you call 911 for a medical emergency, the responders will be Pflugerville firefighters. All of them are certified EMTs, and more than a quarter are paramedics, so treatment starts when the first apparatus arrives, regardless of which one it is. The agreement guarantees six ambulances. A six-year term.

The cost: the ESD #2 agreement runs about $600,000/year more than Allegiance. Travis County covers that difference in year one through a grant, so the resident-facing increase this year is $0. At full cost, it's roughly $2 per household per month, and that's a ceiling rather than a line item, since the general fund is funded by commercial property and sales tax too, not just households.

The change comes down to availability and clinical performance.

Availability: in Q4 2025, Allegiance hit "Level Zero," meaning zero available ambulances in Pflugerville, on 39 separate occasions. The longest stretch was over an hour. None of that shows up in the contractual response-time metric, because you can’t be late to a call you don’t answer. This past Friday, a pediatric cardiac arrest was dispatched while Allegiance was at Level Zero. ESD #2 responded instead and saved that child’s life.

Clinical: Over roughly three years, two Pflugerville residents in their 40s died in sedation-related incidents involving Allegiance. One produced findings from the state health department that found Allegiance at fault. There are many other reported and documented incidents, such as administering incorrect doses of medication, shocking paramedics as well as the patient, and others. Earlier this year, Allegiance's Medical Director asked the Fire Department to train Allegiance's paramedics on how to respond to cardiac arrest calls.

Oversight: The old contract requires Allegiance to keep mutual-aid agreements as backup for Level Zero events and other needs. There's no executed agreement, only an informal arrangement with ATCEMS, whose nearest station is ~15 minutes outside of Pflugerville. The city also never issued a formal notice of deficiency over any of this, even though most of it was reported to Council in Allegiance's own monthly reports. That gap in the city's own process is a big part of what the new agreement's reporting and audit requirements are built to fix. We now also have a new Emergency Services Director overseeing everything public safety in the city.

I made the motion to terminate the Allegiance contract, approve the ESD #2 agreement, and accept the county grant funding. Credit where it's due: Mayor Weiss and CM Metayer spent two years building this before I was elected, and CM Ruiz was a consistent yes throughout. I feel fortunate that they handed me the baton after being elected to bring this across the finish line for all of us.

Last thing. EMS is about as personal as city business gets. Much of what Council and city staff do, you may not notice. This one you'd notice on the worst day of your life. To the firefighters and paramedics taking this on: thank you for answering the call for your neighbors. I'm glad it's you.

Councilmember Melody Ryan ( u/PflugerMel ) and I are doing another virtual town hall this Thursday, July 9, at 7 p.m., hosted by Dennis Tardan and live on YouTube.

July is shaping up to be a busy month for the City Council, so we’ll talk through what is coming up, answer residents' questions, and try to give people a clearer sense of the issues.

Topics on our minds include FY2027 budget planning, the Flock Safety renewal, charter amendments, a proposed bond package, water restrictions, and anything else residents want to ask about.

If you have questions you want us to try to cover, drop them here ahead of time. We may not get to everything live, but advance questions help us make better use of the time.

Watch live Thursday at 7 p.m.:
youtube.com/tardanmedia

* Due to unforeseen circumstances the town hall has been moved to Thursday the 9th at 7pm. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Seven months ago, I was sworn in as your Place 1 council member.

At the time, I said I would show up, put in the work, use data to inform decisions, explain my votes, and not hide behind the dais.

I recognize that most residents cannot sit through multiple 3+ hour council meetings each month just to figure out what is happening in their city. So I have tried to use council recaps and issue-specific posts to explain what is in front of us, where I stand, and what I think residents should be paying attention to.

Here is some of what that has looked like since November:

• Requesting a standalone zoning amendment for data centers, since Pflugerville currently has no specific regulations for them, instead of waiting years for the full development code rewrite.
• Advocating for and helping scope a new utility rate study, including a direct ask to rethink how our water and wastewater fees are structured for affordability.
• Proposing a city charter amendment requiring AI, surveillance, and civil liberties policies and oversight. The Charter Review Commission approved the proposal, meaning voters will see it on this November’s ballot. 
• Writing and pushing for those AI and surveillance policies now, rather than waiting for a charter amendment to require them. The latest version went to the City Attorney last week.
• Pushing for a more data-driven approach to economic development, where we measure outcomes like jobs created, tax base added, and return on public investment, not just meetings held or leads generated.
• Reviewing the current EMS contract, response-time requirements, compliance history, and the documentation needed to fix the parts that are not working.
• Co-authoring a Code of Ethics ordinance with Councilmember Rogers that would strengthen the rules for Pflugerville’s elected and appointed officials beyond what state law already requires.
• Plenty of other issues and decisions along the way of course!

A lot of this is still in progress. Some of it has not taken effect yet. That can be frustrating sometimes, but it is also how much of local government work gets done. You identify the problem, build the record, write the policy, ask the uncomfortable questions, and keep pushing until there is either a better answer or a public vote.

I am already seeing some of that shift in the proposals that come forward from city staff and the questions being asked before they get to Council. More data. Clearer tradeoffs. More attention to long-term consequences. That is not the same thing as a finished result, but it is progress.

None of this happens by working alone. I try to work across the dais with my colleagues whenever possible, and I am proud to have partnered with nearly everyone on Council on at least one project already. I will also continue to disagree when I think a proposal needs more work, more transparency, or a clearer explanation to the public.

I also want to keep making it easier for residents to ask their elected officials questions. Councilmember Melody Ryan and I have another virtual Town Hall coming up this Wednesday, July 8. I’ll share the details separately, but the goal is the same: make local government easier to follow, easier to question, and harder to ignore.

Pflugerville’s future will be shaped by decisions that seem boring in the moment but matter for years: how a water bill is structured, whether a fourplex is legal to build, how we govern surveillance technology, whether growth pays for the infrastructure it requires, and whether economic development produces results residents can actually see.

That is the work. I intend to keep doing it, keep explaining it, and keep listening when residents tell me where we need to do better.

This week, I saw a really clear example of how local rules can change the cost, timeline, market competitiveness, and resident impact of a construction project.

The photos are from neighborhood fiber installs. Both projects are being done by the exact same internet provider. One set is from my neighborhood, using Pf’s rules & regulations. The other is from a neighboring city that allows a more modern, lower-disruption construction method that Pflugerville does not currently allow.

In the neighboring city, the holes in people’s yards are often dug, the lines are run, and fresh concrete covers it all up, with your landscape restored in a matter of a couple of days.

That is a very different resident experience than what we are seeing in my neighborhood right now. Here, the traditional method has meant large open pits in yards for 3+ weeks, covered with 4x8 pieces of plywood, along with disruptions to sidewalks and landscaping. And the project isn’t done yet.

Things happen; construction is messy; the weather needs to cooperate; and staff + Council have a duty to protect our streets, sidewalks, utilities, and neighborhoods. But this is a good example of why cities have to keep their rules current. When construction methods improve, outdated standards can unintentionally make projects slower, more expensive, and more disruptive than they need to be.

At a time when our growth has slowed, I believe we need to move faster to modernize the rules that shape investment in Pflugerville. We can protect residents and public infrastructure without creating unnecessary costs, delays, or disruptions.

What other areas do you think our current processes or policies need to be refreshed to increase non-incentivized private-sector investment in Pflugerville?

There was a thread a few weeks ago now where y'all were asking about the new camera pointed at the intersection of 10th and Pecan.

It's a Flock-brand video surveillance camera. Here's the explanation I got from city staff when I inquired as to what it was and why it's there:

"This camera is one of the four pan, tilt and zoom security cameras deployed to cover the Library, the camera located at 10th and Pecan is directly related to maintaining safety and security at the Library.  (Same camera system we deployed at Moose Park) 

The camera had been attached to the power pole in the same intersection for a period of a little over a year, but do to power issues it was relocated to the Right of Way and placed on solar power feed. The placement provides coverage for the northeastern portion of the library and covers building and parking lot around the northern most side of the library."

My take: I've replied to that response asking for clarification because I'm not sure the location at the intersection has a very good line of sight to the library from its position, and I do not recall there being a camera there in the past.

It is somewhat interesting, though, that for safety at the library, we need 4 Flock surveillance cameras surrounding all angles.

(of Note, the same pan-tilt-zoom Flock cameras are now installed at Lake Pflugerville as well. I've only noticed one, but my understanding is that there are now 4 of them out there).

Next Steps:
Ahead of the renewal of the Flock contract coming to Council for approval in July, I submitted a lengthy official request to city staff this week to finally get to the bottom of the surveillance camera inventory, how they're configured, and to obtain documents related to the upcoming renewal.

I've asked for a full accounting of all cameras, their locations, which models, what other hardware we have, which cameras are interior vs exterior and in public spaces, what additional proposed locations are being looked at, how exactly the Flock software is configured, and, perhaps most importantly -- all correspondence relating to the negotiation of the upcoming renewal contract. I'd like to see if any of the conversations and recommendations for data protection, privacy, ownership, and capabilities that have been discussed are actually being negotiated into the new contract.

More soon.

Last night’s meeting (which continued well past midnight) covered water, roads, EMS, economic development, and the next steps for our City Manager transition. Here's my take on the most important issues and work that was done.

— 
Water Supply

The lake is rising, which is good news. The important part is that we can’t let up on conservation.

Staff’s message to Council and residents is that if residents and businesses continue conserving, we should be in a much better position for the planned two-week shutdown at the end of May. That shutdown is needed for the next major step in repairing and completing the raw water infrastructure work.

Council also approved a change order related to the raw water line work. One important detail: this is currently being paid for out of project savings because the larger project is under budget. That does not mean the failure is free or unimportant, but it does mean this action is not currently adding a new separate budget hit on top of the project. It also aligns with the City’s previous messaging that the recent waterline breaks are not expected to affect water rates, including those arising from any future claims or findings related to fault.

— 
Immanuel Road Reconstruction

Council moved forward with the Immanuel Road project. This is an important road project, and it is also difficult. The corridor has challenging terrain and multiple bridges, which make construction more complicated and expensive than a more straightforward road widening, such as the recent East Pflugerville Parkway contract.

When completed, Immanuel will become a three-lane road. That should improve safety, traffic flow, and long-term mobility in an area that has long needed investment.

This is the kind of project where the City needs to be disciplined: keep the work moving, communicate construction impacts clearly, and watch change orders closely.

— 
City Manager

Council also continued discussion related to the City Manager transition.

My view is straightforward: We need clear performance expectations, a proper evaluation process, and specific priorities that the Council and the public can track against. A couple of other Councilmembers and I are working through proposals for how we think this should work.

--
EMS

We also discussed Emergency Medical Services in executive session, in consultation with the City Attorney.

My main concern has been simple: when you call 911, you should have confidence that well-trained, high-quality medical help is on the way. Response times and performance dashboards are easy to poke at and discuss in the abstract, and we can and should expect them to be transparent and to support strong accountability. But for me, this conversation is more than a spreadsheet issue. If you or your loved one is waiting for help, the only thing that matters in that moment and the moments after is whether the system works when you need it.

I’m not ready to make a final public recommendation yet, but I am actively evaluating the current provider’s performance, the contract structure, and what changes may be needed to provide the reliability and quality care that all Pflugerville residents deserve.

—
Economic Development

We also had economic development items in executive session. I’ll be careful about confidential details, but I will say where I stand generally: I remain unimpressed with the quality of deals coming through PCDC.

Pflugerville needs economic development that produces measurable value for taxpayers. That means stronger rigor, clear return-on-investment analysis, reasonable payback periods, and better contractual guardrails. Deals with eight-plus-year taxpayer payback timelines should face serious scrutiny. If public dollars or public assets are involved, the benefit to residents needs to be clear, defensible, and enforceable.

For at least the past several years, we’ve needed economic development efforts that help diversify our tax base, bring jobs and amenities, and, over time, reduce pressure on residents. Activity is not the same thing as results.

As always, I’ll keep sharing the major items I’m working on and the questions I’m asking on behalf of y’all.