Remove Flock Surveillance Cameras from Boerne and Kendall County

We are half way there. Kendall County voted 5-0 to not renew their flock contract. Original petition language will be at the bottom related to Kendall County. Now onto City of Boerne.

City of Boerne - Flock and Axon

Everyone’s Asking How To Keep Axon Out. Boerne Signed With Them Last September.

I keep seeing comments about not letting Axon into Boerne.

I need you to know something. They’re already here. The city signed a ten-year, $3,158,714.65 contract on September 23, 2025. Cameras and equipment started arriving that November.

It passed on the consent agenda. One motion. No presentation. No discussion. Bundled with a set of meeting minutes, an animal control agreement, and a purchase of network switches.

But it isn’t over, and here’s why: Boerne has 13 days.

The final public hearing on the city budget is Tuesday, September 8 at 6:00 p.m., and the vote to adopt happens at that same meeting. The first hearing was last night. Almost nobody was there.

Here's what I found in the city's own documents this week.

FIRST, SO NOBODY HAS TO GUESS WHERE I STAND

Body cameras are good. Tasers are good. Body cameras protect residents and officers both, and a Taser beats a firearm. Nobody is asking the city to give those up.

My concerns are specific, and they're about surveillance infrastructure that came bundled alongside equipment nobody objects to.

CONTRACT ONE — FLOCK, FEBRUARY 2024

A five-year, $225,000 agreement with Flock Safety. 12 license plate reader cameras plus the software platform. $45,000 a year. No grant money — straight city general fund.

The city's own figures at the time: 768,651 plate reads in 30 days, 146,442 unique plates, from 24 cameras. Boerne has about 20,000 people.

The city also reported access to a network of 1,596 cameras across the state and country, described as "growing weekly."

It was approved on the CONSENT AGENDA, February 13, 2024. One motion, bundled with the previous meeting's minutes, a board appointment, and a budget amendment for playground equipment. No presentation. No discussion. The minutes record that no guests were in the audience and no public comments were received.

CONTRACT TWO — AXON, SEPTEMBER 2025

A TEN-YEAR agreement for $3,158,714.65. That's $315,871 every year through 2034.

It includes body cameras and Tasers, which I support. It also includes:

- 25 patrol car cameras with license plate reader capability. A fixed camera watches one intersection. These move.
- Axon Fusus, a real-time crime center platform, with a license for 150 additional camera streams pulled into a police dashboard. I still don't know whose cameras those are.
- Over $1,000,000 in AI tools across ten years, including "any others developed throughout the contract."
- A drone.

It was approved on the CONSENT AGENDA, September 23, 2025. Item C. One motion, bundled with the September 9 minutes, an animal control agreement with Fair Oaks Ranch, and $202,027.96 worth of network switches. Carried 5-0. No presentation. No discussion.

THE PART THAT SHOULD BOTHER EVERYONE

The Axon quote expired September 25, 2025. Council voted September 23.

The drone and the entire AI package — roughly $750,000 in stated value — were conditioned on signing by the 25th.

A ten-year, three-million-dollar public decision was made against a vendor's two-day sales deadline, with no discussion, on a consent agenda.

And both agenda summaries — Flock in 2024, Axon in 2025 — have a field on the city's own form labeled "Citizen Input/Board Review."

Both times, the entry reads: "N/A."

I WANT TO BE FAIR ABOUT SOMETHING

I'm not blaming five council members. Any council member could have pulled either item for discussion. So could any resident — the consent agenda language says so explicitly.

Nobody knew to ask. That's the actual problem.

On the night the Axon contract passed, seven residents came and spoke — about Buc-ee's, and about flooding near the wastewater plant. The room was full. People were paying attention. The surveillance contract just wasn't something anyone knew was on the table.

A $3.1 million ten-year surveillance agreement and a box of network switches got the same amount of council attention. Which was none.

That's a process problem, and process problems get fixed without anybody having to be the villain.

AND HERE'S THE PART I CAN'T EXPLAIN

I read the FY2027 proposed budget. All of it.

I cannot find Flock or Axon anywhere in it.

No line for either vendor. No line for license plate readers. The Police Department budget is $8.67 million and 95% of that is personnel. Its Equipment Maintenance line actually DROPS from $386,273 this year to $61,500 next year. Software Maintenance is zero.

So roughly $360,000 a year in surveillance spending — $315,871 to Axon and about $45,000 to Flock — isn't visible where you'd expect to find it.

I want to be careful here, and I don’t know for sure yet. It's probably in the IT department budget, which the city says handles "surveillance systems." There may be a more detailed line-item version I haven't seen. We need to ask the Finance Director.

But that IS the question, and I think it's a fair one:

If a resident sits down with the proposed budget, can they find the $360,000 a year this city spends watching them?

I couldn't. I'd genuinely like to be shown where it is.

WHAT I STILL DON'T KNOW

Saying this out loud on purpose. I don't know which 150 camera streams Fusus is ingesting. I don't know whether there's any written policy governing the plate readers or the drone. I don't know the current Flock camera count. I don't know whether Boerne's data is shared outside Texas.

We need to ask. When I know, you'll know.

WHY 13 DAYS

Boerne's fiscal year starts October 1.

The first public hearing on the FY2027 budget was August 25. The second and final hearing is TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 AT 6:00 P.M. — and the ordinance adopting the budget gets its final reading at that same meeting.

Both the Flock and Axon contracts allow the city to terminate if funds are not appropriated. Which means the budget IS the decision. Once it's adopted, we're talking about next year.

City Council Chambers, 447 North Main Street. 6:00 p.m.

If you have ever thought about showing up to one city meeting in your life, this is the one.

WHAT WE'RE ASKING FOR

Not cancellation of body cameras. Not a fight with Chief Perez or his department.

1. NO SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY ON A CONSENT AGENDA. Ever. Regular agenda, staff presentation, public comment first. This is the whole ballgame and it costs the city nothing.

2. A public workshop on the city's surveillance technology before the FY2027 budget is adopted — what we have, what it costs, and who can access the data.

3. Written, published policy for the plate readers and the drone: when they're used, what's retained, who can search it, and how often it's audited.

4. Opt out of Axon's Customer Experience Improvement Program. Boerne is enrolled by default under Axon's own terms and can revoke consent with a single email. Free, immediate, and it could happen this week.

HOW TO HELP

Email the mayor and city council. Ask for the workshop and the consent agenda rule. Contact info is on the city website. Short, civil, specific.

Show up September 8.

If you want to help read documents, message me. There's more paperwork than one person can get through.

Everything above comes from the City of Boerne's own agenda packets, resolutions, minutes, budget, and the signed contracts. Happy to send the documents to anyone who wants to check my work.

Kendall County went 5-0 because people showed up with facts and stayed decent about it.

Boerne has 13 days. See you September 8.

Original Kendall County Petition:

Kendall County Has Renewed a Surveillance Program Twice Without Ever Asking Us

On October 14, 2025, the Kendall County Commissioners Court approved a License Agreement with Flock Safety Group, Inc., a Georgia corporation, allowing automated license plate reader cameras in county right-of-way. The vote was 3–2.

On April 28, 2026, the Court voted 4–1 to apply for a second state grant to continue the program. The county’s own agenda request states the purpose plainly: to continue the lease and deployment of the Flock license plate readers. The grant period begins October 1, 2026.

In between those two votes, there was never a public hearing. Not one. No resident of this county has ever been given three minutes at a podium to say anything about it before a decision was made.

That is what this petition is about.

What the county bought. 56 cameras — 38 standard plate readers, 14 long-range readers, and 4 solar PTZ video cameras. Year one cost $258,305, covered by a state grant. The recurring cost is $198,550 every year, with a county match of $39,710 on the current grant application.

What it does. These cameras don’t photograph suspects. They photograph everyone. Every vehicle that passes, logged with time and location, held for 30 days, searchable. Flock operates a national network connecting thousands of agencies, and departments far outside Texas can query where a vehicle has been without a warrant and without notice. Communities across the country have discovered after the fact that their data was shared more broadly than their own officials understood.

What the paperwork says.

The camera locations were deliberately excluded from the signed agreement. Public roads, public money, undisclosed placement.

Kendall County isn’t permitted to move, adjust, or take possession of the cameras. We pay $198,550 a year and own none of the equipment.

The county granted Flock an irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide license to use our data to improve their products — and that provision survives even if the agreement ends.

Residents have no standing whatsoever. The contract states that none of its provisions are enforceable by third parties. Disputes go to arbitration under Georgia law, and Flock’s total liability is capped at what the county paid the prior year.

The agreement auto-renews for 24 months unless written notice is given at least 30 days before the term ends.

There was no competitive bid. It was purchased off a cooperative purchasing contract.

This is not about distrusting our deputies. Plate readers do sometimes help recover stolen vehicles and locate missing people. Nobody signing this denies that. The question is what we agreed to in exchange, for how long, shared with whom, at what cost — and whether the people being watched ever get asked.

That principle isn’t complicated, and this county claims to hold it: government doesn’t build records on citizens who have done nothing wrong without asking them first.

What we are asking for.

Before the October 1 grant period begins, we ask the Kendall County Commissioners Court to hold a posted public hearing on the Flock program, with time for residents to speak.

We further ask that before the program continues:

 1. Publish what these cameras have actually produced — arrests, clearances, and recoveries attributable to them since installation.

 2. Disclose every agency, in Texas and outside it, that can search Kendall County data, and end all sharing beyond this county.

 3. Shorten the 30-day retention period and publish quarterly audits of who searched the system and why.

 4. Publish the camera validation date and the contract renewal deadline, so no two-year obligation attaches automatically without a public vote.

 5. Commit that no future surveillance system is acquired or renewed without a posted public hearing first.

We are not asking any commissioner to reverse a vote. We are asking for the hearing that should have preceded both of them.

Commissioners Court meets the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays at 9:00 a.m., 201 East San Antonio Avenue, Boerne. To speak, submit a Public Participation Form to the Judge’s Court Coordinator by 8:00 a.m. that morning.

Two grant cycles. Zero public hearings. Sign to ask for one.

Every figure above comes from Kendall County’s own agenda packets and Flock Safety’s published contract terms. Source documents available on request.