Springfield Mayor Jeff Schrag held a press availability Tuesday afternoon to talk about the Flock camera resolution vote Monday night. City Council voted 5-3 to send the resolution to the Plans and Policies Committee before a public hearing was held, which angered people in the crowd. Two people were cited for disrupting a city council meeting.
Schrag said he made the motion to refer the resolution to committee because he wanted a broader set of research parameters.
"We had a questionnaire, but what if in the middle of those questions other questions came up?" he said. "What if folks add other things? And so, I felt like the broadest approach was best for the citizens."
He said he felt the public hearing wasn't needed on the resolution Monday night since it wasn't a policy question, "there was just do we or do we not do research?" he said. "Public hearings, I believe, are designed for people to say, 'okay, there's a specific policy here, and I think we should do this with the policy.' "
Schrag believes council was unanimous in wanting to research the issue of ALPR cameras further.
But Councilman Brandon Jenson who sponsored the resolution, said he was really disappointed by the motion and the vote. He said he feels that what happened Monday night was not good governance.
"It has removed the public's ability to provide meaningful input on the front end," he said. "And, while there may be unanimous agreement that further research needs to be done, there was very clearly disagreement on how we should approach that responsibility. And I think that, more than anything, is what we saw play out last night and what we see as the basis for the public response."
Jenson said allowing the public to speak might have given council more information to use moving forward.
Isaac Protiva with Flock Out SGF, a group working to get Flock cameras out of Springfield, was at the meeting to support those who were scheduled to speak. He's disappointed with the outcome.
"Another council member, I think, summed it up pretty well when they said, 'committee is where bills go to die,' " he said. "There's not a deadline on it until the middle of next year for anything to happen, and we just see that as a timeline that's too slow. And, additionally, the public can't just sign up to go speak at a committee meeting. That's what city council is for. And there's precedent for...similar bills passing, even earlier this year, looking into the police department, that was passed by city council and not sent to committee. This is not the type of bill that should be sent to the committee. And, really, the only takeaway we can take from this is that it was really just to bypass the public comment at city council."
Protiva said he knows someone who took the day off work to prepare to speak at the council meeting.
Jenson said he learned of Schrag's intent to make a motion to move the resolution to committee three hours before the meeting. He said he's disappointed he wasn't given more notice. Schrag said he admits he could have allowed more time to visit with Jenson, but he said he doesn't know if it would have changed the outcome.
The Plans and Policies Committee is chaired by Councilman Abe McGull.
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