Lakeport police have had cameras from a vendor called Intelvi AI Corp. up since early March. On Tuesday the City Council decides whether to pay for them.
The council meets at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 225 Park St. Staff are asking the council to let Police Chief Dale Stoebe sign a year-to-year contract with Intelvi capped at $140,900 over five years. The first year costs $32,500. After that the chief could sign up to four renewals at $27,100 each on his own. Lake County News, which previewed the agenda Tuesday, put the figure at $140,000. The packet says $140,900.
The cameras went up as a six-month pilot. The staff report, written by Lt. Ryan Cooley, calls the pilot “expired” and says the cameras “remain installed pending the City’s decision on whether to continue the program.” If the council says no, or sends the item back to staff, the report says the cameras would come down.
No council vote put them up. A review of the city’s posted agendas for 2025 and 2026 found no item on Intelvi or a camera pilot. The record is two sentences in the minutes. On Jan. 6, Stoebe “reported that Intelvi AI would be conducting a site visit on Friday for the demo trial of the technology.” On March 3 he reported the company “is finishing the installation of the remaining public safety cameras this week.” The city has posted no minutes since May 5. The city’s 2026-27 budget carries a $50,000 line for “Intelvi AI cameras.”
What the cameras do
Intelvi’s quote, dated Oct. 15 and billed to Stoebe, lists four license plate reader cameras, six video security cameras and three 180-degree panoramic cameras, at $1,900 to $2,700 a year each, plus $5,400 to install the final 13-camera configuration. Each camera comes with 90 days of video storage. The cameras are fixed and can’t be panned or zoomed remotely, which the report calls “a more appropriate setting in low staffing environments.” The pilot, it says, “identified areas within City parks that would benefit from a wider field of view,” which is what the three panoramic cameras are for. Beyond city parks, the staff report doesn’t say where the cameras are.
On its website, Intelvi describes its cameras as plate readers that also record video around the clock, with alerts when a plate on a hotlist goes by and a search tool that jumps from a partial plate to the moment it passed.
Lakeport already has plate readers. The council approved eight Flock Safety cameras in January 2022 on a 4-1 vote and extended that contract for five years in January 2024, at $25,000 a year for 10 cameras, two of them added for the Lakeport Unified School District. Flock keeps the data 30 days and gives Lakeport statewide and nationwide plate lookups. What the city didn’t have, Stoebe told The Press Democrat in January, was fixed video cameras, “which the community was less supportive of.” He said then that the department was exploring a trial with Intelvi because of problems in the parks after hours, and that the system could alert police when motion is detected for a set stretch of time inside set hours.
A new vendor
Intelvi AI Corp. gives a Venice, California, address on its quote. Corporate records list it as a Delaware corporation registered to do business in California with a mailing address in Eastvale. Its web domain was registered in January 2025. The company’s website names four police departments as case studies, each with one sentence about the town and nothing about the cameras. Lakeport is first on the list. A search found no news coverage of an Intelvi deployment anywhere else.
The city didn’t put the work out to bid. Staff gathered proposals from Intelvi, Flock, Axon Enterprise and Verkada through a purchasing consultant, AMS.NET, and the report says they “should not be viewed as identical bids that can be evaluated on total price alone.” Flock offered eight solar pan-tilt-zoom cameras and one fixed camera for $107,250 over three years. Verkada quoted $86,917 for 10 cameras over three years, plus networking equipment. Axon priced 11 plate-reader cameras at $134,969 over five years and then withdrew from the broader camera project. Staff picked Intelvi because the first year fits what’s already budgeted, the one-year term is more flexible, and keeping the cameras that are already up avoids “the removal, replacement, and transition work that would accompany a change to another provider.”
Who owns the footage
There’s no draft contract in the packet. In its place is Intelvi’s two-page customer privacy policy. It says the city owns the video, plate reads, search logs and alerts; that Intelvi won’t sell or share the data; that the system has no cross-customer plate lookup, so other agencies see Lakeport’s data only if Lakeport lets them; and that the data is stored on Amazon Web Services’ GovCloud, which the policy describes as “an environment designed for sensitive and regulated workloads.” Retention is up to the city, and the staff report doesn’t set a period. The policy says the signed agreement governs if the two conflict. The AI in the program’s name, as the staff report describes it, is license plate recognition, “analytical features” and real-time notifications. The 80-page packet doesn’t mention facial recognition. The staff report cites no crime numbers and no results from the pilot beyond staff’s judgment that the system “adequately meets the Department’s identified public safety camera needs.”
Animal control fees nearly double
Also Tuesday, City Manager Kevin Ingram brings a rewritten animal-control agreement with Lake County, replacing one from 2010. The county’s hourly field rate goes from $55 to $100, after-hours calls are billed at time and a half with a three-hour minimum, at least $450, and the city’s annual cap rises from $30,000 to $50,000. Lakeport police stay the first call for animal complaints and the city keeps licensing. The council also hears a presentation on the Regional Housing Trust Fund.
Comments can be emailed to virtualhost@cityoflakeport.com before 3:30 p.m. The meeting is also on Zoom, webinar ID 973 6820 1787, access code 477973.