The Lakeport City Council voted Tuesday night to keep the Intelvi AI cameras police have run in city parks since March. It approved a year-to-year contract with Intelvi AI Corp. worth up to $140,900 over five years.
The vote was by voice, with no one opposed. No one from the public spoke on the item, in the room or on Zoom. All five council members answered roll call at the start of the meeting, according to the city’s recording.
The council took staff’s terms as written. Police Chief Dale Stoebe can sign a first-year contract of up to $32,500, then renew it four times at up to $27,100 a year without going back to the council. At the end of the five years, staff are to report on how well the system worked, what it cost and whether it is still needed, and return to the council before continuing it.
The cameras went up as a six-month pilot that never came to a council vote, the Gazette reported Tuesday. The pilot ended, and the cameras stayed up while the council decided.
What police told the council
Lt. Ryan Cooley, who wrote the staff report, presented it. The final setup is 13 fixed cameras, three of them with 180-degree lenses. None can be panned or zoomed remotely. The system reads license plates and records video. It also logs what users search for, “which provides an audit trail for review and accountability,” Cooley said.
A council member asked whether the cameras had helped solve any crimes. Police said they had, and pointed to a recent stabbing in a city park. Without the cameras, “we would probably not have been able to identify what happened so quickly,” police told the council. “It did capture almost all of it.”
Asked who else can see the data, police said Lakeport police have the license plate side, and some public works employees can see camera video for vandalism cases. No outside departments have access, they said. The city’s separate Flock Safety plate readers, in use since 2022, give Lakeport statewide and nationwide plate lookups.
Twelve of the 13 Intelvi cameras run from First Street through the city’s parks, police said. The 13th is in the dirt parking lot at Westside Community Park.
What council members said
Mayor Pro Tem Stacey Mattina said she knows not everyone is comfortable with cameras. “But I think we should make it clear these are not Flock cameras,” she said. “It’s such a benefit for a small department to have these working full-time for them.”
Another council member pointed to Intelvi’s privacy policy in the meeting packet, which says the city owns the video and plate data. The same member said that putting up fake cameras at a boat rental business on Main Street once kept people from “lingering around.” A third said, “This is not about surveillance, this is about public safety.”
After the vote, a council member said that seeing Flock’s name in the packet made them “grateful that, for whatever reason, we didn’t use the Flock, because it’s got a very negative connotation.”
No one on the council asked how long the city will keep the video. The motion doesn’t set a retention period, and neither does the staff report. Intelvi’s privacy policy leaves it to the city.
Animal control rates go up
The council also approved, by voice vote with no one opposed, a rewritten animal control agreement with Lake County that replaces one from 2010. It takes effect as of July 1 and raises the city’s yearly cap from $30,000 to $50,000. The county’s hourly field rate rises from $55 to $100. The agreement goes next to the county Board of Supervisors.
Rae Smith, director of Lake County Animal Care and Control, told the council by Zoom that the county shelter has no veterinarian and has been trying to hire one for years. Across the county, Smith said, everyone is asking the same thing: “What are we going to do about our overpopulation crisis?”
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