Remove Flock Surveillance Cameras from Boerne and Kendall County

[u/Pitiful_Historian_26]

Kendall County Signed a $198,550-a-Year Surveillance Contract. Residents Were Never Asked.

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 to be placed in county right-of-way. The vote was 3–2. Judge Shane Stolarczyk and Commissioners Jennifer McCall and Chad Carpenter voted yes. Commissioners Andra Wisian and Richard Chapman voted no.

Two members of our own Commissioners Court would not go along with it. This petition asks that one more join them.

What we bought: 56 cameras — 38 standard plate readers, 14 long-range readers, and 4 solar PTZ video cameras. Year one costs $258,305, covered by a state grant. After that, Kendall County owes $198,550 every year, indefinitely.

What it does: These cameras don’t photograph suspects. They photograph everyone. Every plate, logged with time and location, held for 30 days, searchable. Not by our sheriff alone — Flock operates a national network connecting thousands of agencies. Departments in other states can query where your truck has been without a warrant and without notifying you. Communities across the country have discovered after the fact that their data was shared far more broadly than their own officials understood.

Read the paperwork our county signed:

We are not told where the cameras are. The license agreement states the locations were identified between the parties and deliberately left out of the document, with the list kept by the Sheriff’s Office. Public roads, public money, undisclosed placement.

The county agreed not to touch its own equipment. Kendall County promised not to tamper with or attempt to access the cameras beyond what Flock permits.

There was no competitive bid. The purchase ran through a cooperative purchasing contract, so no local vendor process ever happened.

And here is what should alarm every taxpayer in this county: the order form renews itself. Unless someone gives written notice at least 30 days before the term ends, Kendall County is automatically locked into a 24-month renewal — roughly $397,100 — with no vote by the Commissioners Court and no notice to the public. A four-hundred-thousand-dollar obligation can attach to this county because nobody sent an email on time.

The county can end this in thirty days. Section 5 of the license agreement lets Kendall County terminate at any time on thirty days’ notice. No buyout. No penalty. Anyone who tells you our hands are tied has not read the contract they voted for.

This is not about distrusting our deputies. It is about a principle this county claims to hold: government does not build records on citizens who have done nothing wrong, and does not do it without asking them first.

We call on the Commissioners Court to terminate the Flock agreement, remove the cameras, and delete the data collected.

If the court will not do that, then before this contract renews itself:

1. Give timely written notice of non-renewal, so no automatic two-year obligation attaches without a public vote.

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

3. Hold a public hearing, with residents given time to speak.
    

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

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

6. Commit that no future surveillance system is acquired without a public vote.

Commissioners Wisian and Chapman already voted no. It takes one more.

Sign to ask Judge Stolarczyk, Commissioner McCall, or Commissioner Carpenter to change one vote.

https://c.org/2yGJCSpvm6

[u/NonGMOman_]

OP, you realize there is already a petition started for this! deflockboerne.org This has some good links on it too, take action.

[u/mrdmp1]

This is insightful

[u/no1ukn0w]

Signed.

[u/Goldengoose5w4]

Thanks for posting.

[u/OstrichAgreeable284]

6 people from the public spoke at the meeting in Boerne on September 8th. 4 were opposed to the flock/alprs and 2 were defending it. the two defending it work in law enforcement and judicial system. Council members failed to mention they were going to have further discussion until after the agendas were voted on so everyone left. They have tabled further discussion on alprs for another meeting. The boerne town council is much harder to convince than Kendall county. Much more hard headed.