the Terror of Coral Hill

Hayworth not Hayward

HOW CAN I HELP?
So glad you asked!

Come to the Coralville city council meeting on Tuesday, September 23, 2025 at 6:30 pm.

Contact Mayor Foster and Coralville city councilors and let them know your opinion.

coralville.org/92/City-Coun...

CONSEQUENCES

Three of the five councilors who will vote on this contract will be on the November 4, 2025 ballot. Mike Knudson and Hai Huynh are running to be re-elected to council and Laurie Goodrich is running for mayor.

We oppose the contract itself as well as the way that the public was circumvented in these negotiations. We will ask the council to end the contract.

*Flock is a shared data network with cooperating agencies all over the world so any policies that attempt to limit Coralville have no effect on the data that Coralville pours into the shared network.

End the contract with Flock
Keep the contract with Flock and add the policies* proposed at the August 26, 2025 meeting.
Keep the contract with Flock with no added policies.

NEXT

September 23, 2025 – Coralville will be bringing a Flock sales rep to the council meeting and council plans to vote on one of the three following options:

August 28, 2025– Coralville resident provides Mayor Foster and city councilors with the $36,000 two-year Flock contract obtained by asking the City Clerk. This is the first time any of them have seen the contract.

August 26, 2025 – Continued public outcry at the city council meeting. Council introduces policy proposals for a contract that none of them have seen.

July 8, 2025 – Nine members of the public speak up at the Coralville city council meeting in opposition to Coralville joining the Flock network.

August 20, 2025 ACLU community briefing about the constitutional concerns of the Flock network.

June 24, 2025 – Trevor Chandler, Director of Public Affairs for Flock, attends council work session.

June 25, 2025 – Article published in local news acknowledges Coralville’s plan to join the Flock surveillance network.

May 12, 2025 – Chief Nicholson signs a two-year $36,000 contract with Flock without having discussed any specifics with Mayor Foster or Coralville city councilors and without the public being informed in any significant way.

May 8, 2025 – Emails between Chief Nicholson and City Manager Hayward obtained through a FOIA request do not demonstrate any interest in informing the public about the pending contract.

April 22, 2025 – Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Public Hearing – in this meeting, Finance Director Ann Hester repeats Chief Nicholson’s list from January 14, 2025.

TIMELINE

January 14, 2025 – Council Work Session – in the minutes for this session, Chief Nicholson buried “license plate recognition system” in a paragraph listing a total of seven budget increases.

The public was informed of this effort for the first time in a news article on June 25, 2025 covering a council work session on June 24, 2025.

Work sessions are open to the public but are not video recorded like regular council meetings.

Eastern Iowa residents say AI surveillance cameras lack transparency and regulation Community members in eastern Iowa are bringing attention to a new surveillance technology that’s been quietly rolled out across the state. It’s a tool that helps law enforcement agencies track vehicle...

Photo is from this excellent piece by James Kelley for Iowa Public Radio: www.iowapublicradio.org/ipr-news/202...

A large combination of people gathered at a city council meeting.

The massive nationwide effort by the private surveillance company Flock to establish contracts leasing their automated license plate readers arrived in Coralville, Iowa in January of 2025.

This is our timeline. Please keep reading.

Links to everything mentioned are available at JoCo7.org

Coralville Campaign Kick-off Sunday September from 12-2 pm Diversione 119 2nd St, Suite 300 in Coralville Ryan Swenka for Coralville Mayor Katie Freeman for Coralville Council

Join us for the shared Coralville Campaign Kick-off for Ryan Swenka and Katie Freeman this Sunday Sept 14 from 12-2 pm at Diversions Tabletop Game Lounge - 119 2nd St, Ste 300 in Coralville.

Swenka is running for Coralville Mayor and Freeman is running for Coralville Council.

All are welcome!

YouTube video by Louis Rossmann Taxpayer funded AI surveillance: why Flock's 30000 cameras have to go

Whoops, we’re famous.

Louis Rossmann is correct that “…this isn’t left vs. right, it’s up vs. down”.

youtu.be/4RM09nKczVs?...

When you say “I’m not political”, I hear “I have an abundance of privilege and a dearth of compassion.”

Finally, here’s an excellent explanation by Benn Jordan of why we don’t want commercial surveillance in our community: youtu.be/Pp9MwZkHiMQion

Why I voted to cancel Oak Park's contract with Flock (and so should you) On August 5th, 2025, I voted along with the 5-2 majority on the Oak Park Village Board to cancel our contract with Flock Safety, Inc and deactivate the 8 Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) cameras ...

Here’s a great opinion piece by Oak Park councilor Derek Eder on the decision to vote to cancel Oak Park’s Flock contract: derekeder.com/blog/why-i-v...

Here it is : rockhardcauc.us/CoralvilleFl...

The central farce of last night’s meeting is that council discussed a policy for a contract that none of them had seen despite the chief signing it over three months ago. We acquired the contract by asking the city clerk for it. I can’t speak to why councilors also didn’t seek out the contract.

I have asked that they also bring in Becca and/or Pete from ACLU of Iowa to that same meeting. I’ll report back if anything comes of that suggestion.

The update from last night is that there is no update. Coralville has an active contract with Flock Surveillance, a private company based in Delaware. The only forward motion is that the city has decided to bring a Flock salesman back to a future meeting for further “discussion” (sales pitch).

As an answer to that, I’m attaching a slide from the work session after the council meeting where the chief presened Coralville “major crimes” statistics from the last year that were far from convincing.

Another statement I really liked last night was from a Coralville resident named Ralph who asked the question of what problem we are aiming to solve with this massive surveillance investment.

Among other important points, Guillermo spoke about the board’s observations of the ways in which surveillance disproportionately affects immigrants and Black and brown people in our community.