Arden Hills City Council 9.19.26
The short version: A League of Women Voters forum lets Arden Hills council candidates field voter questions, a reminder that local elections quietly decide ALPR policy.
Our Take
Credit to the League of Women Voters of the White Bear Lake Area for doing the unglamorous work of putting Arden Hills candidates Jess Birken, Ben Lindau, and David Radzeij in front of voters and letting them answer real questions. Forums like this rarely make headlines, but they're exactly where decisions about police budgets, surveillance contracts, and Flock Safety camera deployments actually get made — not in some distant statehouse, but at a folding table in a city council chamber.
We don't know from the description whether ALPRs came up directly in this particular session, and we're not going to pretend they did. But that's precisely the point: these are the races where a single council vote can quietly approve a network of license plate readers with little public debate, and where a candidate's answer to a seemingly unrelated budget question often reveals exactly where they stand on surveillance expansion.
If you live in or near Arden Hills, watch the full forum and press these candidates directly on whether they support ALPR deployment, what oversight they'd demand, and how they'd protect residents' location data. Then check our camera map to see what's already watching your streets, and use our take-action guide to turn that information into pressure on whoever wins this seat.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of League of Women Voters of White Bear Lake Area, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.