My 2 cents on FLOCK CAMERAS at the Lago Vista, TX City Council meeting - 8/6/26 Public Comment

Our Take

Credit to the creator behind THE TIME IS NOW for documenting something we don't see enough of: a city council actually listening. Lago Vista's unanimous vote to end its Flock Safety contract didn't happen in a vacuum — it happened because residents showed up, spoke plainly about the risks of handing a private company a rolling database of everyone's movements, and refused to let "public safety" marketing go unquestioned. That's the playbook. Flock's pitch to small towns is always the same — low crime, easy grant money, minimal oversight — and it works until someone in the room asks who actually owns the data and who can query it.

The vlogger's ambivalence is worth sitting with too. A council of five or seven people can kill or keep a surveillance contract with a single vote, which cuts both ways: it's how Lago Vista got out fast, but it's also how hundreds of other towns got locked in without ever putting it to a real public referendum. Councils move fast on vendor contracts and slow on civil liberties, so public comment is often the only friction point residents get. When that friction is organized and specific, it clearly moves votes — even in towns that lean conservative and pro-police, where you'd assume this stuff sails through unchallenged.

This is exactly the kind of local win that doesn't make national news but should. If Flock cameras are operating near you, check our camera map to see what's already been deployed, and if you want to push your own council toward a Lago Vista outcome, our take-action page has the tools to help you get organized before the next vote.