I nearly spit my coffee out when I read the latest City Council agenda.

Ok, I’m easily amused. But c’mon, after hours of public comment excoriating the city’s contract with Flock Safety, and after candidates for office have been raked over the coals for weeks by angry activists because of the City Council’s decision to keep the cameras, you’ve got to admit: it’s pretty funny that the Chief of Police wants the City Council, right now, during election season, to approve the purchase of an additional police drone as well as three docking stations to house them across the city (where, of course, is not disclosed in the Agenda Report).

Better yet, the contract is with Axon Enterprise, Inc. (in partnership with the much cuddlier-sounding, but also more Skynet-adjacent, Skydio Inc.). While Axon is not Flock, some might think it’s even worse: Axon made headlines last year when President Donald Trump invested at least $1 million in the company just weeks before U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) put out a request for proposals for $220 million worth of tasers, which just happened to describe in detail the specifications of tasers that only Axon makes. While the contract has not been formally awarded, the situation raised the eyebrows of ethics watchdogs in Washington.

Ah well.

Setting those issues aside, there are reasons to be less worried about drones than about Flock. Unlike Flock cameras, the drones only turn on when the Costa Mesa Police Department (CMPD) needs them; they aren’t a persistent surveillance tool like ALPRs. Additionally, Federal Aviation Administration requirements limit flights to pilots holding remote pilot certificates, and only 24 CMPD personnel currently hold that credential. Compare that to the over 170 authorized Flock users in the city. With fewer operators, there are fewer opportunities for abuse.

And drones are genuinely useful. They can do things that no officer in a vehicle can — fly straight as the crow flies to emergency calls; scan dense, biologically sensitive habitats in Fairview Park for illegal campsites; follow hoodlums on motorcycles off-road and up the Santa Ana River Trail; take aerial footage of stakeout locations; and much more. It makes sense that the CMPD would want to gradually build out its drone force to cover the entire city.

That said, there are also reasons to exercise caution. Once again the CMPD leans on vagueness and weasel words to describe the guardrails on the program:

Hey, CMPD, let me help you: if the program is “not intended” for routine patrols, discretionary (!) surveillance, or immigration enforcement (!!), you should replace “not intended” with “cannot”, “will not”, or “it would violate law and policy to use drones for”. Additionally, it’s bad form say the program will “include accountability […] measures” when you don’t say what that accountability might be! Will drone pilots that abuse their privileges lose their licenses? Face possible suspension? Get a stern talking-to by the Chief?

I also expect activists may key-in on the last sentence regarding “authorized personnel”. As I said above, I feel pretty comfortable we can keep an eye on 24 drone pilots to safeguard against unauthorized flights. But I’ll feel a lot less comfortable if it turns out the footage captured by drones lives on forever in an offsite server that can be accessed at any time, for any reason, by hundreds of other police departments and their “authorized personnel”.

We really, really need a data protection and artificial intelligence policy, if only to save the CMPD agenda report writers from inadvertently leading the City Council into another political debacle.

Anyways, even if people do get riled up about these drones, they’re going to have to wait an absurdly long time to get their time to comment. The item has been slotted all the way at the back of an otherwise packed agenda. In fact, a suspicious mind might conclude that this positioning was intentional, either to try and drain protesters’ energy or ice them if the City Council decides to boot the item to the next meeting.

Good thing I’m the trusting type. Let’s turn to what those folks will be waiting through.

The rest of the agenda: packed, as agendas running up to elections ought to be

There’s a lot here, but I’m just going to go over it briefly because, well, I’m tired, fam.

• The Closed Session agenda has a mysterious reference to a real property negotiation at 3303 Hyland Avenue, which is odd because that’s a big box store (Ferguson Home, previously the PIRCH appliance store in the SOCO Collection). This item was first picked up on by Costa Mesa 1st from the last agenda. What could the city want with a property like that? 🤔
• The Consent Calendar will probably get through without anyone pulling an item. If something is pulled for discussion, I’d place my bets on the OCTA award of a grant supporting the senior transportation program — not because the grant is controversial, but because the senior transportation program had to be substantially slimmed down after overwhelming demand blew up its budget.
• The looming item involving the Ohio House sober living home on Wilson Street, which has been agendized and continued for several meetings now, will finally come forward. Sorta: while this looks like a meaty item, I wonder if the discussion will be brief because the City Council’s recommended action is actually procedural rather than substantive. Rather than making a final determination on the Ohio House’s permit to operate, the City Council is being asked to remand the sober living home’s application back to the city’s zoning administrator for reconsideration following some updates to State law, and then schedule a hearing on Ohio House’s conditional use permit for October 20. So this might be less dramatic than it seems, at least this time around.
• Yes, the Fairview Developmental Center Specific Plan is back, but it’s only to reaffirm the changes made a couple weeks ago. I figured that the substantial surgery Mayor John Stephens orchestrated from the dais would probably require the zoning amendments to come back for a second reading, and here we are. That said, unless the Staff has come up with some problem with the changes in the interim, I expect this one to sail through with minimal discussion.
• The City Council will review the final plans for the expansion of Shalimar Park, which may or may not include a community center for that neighborhood.
• The City Council will also consider a proposal from Public Works to lower speed limits to 20 mph (possibly 15 mph under certain conditions) in school zones.
• The Council will also consider the provocatively titled “Fair Drive for All” project. Once again, the grant wizards in the Public Works department have cobbled together hundreds of thousands of dollars of free money to tackle another road project, this time right in the City Council’s front yard. The project looks like it could be pretty substantial, including adding center medians and (eat your heart out, Sean Duffy) bike lanes and pedestrian crossings. The only thing I’ll say about this is: a couple of Earth Days ago, Council Member Arlis Reynolds organized a bike ride around the Fairgrounds that began and ended at City Hall. Fair Drive was so dangerous that the community ride required a police motorcycle escort to ensure the safety of the participants. So, yeah, I’m ok with this.

There are a few other happenings around town outside the four corners of the City Council agenda that I also think are worth briefly touching on:

• I know it’s paywalled, but this update from the Orange County Business Journal jumped out at me: LAB Holding Co., which is owned by the developer behind the LAB Anti-Mall and The CAMP, has purchased the former Pep Boys location on Bristol Avenue. That has to mean the Sadeghis are cooking up something new over there. Should be exciting to watch!
• The Newport-Mesa Unified School District’s “e-bike ban” at local middle schools has resulted in a predictable consequence: the kids are still riding, they are just parking their e-bikes in parallel parking spaces in adjacent neighborhoods. Hey, y’all wanted them to ride on the road and obey traffic signals like any other vehicle. Feels like fair game for them to take up parking like any other vehicle. It’s good to see NMUSD really thought this one through.
• Costa Mesa’s animal shelter saga is back in the news again, and sadly for all the wrong reasons. It sure looks like the CMPD is going around the Animal Services Committee to get straight to a contract with WAGS of Westminster, our current shelter provider after the city’s relationship with Priceless Pets spectacularly collapsed this past spring. Yeah, I’ll say it: if we aren’t going to allow the Animal Services Committee to give advice and commentary on the animal shelter contract, the city should disband the committee altogether. At this point, they seem to just be human shields held up by the city and the CMPD to avoid accountability for their animal shelter policies.
• Finally, the Costa Mesa Planning Commission limped through its meeting this past Monday with only four members in attendance (!). Thankfully they didn’t approve anything of importance — just the largest mass rezoning in recent city history, as they approved the entire Neighborhoods Where We All Belong package covering all Measure K sites. This gargantuan land use overhaul passed with only three votes, which is short of a majority of the body as a whole. Oh well. I guess it will be up to the City Council to again do the heavy lifting to get the public comfortable with pretty significant change.