Everything on this site traces back to documents like these. Read them yourself.
The May 12, 2026 vote: official record
- Meeting Minutes: confirms 6–1 on both RTIC items, all seven members present, Roney the sole no; records 22 speakers in opposition. Motion text verbatim: Hess moved, Ullman seconded, on both items.
- Action Agenda · Resolutions PDF · Ordinances · full documents folder
- Staff reports: Item B.1: RTIC grant · Item B.2: Axon contract
- Full video, and my timestamped reconstruction
- What was enacted: Resolution 26-97 (civil-liberties resolution) · Resolution 26-98 (DOJ grant acceptance) · Ordinance 5222 ($1,141,255.56 budget amendment) · Resolution 26-99 (Axon contract authorization, Sourcewell cooperative pricing)
What’s still not public: the executed Axon contract itself. Resolution 26-99 authorized the City Manager to sign it. The signed contract has never been released, including after council member Turner relayed (Aug 13, 2026) that it would be made public “tomorrow”; three days later, nothing (Promise Tracker row 12). What is public is the framework it rides on: the Sourcewell cooperative contract 101223-AXN with Axon’s embedded Master Services Agreement (112 pp.), the current pricing catalog, and the Fusus appendix: five-year auto-renewal, non-cancelable payments, no convenience termination, fixed-ALPR pre-authorization, and a pricing-confidentiality clause. Analysis: Getting Flock Out.
The earlier votes
- April 28, 2026 work session (Axon and Flock reps presented; no public comment): agenda · materials · video
- April 14, 2026 (the pulled vote): minutes · action agenda · video
- March 25, 2025 (first RTIC money, via consent agenda): minutes · action agenda · video
- January 24, 2023 (joining the county Fusus network): minutes · action agenda
The full meeting archive: 2020–present · 2012–2019. I also hold a local transcript corpus of 102 council meeting videos.
APD’s own policies
APD publishes its policy manual publicly on PowerDMS: 116 documents. The ones that matter here:
- Policy 505: Automated License Plate Recognition, the written policy NC law requires. Original issue March 2024; last revised May 5, 2026, one week before council voted, and the revision already assigns responsibilities to “the RTIC supervisor,” for a center council had not yet approved. Governs hot lists, data access, 30-day retention, preservation requests.
- Policy 510: Recording Devices · SOP 3102: Body-Worn Cameras · Policy 1701: Criminal Intelligence · Policy 206: Technology Use and Security
Released records and refused ones
- APD Flock Camera Sheet: which agencies have search and hot-list access to Asheville’s Flock data (released Sept 2025 via Sunshine Request).
- Refused: the same request asked for Flock organization and network audit logs, the record of who searched what. The city declined, citing G.S. 20-183.31(b) and the criminal-intelligence exemption (G.S. 132-1.4). The dispute remains open. The trail exists, and the city has already refused to show it to the public. See Promise Tracker.
- Missing: APD’s transparency page describes an “Axon ALPR Dashboard” and a “Flock Safety ALPR Dashboard,” but the page contains no working links and the dashboard page returns a 404 (checked Aug 17, 2026).
Filing your own requests
The city’s records portal is JustFOIA (no account needed; NC law lets anyone request, no reason required). Note: the city’s old NextRequest archive of past requests has been taken offline: released records are no longer publicly searchable at all, which is itself a transparency failure. High-value requests not yet fulfilled:
- The executed Axon contract (authorized by Resolution 26-99), with all pricing schedules and renewal terms.
- The quarterly RTIC access audits APD promised (frame around G.S. 20-183.32(f) oversight records, since the city rejects requests framed as ALPR “data” under 20-183.31(b)).
- The index of all closed records requests from the retired NextRequest system: request numbers, titles, dispositions.
- Answers to Roney’s 29 questions from March 2025.
Related: 2026-05-12 City Council · Promise Tracker · Claims Library