Troy's Flock contract never went to the City Council

Troy has had surveillance cameras photographing its traffic since 2021. The people Troy elects first voted on them in March 2026 — four years and eight months later.

The city charter says who can commit Troy to a contract: the mayor signs it, a purchasing agent buys and takes bids, and the elected council commits the money. Troy’s camera contracts were signed by a police captain.

This page is the paperwork. What the mayor has done to defend the cameras since is covered in Mayor Carmella Mantello supports Flock.

The two signatures

Flock’s order form is dated July 19, 2021 and signed on July 22 by Steven Barker, a Troy police captain. It buys eleven Flock Falcon cameras at $27,500 a year on a 24-month term, with a special term starting the contract on August 16, 2021 “after 60 Day Pilot finishes.” Year one came to $30,250.

Seventeen months later, on December 19, 2022, the department signed an Additional Services Agreement for eleven more cameras at the same annual price — $31,350 in year one. That doubled the system to 22. It now stands at 26.

Two signatures appear across the two documents, both from the police department. No council resolution, no mayoral signature, and no reference to either appears anywhere in the records produced.

Three offices can do this, and none of them is the police

The charter hands the job out in three pieces.

§ C-33 sets out the duties of the Mayor:

To execute all deeds and contracts on behalf of the City and to sign all warrants, certificates, licenses and other legal instruments issued by or on behalf of the City, unless otherwise provided by law or ordinance…

§ C-45 creates a City Purchasing Agent who “shall make all purchases for the City, including purchases by contract,” and who “shall comply with all public bidding requirements, shall bid all contracts for services and goods so far as reasonably possible.”

§ C-47(L) governs the money:

No money shall be drawn from the City treasury nor shall any obligation for the expenditure of money be incurred except pursuant to obligations made by the City Council.

The Mayor executes, the Purchasing Agent buys and bids, the Council obligates. The signatures on the two order forms are a police captain’s and a department contact’s.

The Charter’s delegation clause is “unless otherwise provided by law or ordinance.” Chapter 79 of the City Code, which governs the Police Department, contains no mention of contracts, purchases, or procurement, and no other chapter delegates contracting power to it. The only department head in the entire code who may sign a contract is the Commissioner handling solid waste, under § 247-11, and only after the Mayor has declared an emergency.

Neither the 2021 contract nor the 2022 expansion was signed by anyone the Charter empowers to sign it, and the money was never obligated by the body the Charter requires to obligate it.

Nobody else was allowed to bid

Above $20,000, state law makes a city advertise what it wants to buy, take offers, and go with the cheapest qualified one. Both Flock order forms are above that. Neither records a bid.

What the city agreed to

The contract deletes the pictures after thirty days. It does not delete what Flock makes out of them.

Section 4.4 lets the company call Troy’s data “Aggregated Data” and keep it:

Agency hereby grants Flock a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free right and license (during and after the Service Term hereof) to (i) use and distribute such Aggregated Data to improve and enhance the Services and for other marketing, development, diagnostic and corrective purposes, other Flock offerings…

Perpetual means forever. During and after the Service Term means the licence outlives the contract — cancelling in Troy does not take it back. Marketing and other Flock offerings means the company can sell it.

Section 4.2 grants the same thing over the underlying data: a “perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, fully paid license to use, reproduce, modify and distribute” it as part of that aggregate.

The clause says Aggregated Data is “compiled anonymous data which has been stripped of any personal identifying information.” The agreement never says what personal identifying information is. The term appears in that one sentence and is defined nowhere in the fifteen pages, so the company applies its own meaning to its own data. A plate number names a vehicle; it reaches a person through Department of Motor Vehicles records, which Flock does not hold. On that reading a plate is not personal, and nothing in the contract says it comes out.

So the thirty days covers the photograph of the car. Where the car was, and when, sits under Section 4.4.

A police captain agreed to this on Troy’s behalf. Nobody Troy elected saw it.

Nobody in the room had read it

On March 19, 2026, with the renewal resolution in front of the council and a Flock representative on Zoom, Council Member Noreen McKee read the licence clause aloud.

The contract gives the right to Flock for worldwide perpetual royalty-free right and license to disclose agency data and to share data with federal agencies for investigative purposes, even if a local department chooses to restrict the data. This clause effectively gives Flock the ability to override any restrictions that local PDs have written into the contract and essentially provides ownership rights to the data forever.

The representative answered with a different section — 4.1, which says the customer owns the data — and then said he could not speak to the one she had read.

I haven’t seen your contract, but I’m familiar with our updated contract.

Then the police answered.

I haven’t seen that specific one, but I’ll read it again with your intentional focus.

Barker signed the order form in 2021. He has held the department’s technology and grants portfolio since 2019.

The contract was enclosed in that night’s agenda. McKee was asked to supply the section number, said she would, and was told to hold it: “We’ll do it afterwards. Let’s finish.” The council moved on. She closed with “I look forward to seeing that part of the contract.”

Four and a half years after Troy signed it, at the meeting called to sign it again, the company that wrote the contract and the officer who signed it both told the council they had not read the clause the council was asking about.

Five years of agendas with no mention of it

Every City of Troy agenda and minutes document from 2021 and 2022 has been searched for Flock Safety, Flock Group Inc., ALPR and automated licence plate readers. The numbered resolution and ordinance titles are searchable text, and none of them names it. Nothing in 2023, 2024 or 2025 either.

The earliest entry is the resolution tabled on March 19, 2026, titled “Resolution Authorizing The Mayor To Enter Into A Two Year Subscription Agreement With Flock Group, Inc., For The Use Of Its License Plate Recognition Camera Platforms For Law Enforcement Purposes.”

The city could not find the contract either. A records request filed in June 2023 for “Flock Safety Contracts and Agreements” was closed that month with no responsive documents:

A diligent search of City records returned no results relative to your request.

The signed order forms above were produced three years later.

The rule exists and nothing happens when it is broken

§ C-47(L) says no obligation for the expenditure of money may be incurred except pursuant to obligations made by the City Council. It does not say what happens when one is. Many New York city charters void a contract made without a council appropriation; Troy’s does not, and the only voiding provision in the whole code, § 43-9, concerns conflicts of interest.

So the rule was written, the rule was not followed, and the charter left nobody a remedy.

On April 1, 2026 Council President Susan Steele said that “as the administration admitted last month, there is no executed contract between the city of Troy and Flock.” The two executed order forms above are dated July 2021 and December 2022, and the city produced them under a records request three years after it told a requester it had none.