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You’ve probably heard something about the pushback against automated license plate readers. The biggest name in the game is Flock, and there’s a growing movement to “De-Flock” Austin and other cities in Central Texas. We’ll hear their reasoning.
Austin’s newly renovated Mexican American Cultural Center is gearing up to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. We’ll dive into more about the changes and upcoming events.
Plus, we’ve got a budget update for the local health district, Central Health — as well as a budget update from Hays County.
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The full transcript of this episode of Austin Signal is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:09] You probably heard a little something about the pushback against automated license plate readers. The biggest name in the game is Flock Safety, and there’s a growing movement to deflock Austin and other cities in central Texas. We’re going to tell you about that. And Austin’s Mexican American Cultural Center is back open to the public after some renovations and additions to the site. They’re gearing up for a whole host of Hispanic Heritage Month events over the next few weeks. We’ve got more about this weekend’s kickoff celebrations and a little local music spotlight coming up on today’s show.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:00:41] The Austin Signal is a production of KUT News, hosted by Jerry Quijano.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:46] Plus, we’ve got a budget update for our local health district, Central Health, and a budget update from Hayes County, too. Those stories and more, it’s all up next. And it’s right here on Austin Signal. Howdy out there, this is Austin Signal. I’m your host Jerry Keehanel. It is Wednesday, September 16th. Thank you for being with us. No heat advisory today from the National Weather Service, but we’re not yet through with that triple-digit heat. The forecast high for today is 101 and an even 100 tomorrow. After that, highs are only expected to reach 99, only 99. Thank you tuning in and thank you for bein’ with us! Hayes County has approved a $650 million budget for its next fiscal year. County commissioners debated last-minute amendments, and as QUT’s Lee Walden reports, one of those dealt with the Hayes county sheriff’s new contract with Axon AI.
Leigh Walden [00:01:53] The contract would have used around $96,000 from the sheriff’s office budget to pay for new AI-assisted services from Axon, the company that makes police body cameras and surveillance tech. The services include AI translation and transcription of body camera footage. The commissioner’s court had voted last week to pay those services, but changed their minds by Tuesday. Commissioner Michelle Gutierrez Cohen was among those who switched their votes.
Michelle Gutierrez Cohen [00:02:20] And I think a lot of counties and other cities are dealing with the same thing, is how do we responsibly incorporate AI into our work?
Leigh Walden [00:02:31] Commissioners decided to spend money instead on helping fund two correctional officer positions. From San Marcos, I’m Lee Walden.
Jerry Quijano [00:02:46] Cities around Central Texas have been canceling their contracts with Flock Safety and its automated license plate reader technology, but there are still many cameras out there in use. QUT’s Gabriel Velázquez-Neda tells us about a coalition of citizens, advocates, and elected officials working to get rid of those cameras, and he tells us others who want to keep them on the streets.
Gabriel Velasquez Neira [00:03:09] It’s all over the news.
Michelle Gutierrez Cohen [00:03:11] Flock cameras being vandalized. Let’s talk about these flock cameras.
Jerry Quijano [00:03:14] Police departments across central Texas are reconsidering their use of flock safety’s license plate reading cameras.
Gabriel Velasquez Neira [00:03:20] Flock cameras is what you usually hear, but the formal term is automated license plate readers, ALPRs. Flock is just the best known brand. The cameras use AI software to track where cars and the people in them are going. The tech has been used to find missing persons, identify suspects, and solve crimes. It’s also been used by law enforcement officers across the country to do things like stalk their exes. And that’s led to a growing sense of mistrust in cities in central Texas, including Austin, Pflugerville, San Marcos, and Bastrop. Have been canceling contracts with ALPR companies like Flock Safety. It’s a deflock movement, and one of the biggest forces working for the removal of this technology is the No ALPRs Coalition. It’s made up of groups like the Texas Civil Rights Project, Local Progress, and Grassroots Leadership. Austin City Councilmember Mike Siegel is part of Local Progress. A group of progressive community organizers and elected officials. Austin was one of first major cities to decide not to renew its contract with Flock, And see you go! Was on the front lines against the technology.
Mike Siegel [00:04:22] Ever since then, myself, as an elected official, a member of national organizations, I’ve been trying to recruit folks from around the country to join us in opposing flock safety and opposing ALPRs. And one of the most important things that came out of the Austin movement was a collection of community-based organizations that formed what they call the No-ALPRs Coalition.
Gabriel Velasquez Neira [00:04:46] Siegel says he and his staff have been reaching out to other elected officials, developing presentations and analyzing the vulnerabilities of the surveillance systems, specifically how they threaten the privacy and liberty of citizens.
Mike Siegel [00:04:57] And so, for example, I worked closely with a couple of the Fluterville council members as they were studying their block safety programs and trying to decide whether they should fight to end those programs.
Gabriel Velasquez Neira [00:05:08] What happened in Pflugervo is interesting. This is a city council meeting in late August.
Mayor Doug Weiss [00:05:12] Uh… That brings us to item six
Gabriel Velasquez Neira [00:05:17] The push to get rid of the cameras there didn’t come from a group or organization. It was a citizen who made a public information request. The request was for organizations that had been accessing the city’s database. Pflugerville had a list of 83 approved vendors who could pull the data. Mayor says the city thought only those 83 organizations could access that info. But the request showed that 459 agencies across the country had access to Pflugherville’s data. And that led to a cancelation of the contract.
Mayor Doug Weiss [00:05:46] This afternoon I asked the city manager to bag and tag the cameras around town.
Gabriel Velasquez Neira [00:05:54] Blue River’s Mayor Doug Weiss says that had the request not been publicized, the outcome at this council meeting might have been different.
Mayor Doug Weiss [00:06:01] If the citizen had not submitted that, if we had not discovered that information, that is a scary scenario. I don’t know if the vote would have been as unanimous as it was once that information was revealed.
Gabriel Velasquez Neira [00:06:14] So what does this have to do with the no ALPR coalition? The request came from a citizen. But one of the most vocal proponents of canceling the contract in that meeting was Pflugerville council member, Rudy Metair. And he is a part of local progress, which is a part of the no-ALPR coalition. Here’s Metair at the meeting.
Rudy Metair [00:06:33] Let’s be blunt here. They’re a terrible company, not a bad partner. A terrible company. And to see over and over again, them not learning from us. We were in this room, what? Six, eight months ago? And lying to our face about what the hell they do.
Gabriel Velasquez Neira [00:06:55] The council voted unanimously to end its contract with FLOC. Another way organizations in the No AOPRA coalition engage with the public is with gatherings like a FLOCKWALK that happened in August.
FLOCKWALK participant [00:07:07] They searched 83,000 cameras across 6,800 law enforcement networks in the country, including a number of other law enforcement
Gabriel Velasquez Neira [00:07:14] It’s a group of people walking to different ALPR cameras and learning more about the technology. Like a walking info session, but with umbrellas for the Texas sun. Lydia Fortuna was at the Flock Walk. She’s a part of the No ALPRs Coalition.
Lydia Fortuna [00:07:29] I actually had an experience with my roommate being targeted by a misread license plate from a cruiser-rounded ALPR.
Gabriel Velasquez Neira [00:07:39] Lydia discovered the group at a conference, found the tech concerning.
Lydia Fortuna [00:07:43] The reason that I’m out here today is because of the history of fascism and what it means to take a stand in the beginning before you see everything, anything, criminalized.
Gabriel Velasquez Neira [00:07:57] And again, it’s not just local progress and individuals like Fortuna. Another group in the No ALPR Coalition working against the technology is the Texas Civil Rights Project, which, as the name indicates, advocates for civil rights. Chris Harris is the organization’s Associate Advocacy Director.
Chris Harris [00:08:15] We see these flock cameras and automated license plate reader more broadly as something that ultimately is incompatible with our privacy as people in the community. And we believe that the solution is to take these cameras down and not collect the data about the travel habits of everybody across our community and across.
Gabriel Velasquez Neira [00:08:39] Our state and our country. So at the beginning of the story, when I said there was a deflux movement in central Texas, there are council members, civil rights organizations and citizens like Lydia Fortuna working against this technology. But the cameras have their supporters. The technology does help solve crimes. I asked council member Siegel about the repercussions of not having the tech. And he pointed out that surveillance cameras have existed long before flock.
Mike Siegel [00:09:05] You can have cameras without having the data be in the cloud that’s available to a private company and can be sold to anyone who wants to buy it. We had cameras in this country before we had ALPR systems. And so I believe it’s a little bit of a false choice between safety and liberty. I think we can have both.
Gabriel Velasquez Neira [00:09:26] Flock Safety has spent over $2 million on federal and state lobbying since 2025, according to lobbying watchdog OpenSecrets. Councilmember Siegel says the group has attempted to lobby Austin to try to get the city to reverse course, and in Pflugerville, before the whole data privacy debacle, Flock representatives had lunch with the councilmembers. But regardless of what cities do, the Texas Department of Public Safety is using the technology, including in Austin. I reached out to DPS for an interview but they declined. Flock Safety did not get back to me in time for publication of the story. One of the cities still using this technology is Caio. The police chief, Jeff Barnett, told me about a number of cases solved with the help of the cameras, including one involving Alonso Echeverria. He’s in jail now, accused of stealing a car with a five-month-old baby in the backseat.
Jeff Barnett [00:10:16] I think we would have solved it, yes, but I don’t know how long it would have taken. And I don t know what else could have occurred or what danger that child could have been in beyond the time that it already took us to find him, which was about 20 minutes in another town, by the way.
Gabriel Velasquez Neira [00:10:29] Now, Chief Barnett says there are safeguards in place. Officers have to put in a police case number and the nature of the search. And there’s also a commander who puts together a monthly report and audit to make sure no one is abusing the information. The city of Kyle has 35 license plate reader cameras, 12 live view cameras, and two drones, all as part of its contract with Flock Safety. Round Rock also has ALPR cameras, and other cities are likely going to continue using the cameras, because at the end of the day, They do help solve crime. But this defloc movement and the counter effort to keep the technology is going to be an ongoing battle.
Jerry Quijano [00:11:14] Some Travis County property owners can expect to pay a lower property tax, at least for the county part of their bill. Travis County Commissioners voted this week to approve a new tax rate. It’s one penny higher per $100 valuation compared to the current rate. But property values are slightly lower, which will mean a lower bill in some cases. People owning homes valued around $391,000 will pay about $30 less than last time. That’s around $1,440 on the Travis County portion of their annual property tax bill. But there’s another part of the bill where Travis County taxpayers can expect to see a slight increase. KUT’s Olivia Aldridge reports the money will go toward bolstering mental health care in the Austin area.
Olivia Aldridge [00:11:59] Travis County Commissioners approved a $1 billion budget for the local health district, Central Health, on Tuesday. That includes around $127 million in funding for mental health services. Travis County Judge Andy Brown said those investments would build on collaborative local efforts to strengthen mental health crisis care, such as the county’s mental health diversion pilot.
Andy Brown [00:12:21] We’ve laid the groundwork for an idea which is closing the revolving door of mental health crisis in our community.
Olivia Aldridge [00:12:29] Included in Central Health’s budget is funding for 22 new psychiatric department beds in Austin, as well as startup costs for a future mental health crisis center. It’ll be paid for in part by a tax increase. The median homeowner will owe about $36 more on their tax bill this year. I’m Olivia Aldridge in Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:12:55] All right, thank you for tuning in to Community Powered Public Radio. This is KUT News. Yesterday kicked off Hispanic Heritage Month, and today is Mexican Independence Day, so we’re gonna celebrate in style here on the show. We’re gonna put a little highlight on the local music scene and let you know about some events happening this weekend and really for the next month here in Austin, and make a visit out to the Mexican American Cultural Center. Not physically, but. We’re gonna let you know what’s new in that space. That’s coming up next. It’s right here on Austin Signal. Welcome back and thanks for being with us, this is Austin Signal. This Hispanic Heritage Month we are highlighting Latina and Latino artists that have helped shape the Austin music scene over the years. So let’s kick it off in style with one voice who has made a memorable mark.
Carrie Rodriguez [00:13:49] One, two, three, two.
Jerry Quijano [00:13:59] Native Austinite Carrie Rodriguez began her musical journey when she started playing violin at five years old and she hasn’t looked back since.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:14:09] You bend it, I’m too tired to bend it I don’t wanna play house anymore
Jerry Quijano [00:14:21] Her Ameri Chicana sound is grounded in her powerful voice and fierce fiddle playing. It’s also rooted in her family’s rich musical background. Her father was folk musician David Rodriguez, and her great aunt was the renowned singer and actress Eva Garza.
Eva Garza [00:14:38] La puñalada que me diste fue trapera
Eva Garza [00:14:47] y esa se salva el que no tiene mi corazón
Eva Garza [00:14:58] Mala forma de pegarle a un corazón.
Jerry Quijano [00:15:09] She spent some time at the Oberlin Conservatory, but Rodriguez soon realized that she would rather be listening to Hank Williams than studying Tchaikovsky. After catching the ear of singer-songwriter Chip Taylor at South by Southwest, the duo were soon recording their first of many successful collaborations, beginning with 2002’s Let’s Leave This Town. Rodriguez released her debut full-length album, 7 Angels on a Bicycle, in 2006. Taylor sent that album to Lucinda Williams, and soon Rodriguez was the opening act for Williams’ 2007 tour.
Carrie Rodriguez [00:15:48] Say, little darlin’, won’t you marry me? We live in the holler, dear the old oak tree Say, darlin’ say
Jerry Quijano [00:15:55] She’s since released four additional solo studio albums and three live recordings, including one that was recorded at the Cactus Cafe.
Carrie Rodriguez [00:16:05] You
Jerry Quijano [00:16:11] In 2017, Rodriguez launched what has become one of Austin’s great musical traditions, Laboratorio. The concert series features Rodriguez, her backing band, and a different guest star for each event, making for a truly unique aural experience each and every time, and has featured artists like Ruben Ramos, Gina Chavez, and Adrian Quesada.
Carrie Rodriguez [00:16:33] Tell me what you’ve been doing at night in Austin, T.A.
Jerry Quijano [00:16:40] And to learn more about Kerry Rodriguez, go to KUTX.org or visit today’s podcast show notes.
Carrie Rodriguez [00:16:51] Say that thing, but I’m never gonna be your bride
Jerry Quijano [00:17:00] And as Hispanic Heritage Month gets underway, there’s no shortage of events to celebrate. Here to give us a preview of some of them is Olivia Tamzarian, marketing representative with the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center. Olivia, welcome to the show.
Olivia Tamzarian [00:17:15] Thanks so much for having me.
Jerry Quijano [00:17:17] Okay, so first off, can you just tell us a little bit about the Mac for folks who might not be familiar?
Olivia Tamzarian [00:17:21] Definitely. The MAC is on Rainy Street. It’s at 600 River Street right in the center of the Rainy street neighborhood and it’s a center that was built by the people for the people. It actually started in the 1970s with activists at UT. They weren’t seeing a lot of representation for Mexican-American cultural arts so they really advocated for many years for the center. It was finally built in 2007 and it is actually part of the city of Austin. It’s under ACME which is Austin Arts, Culture, Music and Entertainment. The center is a place where we preserve and promote Mexican, Mexican-American, Latino, and indigenous art. It’s a wonderful multimedia space. So we have visual art, there’s an art gallery, there’s a lot of summer camp programs and things for youth, families, and then workshops, classes, and big events. So the Mac is just a jewel right in the center of Austin and a lot people might jog by it on the hike and bike trail and not really know, they might see a mural and not know that the center exists. It’s free to visit, and again, it’s a space by the community for the community, so it’s really a special place to work and a special kind of feature of Austin that a lot of folks might miss.
Jerry Quijano [00:18:28] Yeah, I think it’s kind of easy to miss because there’s those statues of the Tejano legends right outside and you see the building and then you just can easily get sucked back into the trail. But I think maybe it might have caught some folks’ eyes because there were some renovations going on over the last year or so. Can you tell us a little bit about those changes?
Olivia Tamzarian [00:18:44] It’s been amazing. So we opened again to the public on June 6, and we’ve just been going strong since then. So the Mac was always intended to be built in phases. If you see the building, it’s a semicircle. So what phase two did is it built two wings on the edges of the semicircal. It’s a beautiful kind of half moon shaped building. It’s really unique space. All the rooms open into our central plaza. That’s where we have our big events. And so the renovation allowed us to add some multi-purpose rooms, classrooms. We added a culinary space. So that’s kind of my favorite new space at the renovated Mac. That’s where we get to teach tortillas and salsa and all these things that the community really appreciated. And again, phase two was born out of community advocacy. People wanted to see the Mac expand. They needed more spaces to rent, spaces to hold big arts programs. And as you know, there’s not that many spaces in Austin that offer kind of affordable cultural art space and the Mac is one of them, so. When we reopened, it was with a gran fiesta. It was called Juntos de Nuevo, together again. And it was amazing to see kind of our founding members come out and new folks and families. And then since then, we’ve just been going strong. The MAC, you know, will continue to grow and develop, but right now we’re really happy with the size of the building and the fact that we’re able to accommodate so many different types of program. When you think of Latino cultural arts, you know some people think, okay, that’s music, that dance. But there’s so many more things. Visual art, theater productions. We have a Casa de la Cultura program which teaches different types of skills. Things that the abuelos might not have passed on to us, like things like sewing classes, cooking classes. There’s music, photography, singing courses. We have gardening program. We actually have a garden on site at the Mac where we grow fresh herbs and then you can use those in the culinary classes. So. It’s not just a space to kind of view art. It’s also a place where community organizations, they come in and they produce programming and collaboration with us. Those are some of my favorite productions. And the Mac, you know, again, it sits in central Austin. I have worked both at Mexicarte Museum and at the Mac. They’re kind of like cousins, right? Mexicart is the one on Congress. They do the big day of the dead parade and their gallery, you that they host amazing exhibits. The Mac is just a couple blocks away on Rainy Street. And it’s more of an event and programming space, but we do have a small gallery. So now that we’re sitting here on Mexican Independence Day, just enjoying being able to visit both spaces and being able share more about what we do.
Jerry Quijano [00:21:13] Yeah, well today as you mentioned is Mexican Independence Day, yesterday kicked off Hispanic Heritage Month, and you mentioned some of those events that y’all have had since reopening back in June. What do y’ all have going on this weekend?
Olivia Tamzarian [00:21:23] Yeah, so this weekend is a big weekend because it’s the first full weekend of El Mese de Herencia Hispana, so it’s Mexican Independence Day last night. And today we had the Viva Mexico on Saturday, September 12th, and that was kind of our annual event to celebrate Mexican independence. This weekend we have on Saturday Fiesta de Salud, which is with Austin Public Health. They have a family event where they’re going to do free vaccines, health resources, and they’re having mariachi. So it’s kind of a fiesta vibe, but very much focused on families. That’s 11 to 2 on Saturday the 19th. On Sunday the 20th it’s Austin Museum Day and so a lot of different spaces in Austin are opening up and doing family programming and exhibits. We’re we’re going to be open for viewing our gallery. There’s a beautiful exhibit at the Mac right now. It’s called Mitote, Amigos Gathering and it’s by Gilberto Cardenas and Dolores Garcia. They are kind of a power couple in Austin. They’ve been collecting Latino art for you know half century. But this Sunday, it’s kind of more focused on viewing the exhibit, creating some art projects, doing some tours, and then there’s also a performance called Mexico de Colores, which is a ballet folklorico performance, and that’s at 2 p.m. And 6 p. M. I love seeing the mat come alive on the weekend. I love families coming in. We have a parking lot, so folks can park for free. It’s just a great space to take the family out on like a Sunday afternoon and be able to enjoy some different types of art. Then when you’re there, you can pick up information to find out what other classes and programs you might be interested in.
Jerry Quijano [00:22:53] Well, it sounds like you have a lot of events planned for the future and hopefully even more as more people learn about the Mac and its existence there. What is the best way for folks to keep up with everything that’s going on at the Mac?
Olivia Tamzarian [00:23:06] We have a great active social media. It’s ESB for Emma S. Barrientos, M-A-C-C. So our social media is at ESBMACC. We do a lot on our Facebook and Instagram. You’ll always see us posting all the events that we have coming up. And then the official website is austintexas.gov slash M-ACC so austintExas.Gov slash Mac for Mexican American Cultural Center. We have really long name.
Olivia Tamzarian [00:23:32] I’m
Olivia Tamzarian [00:23:33] The Emma S. Barrientos, we had to name our center after Emma because she was one of the founding members and she was somebody who really advocated for representation in the educational system.
Jerry Quijano [00:23:43] OK, well, we’ll have a link to the Emma Esparrientos Mexican-American Cultural Center page in today’s show notes, and we’ll make it a little easier for our listeners to find it right off the bat. We have been speaking with Olivia Tamsarian from the Emma esparrients Mexican-american Cultural Center. Olivia, thank you for your time.
Olivia Tamzarian [00:23:59] Thank you! Viva Mexico!
Jerry Quijano [00:24:01] And thank you out there for joining us today here on Austin Signal. That’s it for us, but we have more about the stories we shared with you in today’s podcast. Show notes and always at kut.org slash signal. Caroline File is our technical director. Alexandra Hart is our producer. Kristin Cabrera is our managing producer. I’m your host, Jerry Kehannel. We’ll be back with you tomorrow. Talk to you then.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
