The Tampa City Council voted today to pass a resolution that granted the Tampa Police Department $2 million to purchase the use of approximately 60 cameras for surveillance around downtown for the Republican National Convention — but also voted to host a workshop in September to determine what would happen with the cameras after the RNC.
The motion passed 6-1, with Mary Mulhern dissenting. She was unsuccessful in getting her colleagues to specify what dates the cameras would actually be operating. Saying "this is how it happens," she expressed concerns that the public had not had any opportunity to debate whether they wanted the cameras in use after the convention.
Other Council members expressed similar concerns regarding the use of such cameras post-convention. But that issue was addressed when the Council added an amendment that requires a workshop to be held exactly three weeks after the convention ends (left unsaid is whether those cameras will be used during those three weeks).
The ACLU's Tampa representative, former Councilman John Dingfelder, called on the Council to delay the vote for two weeks to allow the public the chance to review the proposal and comment about it. That's because the item to approve the funding (which comes from part of the $50 million given to the city for security for the convention) was only put on the Council's agenda on Wednesday, technically a violation of City Council rules which state that the agenda should be fixed seven days earlier, though one that Council can and has waived in the past. A city attorney ruled that it was up to the chair's discretion.
This article appears in Mar 1-7, 2012.