KALISPELL — About 40 community members packed Kalispell City Hall Monday night to oppose a proposal that would have brought license plate recognition technology to downtown streets and the council listened.
The Kalispell City Council voted 5-2 to remove a $70,000 license plate recognition (LPR) allocation from the budget. Council members Dustin Leftridge and Kari Gabriel voted against the motion.
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For years, one officer kept downtown parking in check, driving streets daily to chalk tires. When that officer retired, downtown parking went largely unsupervised. The city's proposed fix was LPR technology.
Kalispell City Manager Jarod Nygren explained how the system would work.
"It's not a stationary camera. It's on a vehicle, driving around, getting a geo-position on a car that can instantly track it rather than an individual having to drive around a special route hanging out of the car chalking it," Nygren said.
But residents pushed back hard, raising concerns about potential misuse of the system by those with access to it, a problem documented across the country.
"Police officers and people in city government have been either put on suspension, fired or arrested for misuse of these cameras," one resident said.
Residents also pointed to documented accuracy problems with the technology itself.
"The national highway traffic safety report says three of six case studies indicated that their agencies experienced technical challenges with accuracy and reliability," a resident said.
The most common concern, however, was privacy.
"We are innocent until proven guilty. Having everyone surveilled is an act of assuming everyone is guilty," a resident said.
The crowd's message reached the council. Member Sam Nunnally made a motion to act.
"We strip the LPR from this year's budget," Nunnally said.
For now, it's back to chalking tires while the council figures out what comes next.
