By: Mike Koury | Woodward Talk | Published February 10, 2026
FERNDALE — Ferndale’s development of its government surveillance ordinance continued at recent City Council meetings.
Back in December, the Ferndale City Council approved an agreement with Axon to provide the city with an automated license plate reader camera system.
This agreement was made contingent upon the approval of an ordinance and companion policy designed to strengthen protections for residents and oversight of government surveillance technology.
At its Jan. 26 meeting, the council held the first reading of its community input over government surveillance, or CIOGS, ordinance. This was followed by a public hearing on Feb. 2 to gather more feedback from residents.
Many of the residents who spoke during the meeting, while supporting the ordinance, voiced concerns running from how it would protect residents from exigent circumstances to it having enough teeth and actually being enforceable.
Resident Andrea Popovic said she appreciates the city for drafting the ordinance and recognizing that surveillance technology carries real privacy and civil liberty risks.
That being said, she felt the ordinance only protects residents if it has teeth and if it is applied before surveillance technology is approved, not after.
“We recently ended our contract with Flock because of legitimate concerns about data access and privacy,” she said. “That experience showed us how easily surveillance tools can shift away from community safety and toward broad monitoring of residents, including people who have done nothing wrong.”
“No one here is anti-safety,” Popovic continued. “We all want a safe city, but more cameras do not equal less crime. Safety is built through trust, transparency and community partnership. No rushed contract and after-the-fact oversight. Our City Council and Police Department have the opportunity to lead here to protect residents from unnecessary surveillance, to demand stronger regulations and to put community first.”
Originally, the city was to bring the ordinance back for a second reading at its Feb. 9 meeting and possible approval.
Mayor Pro Tem Laura Mikulski said the city is going to take its time making this ordinance and there is no set date when it will come back to the council. She also wants there to be another public hearing and public input session when the next draft is complete.
“I think that we heard from our residents that, No. 1, they absolutely do support our public safety officers. Two, they really value having input and clarity, and they really want us to make sure that we’re taking our time to ensure that when we do move forward, we do so with clear guardrails that work for the officers and the community alike,” she said.
Mikulski said there were a couple of points of clarification that came up repeatedly during the public hearing, one of which was on data retention and concern about the 30-day data retention policy.
She also said there needed to be clarification on what constitutes an exigent circumstance, which is a situation that requires law enforcement intervention without use of a warrant. Examples Mikulski cited include if police needed to use a drone to go find people in their homes during a flood or during an active shooter situation.
“Basically, it allows them to take immediate action,” she said. “There was a lot of concern around that, as to what qualifies as an exigent circumstance, how do you figure out what exigent circumstances? Are there parameters around exigent circumstances? So, we’re working through kind of like examples and examples of what aren’t exigent circumstances, in terms of our language, and we’re running that through legal counsel as well as then sending that over to the Police Department and the police union for approval.”
As for the ordinance having “teeth,” Mikulski said it was a fair concern and that accountability is the core reason that the CIOGS ordinance is being put into place in the first place.
“The conversation that I heard at that council meeting was really about how to write a level of accountability, provisions that are clear, they’re enforceable, they’re durable rather than just symbolic,” she said. “That is something that we have to collaborate with our Police Department and police union on so that there’s clear understandings of how things flow through the department.”