Automatic license plate reading cameras are now banned in Old Town.
In the last City Council meeting before election day, Councilors Christian Pushor, Linda McLeod, Michael May, David Wight, Charlene Virgilio, Katrina Wynn and Zachary Wyles unanimously approved banning fixed automatic license plate readers.
Old Town is the first Greater Bangor community to ban the technology.
The initial proposal was brought forward in September at a time when Bangor residents were filing complaints about cameras the city did not own. Brewer officials stopped using such cameras after finding out the software for one of its cameras violated state law.
Fixed license plate readers are not currently being used in Old Town. If they are proposed or requested to be used in the city in the future, five of the seven City Council members would need to approve the proposal.
There has been little to no public comment for or against the proposal during the multiple council meetings in which it appeared on the agenda.
Opposition to license plate reading cameras, which capture passing license plate numbers and other identifying information and add them to a network that can track a person’s movements, has grown across the country this year because of reported misuses, including tracking people without any legal cause and wrongly identifying drivers as criminals.
The council has not discussed the proposal much since it was first brought forward. On Monday there was no discussion.
When councilors have talked about the proposal, they have said that they want future councils, and possibly voters, to have the option to approve or deny the use of the technology. That discussion is reflected in the ordinance.
The ordinance does not ban the Old Town Police Department from using mobile license plate readers, which they currently have in their cars. It also does not mean the fixed readers could not be built or operated in the future. It does require approval for any funds to be used for the cameras and for the police department to enter data-sharing agreements with communities that already use the technology. In a reflection of council discussion, it also creates a requirement for a public hearing where information about data retention and the necessity of the cameras would be shared.
Although there were no proposals to bring the technology to the city, Wyles brought forward the ban in September as a proactive measure. It would be easier to create an ordinance before the cameras were installed than try to react to it, he said at the time.
“I think that smooth waters, calm times is the most appropriate time to put forward proposed legislation because it’s much easier to talk about these things when we’re not dealing with a direct third-party contract on our hands because then it becomes more of an issue about a private company,” he said in September.