Palm Desert, CA Flock Contract

Who approved this?

Approved 1-0 by Palm Desert City Council on June 12, 2026.

The Palm Desert City Council voted 5 to 0 on June 12, 2026 to expand its Flock Safety license plate recognition system and to raise the program spending ceiling to 2,500,000 dollars through June 30, 2029. That action approved solar conversions for 9 cameras along El Paseo and 9 live view pilot cameras, and it let the city manager approve later Flock orders without returning to the council so long as the running total stays under the ceiling, lifting available capacity from 2,106,250 dollars. The approved count reached 157 cameras, with 148 installed on the day of the vote. Palm Desert first put 49 Flock cameras in service in October 2022, and the Coachella Valley Independent reported the original contract cost 291,100 dollars in year one and 258,500 dollars each year after. The two outlets give different running camera totals, 102 after an expansion reported by the Independent and 157 approved in 2026, because they describe different dates rather than the same count, so both figures are named here. The staff report for the June 9, 2022 meeting sits on a Granicus viewer that could not be read, so the earlier contract history rests on named local news coverage. Police service in Palm Desert is provided under contract by the Riverside County Sheriff.