AUSTIN (KXAN) — It’s not every day that Austin Mayor Kirk Watson starts an Austin City Council meeting talking about bong hits. But today’s meeting — at least until public comment had wrapped up — was anything but standard.
To tell this story we need to go back to a council meeting last month. On the agenda: “Authorize a contract for mobile security cameras and monitoring for the Parks and Recreation Department with LiveView Technologies dba LVT.”
That item drew significant pushback, and an Aug. 26 memo showed Austin’s Financial Services team withdrew it from the agenda saying “staff expects to bring the item back for Council consideration on the September 25, 2025 Council Meeting.”
But that item did not get put on the agenda Thursday.
“There’s been, apparently, some confusion about an item. And some people have signed up to speak on an item related to cameras in parks that is not on today’s agenda. We also have had a number of people sign up using names that do not appear to be real, and those names will not be called,” Watson began.
He then asks the public to let him know if he’s pulled their name out of the mix unintentionally, thinking it’s one of those fake names. The result…well, we’ll just let you watch:
Didn’t watch the video? Okay, fine. Here’s what he said:
“If Anita Bong Hit is here, but I haven’t seen any of the Bong Hits in a long time…even though bong hits have long been an iconic part of Austin, Texas and brought much happiness to our city. In fact, if any of the Bong Hits are here, it would be a high point in our day for us to get to hear from them…And by the way, if Ms. Bong Hit is here, she will be limited to two minutes. A two minute bong hit is about all we can handle.”
Still, people against the cameras showed up to speak under other items, often getting cut off by the mayor, who regularly chimed “sir/ma’am, you’re out of order.”
Why did they do this? Many of them encouraged to do so by Louis Rossmann, who has a popular YouTube account and has been publicizing the park camera item on his account.
“Lets say I wasted 30 minutes of their time, how many people showed up last time because they only gave half a day’s notice that they were cancelling? You wasted 8 hours of their day,” Rossmann said.
The item is to expand Austin’s use of security cameras in its parks to crack down on crime. The vendor is LiveView Technologies (LVT).
“I think spending $400,000 to $2 million if you have a few break-ins in three our four parks is a massive waste of money,” Rossmann told KXAN. “There’s a million different ways that you could deal with that.”
Others that showed up were worried about the data that would be collected by the system and how it may be used. Representatives from LVT were also at City Hall Thursday trying to make clear, the tech doesn’t have features like facial recognition or do things like track vehicles.
“There’s a number of hot spot crime areas and we have found that when a unit is put in place we see a reduction of crime of 70 percent,” Matt Deighton, senior manager of marketing and communications, LiveView Technologies said.
What are council’s speaking rules?
The group that showed up at Thursday’s meeting is not only concerned about the cameras — which are expected to come back to council at a later meeting (where public comment will be allowed to happen) — but also the city’s speaking rules, which have been in place for years.
“I’m not talking about the rules changing I’m talking about the rules as they are and people not being aware of them,” Rossmann said.
So what are the rules?
Each speaker has two minutes per item on the agenda — but the item has to be on the agenda. If city council postpones an item, that means it will appear at a future meeting and public speakers will be brought up at that time.
In addition to speaking on individual items, there’s something called “general public comment” as well. Those people can talk about anything they want.
City council hears from a maximum of ten of those people per meeting — they each get three minutes. You have to register at least 14 days in advance and each person cannot participate in general public comment more than once every three meetings.
You can find more details about how to sign up to speak at meetings here.
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