Apex Town Council February Work Session

We discussed sidewalks, the Apex Peakway North widening from Center to Old Raleigh Road, and Flock Cameras.

The Apex Town Council held a work session on February 18th. Work Sessions are similar to Council Meetings, but less formal, with more discussion. Unlike Council meetings, work sessions rarely involve official votes. Instead, we focus on presentations, discussions, and providing informal direction when a decision point arises.

This work session we talked sidewalks, the Apex Peakway, and Flock ALPR cameras (automated license plate readers)

Here is the agenda and presentation materials, and here is the Youtube video.

Let me summarize what we learned.

Safe Routes to Schools Update aka Sidewalks

The Town of Apex develops and maintains a prioritized sidewalk needs inventory. Our presentation went over how this was developed and our current status. This involves interviews with principals, site visits, and community feedback. Projects on the list are funded by a combination of grants, bonds, and sometimes just regular tax dollars. If you go through the presentation materials the site visit information was interesting, but I want to focus on a few things out of the presentation.

First, town staff has put together an amazing webpage where we published a map of all the sidewalk needs, their priority, and what is currently funded:

Sidewalk Needs Webpage

Second, I want to highlight the new streamlined Sidewalk Projects page. If you’re interested in sidewalk projects, you’ll want to bookmark this. It’ll be updated at least monthly.

Sidewalk Projects

Finally, I wanted to call attention to our Sidewalk Request Form - if you see an important missing sidewalk gap that isn’t a current project or even on the future project map above, the first step for advocating for it is to fill out this form!

Apex Peakway North Widening

The Peakway between Center and Old Raleigh Road is one of the worst traffic areas in town, with long backups both in the morning and evening. The town hired a consultant to advise us on the best way to address it, and we got a presentation of the results. Ultimately we were presented with two options; one is to asymmetrically widen to the east (minimize impacts on homeowners) - Alternative 1 - and another to symmetrically widen which could require a retaining wall on the west side. There are a variety of advantages and disadvantages to each of them.

Man, that took way too long to make. And I still think I’m off by like a pixel or two.

Anyway. We gave direction to staff to proceed with Alternative 1.

Flock Camera Program Review

Finally, we got a presentation from our new Police Chief Ryan Johansen about the Flock ALPR program.

ALPRs is a law enforcement technology where a series of cameras automatically reads license plates and runs it through a state database looking for stolen cars, Amber alerts, etc. APD would also have the ability to put in a “hot” list of license plates to get hits on, if they are looking for a vehicle involved in a crime in progress.

The Chief went over a series of facts and myths about the program. He has experience with the system in his previous municipality. I found his description of the program to not at all match what I was expecting; perhaps your experience will be similar.

This system is currently deployed across the country, state and several municipalities in Wake, including Cary, Raleigh, Wake Forest, Holly Springs, Garner, and Fuquay Varina.

Apex has funded a “pilot” program for APD to evaluate the system. As of today it is not yet deployed. After a year or two of evaluation, we’ll decide on how to proceed.

This is a key technology to help battle the “crime we have” - namely, car thefts and break-ins. This could allow us to, in real time, identify, track, and capture suspects. Since most of these crimes are committed with stolen cars, it can even drastically reduce these crimes by apprehending suspects as they enter town with a stolen vehicle - before any further crime is committed.

It works as a network with privately deployed cameras, such as those in a big box store (Target, Walmart, etc) parking lot. HOAs around the country have also deployed the system, but none that I’m aware of in Apex.

The Chief proposes a 30 day retention policy of license plate data (State law maximum is 90 days), and a series of checks and balance data access policies. I put these slides below, as I felt they were among the most important in the presentation.

I want to stress that this presentation was for information only. We have already funded the pilot program, which is proceeding but not yet in operation.

I’d encourage those who have concerns about the program to review the presentation materials from the Chief, watch the video if you can (direct link to the timestamp of this presentation), and reach out with your thoughts.

That’s all for now. Council Meeting on Tuesday.