Citizens Liaison Committee for Seaside cameras approved by city council, mayor to appoint members.

When the Seaside City Council deliberated last month about whether to approve the installation of more surveillance cameras in the city, several residents publicly expressed Big Brother-like concerns about what the cameras might be used for. Also discussed was the possibility of a citizen’s committee, one that would allow select members of the public to see how the cameras were being used.

The installation of additional cameras was approved unanimously by the city council, and in a subsequent city council meeting on Feb. 6, so was the formation of a Citizens Liaison Committee (CLC), which will allow those concerned residents to possibly be part of a group that will get an inside look at police activities associated with the cameras. The CLC is to be comprised of five Seaside residents appointed by mayor Ralph Rubio and mayor pro tem Ian Oglesby, with at least one being a representative of the business community and another of the city’s Neighborhood Watch program.

The committee is hasn’t been selected yet, Oglesby says, and residents can nominate themselves or others by contacting city hall. He says mayor Rubio will be establishing the criteria for CLC members, and those deemed most qualified will be brought in for interviews.

Seaside City Manager John Dunn says the committee will be finalized and presented to city council no later than Apr. 3, and that the new cameras will be installed by Apr. 15 at locations only known to the Seaside Police Department.

At the Feb. 6 city council meeting in which the CLC formation was approved, Seaside City Councilmember Dennis Alexander liked the committee as an appropriate response to community concerns.  

“If there was ever an example of how a local government reacts to the community’s concerns, this is it,” Alexander said. “This really gets to the concern of Big Brother is watching, because now we have representatives from the community to make sure that the things that they were concerned about do not happen.”

Mayor Ralph Rubio voiced similar thoughts: “I think it addresses some of the ‘Chicken Little’s’ out there, the sky is falling attitude that’s out there,” he said.

The CLC will exist for at least two years, the length of the “implementation period” of the camera surveillance program, and is subject to an extension by the city council following evaluation. The main function of the committee will be reviewing logs submitted to it by the Seaside PD on a quarterly basis about police activity associated with the cameras, and then reporting on them to the Seaside City Council, without revealing confidential information.

Dunn stresses that the CLC is not intended to be an oversight committee, and is only to provide counsel to him and police chief Vicki Myers. “It has no authority beyond that,” he says.