On Tuesday, May 12, Asheville City Council is voting to authorize the City Manager to negotiate and accept a $1.1M federal grant for a Real-Time Intelligence Cente" (RTIC).

As a software and security professional with 25 years of experience working with high security private data, I am sounding the alarm: Everything about this process is a due diligence failure.

Council is being asked to authorize this expansion before a finalized contract with Axon/Fusus has even been drafted or presented for public review. As a technology professional, if I was going to sign a million dollar contract without seeing what the fine print was, well... you'd say that's negligent! And you'd be right.

Why we need to stop this authorization now:

• The "Blank Check" Problem: Voting YES on Tuesday gives the City Manager the power to sign whatever Axon puts in front of them without further Council review. We shouldn't be taking "slop" from Chuck Edwards’ federal grant without seeing the fine print first.

• Taxpayer Liability: We are walking toward a cliff. In early 2026, Denver’s City Auditor refused to sign a similar contract because it incurred a massive risk of liability for the city. When technical errors lead to wrongful detainments, like the family held at gunpoint by police in a technological mistake in Aurora, CO, the vendor is contractually protected, and Asheville taxpayers pay the settlement.

• Data-Mining for Profit: Axon’s ACEIP policy allows them to use our private data to train their AI models for profit. They can change their privacy rules with just 30 days' notice on a webpage, and they can change how they use our data, and more importantly, who they share it with, without enough time for public comment.

• Oversight vs. Optics: Any "privacy resolution" passed alongside this grant is just optics unless it specifically mandates independent external audits, an explicit ban on facial recognition, and a mandatory opt-out of Axon’s data-mining programs.
  

We are being sold "public safety" by a company with documented ethical failures. We deserve to see an audited, finalized contract before a single dollar is authorized.

Tell City Council: Prioritize due diligence over premature authorization.

Protect our privacy and our budget.

VOTE NO on Tuesday