Troy wants $53,491 to release records about its own surveillance cameras

October 1, 2026

The Troy Police Department has told me it will cost $53,491.30 and take 90 business days to produce records about the city’s Flock Safety license plate readers. Redaction labor accounts for 99.7 percent of that figure. The city’s entire written justification for charging it, entered twice on its own cost form, is one sentence: “this is more than the usual amount.”

What I asked for

On Sept. 21 I filed a 12-item request with the City of Troy through its public records portal, seeking documents about the Police Department’s automated license plate reader system.

The items were ordinary records: the department’s ALPR policy and training materials, its two signed contracts with Flock Safety, the audit log of searches of the system, which agencies Troy shares its data with, the reports Troy’s own contract says the software generates, the data behind the arrest and recovery figures the department gave City Council, and any internal reviews of misuse. One item asked for the detections and images of my own vehicle.

The request was logged as 26-539 and assigned to Police Records. On Sept. 28 the department extended its response deadline by 10 business days, citing a reason entered on the notice: “The City is short staffed with numerous requests.” The response arrived Oct. 1.

The bill, line by line

Troy granted the request, then attached a price. The city’s Detailed Cost Itemization Form, dated Oct. 1 and issued by Police Records, breaks down as follows.

The deposit is due Nov. 18. The letter estimates 90 business days to process the request after payment, which would put delivery in the spring of 2027.

1,186 hours

Redaction is 99.7 percent of the bill. The figure Troy entered is 71,144 minutes, which is 1,186 hours, or 148 eight-hour working days. One employee doing nothing else would spend roughly seven months on it.

The same form says locating every responsive record takes 30 minutes, and copying them takes 60.

Those numbers sit badly together. Troy is describing a body of material so large it needs seven months of review, and so small it can be found in half an hour and duplicated in one. Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act requires a fee estimate to rest on a good-faith calculation. Nothing on the form explains how both figures can be right.

What the city says the time is for

One sentence in Troy’s letter explains where the money goes: “The bulk of the cost is figured into the review/redaction of multiple body worn/dash cameras.”

I did not ask for body-worn camera footage. No item in the request mentions it.

There is a plausible path from my wording to the city’s reading. Item 1 asked for “detections, still images, video clips and associated metadata” from “any Troy-owned or Troy-accessible Flock camera” for my own vehicle. Troy’s patrol cars may fall inside that phrase. When the department first brought Flock to City Council in March 2023, then-Chief Frank Nastasi told members the in-car cameras installed in 2022 “have integrated Flock ALPR functionality,” activated that November. Nastasi has since moved up: he has been Troy’s city manager since November 2024, and the agenda memo recommending the five-year Flock extension was addressed to him. If patrol-car video is treated as ALPR output, every clip containing my plate becomes responsive.

Troy’s letter offers one remedy: “If you’d like to modify the request to lessen the cost, you may submit a new FOIA with the appropriate modifications.” It does not say which item drove the cost, and the cost form does not break the redaction time down by item.

Narrowing blind is the only option on offer, and I had already learned that before this estimate arrived. On Sept. 28, after the City Clerk’s office invoiced my other request at $539.88, I asked where the costs were coming from — $500 seemed steep for a search of emails. The answer came twice the next morning: file a new FOIA. Two days after that, Police Records sent an estimate ninety-nine times larger, split into three labor lines and broken down no further. Learning what any single item costs appears to require requesting that item on its own, and waiting out a fresh response clock for each one.

What the law requires, and what the form says

Michigan’s FOIA does not let a public body name a number and stop there. Under MCL 15.234, labor may be billed at no more than the hourly wage of the agency’s lowest-paid employee capable of doing that particular task, whether or not that person actually does the work. Labor costs must be itemized in a way that expresses both the hourly wage and the number of hours charged. And a public body may only charge search and redaction labor where not charging would cause unreasonably high costs, because of the nature of the particular request.

Troy’s own form has a blank for that last point. It reads: “because of the nature of the request in this particular instance, specifically:” The department entered, in both the search and redaction sections, the same seven words:

“this is more than the usual amount.”

Three other things are missing from the form.

• No hourly wage. Every “Hourly Wage Charged” field is blank. Troy filled only the fringe-loaded figures. Backing out the 40 percent benefits multiplier printed on the form, the implied base pay is about $71.55 an hour for duplication, $62.57 for searching and $32.34 for redaction. The highest rate is attached to copying files, the simplest task on the form.
• No ruling on the fee waiver. I asked for a public-interest reduction, which the statute allows when records primarily benefit the general public. The form’s waiver section is blank: no box checked, no percentage entered, no finding either way.
• No date of receipt. The field for when the request arrived was left empty. The letter states Sept. 22. The portal, and Troy’s own worksheet on my second request, say Sept. 21.

The public summary of Troy’s FOIA procedures, linked at the bottom of the city’s letter, is posted as a file whose name dates it to December 2018.

Two departments, two rates

I filed a second request the same morning, this one with the City Clerk’s office. Comparing the two worksheets shows Troy charging two different prices for the same category of work. Both charges sit in section 3a of the form, the line for redaction labor by a city employee. The Clerk’s office said so in writing, and on both worksheets the figures occupy the identical positions within that section.

Both offices answer to the same statute and the same city policy, and both filled out the same form three days apart. The police rate is 1.4 times the Clerk’s.

Priced at the Clerk’s own rate, the 4,742 increments of police redaction would come to $38,789.56 rather than $53,347.50. The difference is $14,558, before anyone examines whether 1,186 hours is a real number.

The second request, closed in eight days

Request 26-551 asked for communications between city officials and James Christiani, the Troy resident who organized the group No Flock In Troy and brought residents to speak at the Aug. 31 City Council meeting, along with internal city discussion of that meeting.

Its short life is on the record in the portal’s timeline.

When the invoice arrived I asked a narrower question: how much would it cost to limit the request to Christiani’s emails alone. Twice the Clerk’s office answered that I would need to file a new request. “Please submit a new FOIA for revised or new information you are seeking,” one reply read. The statute sets no procedure for narrowing a pending request, and each new filing starts a new response clock.

I told the office it could close the request, and on Sept. 29 it did, logging the closure as a withdrawal. That ended the $539.88 fee, and with it any fee determination to appeal.

What Troy bought

The records I asked for concern a system Troy has run since July 2023 and has committed to through 2030.

City Council approved Flock cameras in March 2023 under Resolution #2023-03-040. In August 2025 the council waived the bid process and extended the contract directly with Flock Group Inc. for five years at $69,500 a year, a total of $347,500 running from Aug. 29, 2025 to Aug. 28, 2030. Staff told council that contracting directly rather than through the state’s MiDEAL bid saved about $29,000 a year. The agreement renews automatically for another five years unless the city gives notice at least 30 days before the term ends.

The order form lists 25 fixed license plate readers and two portable units, and sets a 30-day data retention period. The software Troy pays for, in the contract’s own words, includes:

• Vehicle Fingerprint, which captures make, color, type, plate state, missing, covered and paper plates, and “over 20 unique vehicle details like roof racks and bumper stickers”
• Advanced Search, listed as “Convoy Analysis, Multi Geo Search, and Visual Search”
• Nationwide Network lookup, described as a system “boasting 10 billion additional plate reads per month”
• Community Network Access, the ability to request feeds from privately owned Flock cameras “in neighborhoods, schools, and businesses”
• Real-time alerts against federal missing-person and wanted databases, and unlimited custom hotlists

The agenda memo, submitted by Police Chief Josh Jones and six other city officials, reported that since July 2023 the cameras had produced 60 traffic stops, 29 recovered stolen vehicles and 31 arrests. The Detroit News reported that Jones gave council the same figures at the late-August meeting. Item 10 of my request asked for the records behind those three figures.

What the contract does not show is how much of Troy’s data flows outward. It grants Troy access to the state and national networks; it does not record whether Troy shares its own reads, or with whom. The Detroit News reported in September 2025 that Troy’s cameras can be accessed by other law enforcement agencies across the state that use the technology, including the Michigan State Police. The audit log and sharing settings I requested would answer the question. They are behind the $26,745.

Troy is holding while its neighbors leave

More than 180 Michigan law enforcement agencies use Flock, roughly a third of all agencies in the state, according to company data reported by The Detroit News in April. A policy strategist for the ACLU of Michigan said roughly 60 agencies used the technology when she began working on the issue in 2022.

The direction has since reversed in Metro Detroit. Ferndale ended its contract in November 2025. Clawson and Milford followed on council votes in May and June. In Westland and Sumpter Township the decision came from the police department rather than elected officials, in July and August. On Sept. 1 Monroe County commissioners voted 8-1 to stop the sheriff’s office from using more than 40 cameras. Independence Township cancelled on Sept. 8. On Sept. 15 Eastpointe’s council voted 4-1 to end its contract after the police department determined two employees had misused the system. The movement is not uniform: Warren’s council voted 4-3 in July to renew its $132,000 contract.

Other cities chose oversight instead of cancellation, and they offer a benchmark for what Troy has not done.

• Grand Rapids moved its 31 license plate readers under the city’s Surveillance Technology Policy, through an administrative order the city manager announced in late August and said he would issue by mid-September, requiring Public Safety Committee review and City Commission approval for any renewal or expansion, with annual public reporting beginning in 2027.
• Grand Rapids police and the Kent County Sheriff’s Office launched public Flock transparency portals in September, showing camera counts, plate-read totals and search counts. The Grand Rapids portal also lists the most common stated reasons for searches, offers a downloadable report on individual searches and updates every 24 hours. Neither discloses camera locations.
• Ferndale, after dropping Flock, negotiated terms with a replacement vendor giving the city sole ownership of its data, barring third-party access, and prohibiting sharing with federal agencies without case-specific written authorization. That deal is still conditional: council approved it in December 2025 only if the city first adopted a surveillance ordinance, which had cleared a first reading and a public hearing by February 2026 but, as far as I could determine, has not been adopted. I found no later reporting that it passed.

Troy has a public page of its own, but the city does not publish it. Flock hosts a transparency portal for the Troy Police Department listing 27 cameras, a 30-day retention period, three hotlist sources and 5,445 hotlist hits in the preceding 30 days. It carries none of the search totals, stated search reasons or downloadable search-level reports that Grand Rapids and Kent County post, and it is dated Nov. 21, 2025 — more than ten months old. Michigan has no law regulating license plate readers, though bipartisan bills would change that. Senate Bill 1131, from Sen. Jim Runestad, R-White Lake, would require a warrant outside active investigations, missing-person cases and stolen-vehicle searches, and delete data after 14 days. House Bills 5492 and 5493, introduced the same day by Rep. Doug Wozniak of Shelby Township and Rep. Jimmie Wilson Jr. of Ypsilanti, would cap retention, require agencies to post their policies publicly and file quarterly usage reports. Both carry 27 co-sponsors, and both have sat in the House Judiciary Committee since Jan. 29.

Troy is also not the only Michigan government being asked in court to open its ALPR records. In August, Kettering University student Josh Tewolde sued Genesee County, represented by the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, after the county withheld audit logs, policies and camera locations from a FOIA request about its Flock system. According to the complaint, the county argued the records were Flock’s property, while the contract it handed over says the county owns the data.

Where this stands

Michigan FOIA gives a requester two moves. A written appeal to the head of the public body — which must contain the word “appeal” and state how the fee exceeds what the law allows — obliges the city to waive the fee, reduce it with a written determination, or uphold it with a written justification within 10 business days, subject to one further extension of up to 10 business days. Separately, a civil action for a fee reduction must be filed in circuit court within 45 days of receiving the fee notice or of a determination on that appeal. Troy’s fee notice is dated Oct. 1, and the deposit is due Nov. 18.

The statute also allows a public body to reduce or waive fees when the records primarily benefit the general public. Troy’s cost form has a section for that finding. On both of my requests, it is blank.

Four things Troy’s documents do not show:

• which item in the request the department read as a request for body-worn or in-car video
• what job classification corresponds to each hourly wage on the cost form
• why the City Clerk’s office and Police Records charge different rates for the same category of labor
• why the public-interest fee waiver was not addressed

I put those questions in writing to the Troy Police Department and the city manager’s office on Oct. 1, at the addresses the City publishes for each, and asked for a response by Oct. 5. This article will be updated with the City’s answers, or with a note that none came.

I filed these requests expecting to verify information: how long Troy keeps plate data, who is able to search it, what the audit log shows. Now I am wondering whether the city is hiding something. I cannot say that it is. What I can say is that Troy has set the price of finding out at $26,745, and that when I asked which part of the request was driving that cost, the answer was to file another one.

Disclosure and methodology

I am both the reporter and the requester here. I filed requests 26-539 and 26-551 in my own name as a journalist for Troy Thrive, and the fee described in this article was billed to me. Readers should weigh that interest in judging the piece.

The figures come from Troy’s own documents: the Oct. 1 fee notice and Detailed Cost Itemization Form for 26-539, the Sept. 28 worksheet for 26-551, the August 2025 City Council agenda item containing the signed Flock order form, and the portal timelines for both requests. Hourly rates are the fringe-loaded figures Troy entered; base-wage estimates are my arithmetic using the 40 percent benefits multiplier printed on the city’s form, since the base-wage fields were left blank. Totals and increment counts were recalculated and match the city’s.

Statewide camera counts and the list of cancellations are from The Detroit News, Michigan Public, WXYZ, WDIV and C & G Newspapers, each linked below. Legal requirements are from MCL 15.231 et seq. I am not an attorney, and nothing here is a legal conclusion about whether Troy complied with the statute.

Sources

• City of Troy, FOIA 26-539 fee notice and Detailed Cost Itemization Form, Oct. 1, 2026
• City of Troy, FOIA 26-551 cost worksheet and portal timeline, Sept. 28, 2026
• Troy City Council agenda item, Flock Safety ALPR bid waiver and order form, Aug. 18, 2025
• Michigan Freedom of Information Act, MCL 15.234
• Troy approves license plate-reading cameras, C & G Newspapers, March 2023
• Troy extends license plate reader contract, The Detroit News, Sept. 4, 2025
• License plate readers grow in Michigan, The Detroit News, April 7, 2026
• Detroit suburbs cancel Flock police contracts, The Detroit News, July 17, 2026
• Communities across Michigan move to ditch Flock cameras, Michigan Public, Aug. 19, 2026
• Bipartisan push grows for stricter rules on license plate reader cameras, Michigan Public, Aug. 4, 2026
• City brings automated license plate reader technology under surveillance policy, City of Grand Rapids
• Monroe County commissioners vote to end Flock program, WXYZ, Sept. 2026
• Eastpointe ends Flock contract after employees misused system, WDIV, Sept. 17, 2026
• College student sues Genesee County over Flock records, Michigan Public, Aug. 20, 2026
• Ferndale to work on policies to strengthen ALPR camera oversight, C & G Newspapers, Jan. 2026
• Troy Police Department Flock transparency portal (vendor-hosted; last updated Nov. 21, 2025)
• Michigan House Bill 5492 and House Bill 5493