Stillwater's council meeting Tuesday, Oct 20 at 7 pm at City Hall is set to be another packed one. It follows a September meeting where residents filled the room over the city's Flock cameras, and a wave of letters in the Stillwater Gazette about a quieter contract: a Professional Services Agreement with Urban SDK, an AI traffic analytics company that sells speed and mobility data pulled from connected vehicles and apps.
A letter published in the Gazette on Oct 12 says the agreement was slipped onto the Oct 6 consent agenda, the routine list of items councils approve in one vote, then cut short before it could pass.
Urban SDK is not the Flock system, though people often lump them together. Flock's license plate readers and cameras sit at fixed locations around town and the city's transparency portal lists 17 readers, 20 cameras, and 30-day data retention. Urban SDK instead buys commercial mobility data for traffic analysis: speeds, volumes, congestion. The council has already separately approved AI-enabled NoTraffic cameras at two intersections this year. One note on the name: Flock is not an acronym. Flock Safety is the company name, and its devices are automated license plate readers, usually shortened to ALPR.
Who is Urban SDK?
Urban SDK is a geospatial AI company founded in 2018 in Jacksonville, Florida, by Drew Messer and Justin Dennis. It sells traffic and mobility analytics to local governments: speeds, volumes, congestion, and safety analysis, mostly from commercial data pulled from connected vehicles and navigation apps rather than a city's own cameras.
The company is growing fast. Its annual recurring revenue grew 145% in 2022, and in February 2026 it closed a $65 million growth round led by Riverwood Capital, a major private investment firm. It has raised roughly $73 million in total and says it now serves more than 300 local government clients across 40 states. It also says it is profitable, though that is the company's own claim rather than audited public filings.
Its early investors included the Florida Opportunity Fund, a state-owned investment fund created by Florida lawmakers, so taxpayer money helped seed the company. Its real business model is selling to governments: taxpayer-funded agencies pay for the analytics.
As for the data itself, Urban SDK runs on Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure and partners with HERE Technologies for location data. There is no physical data center coming to Stillwater. The traffic data simply gets processed in Amazon's cloud.
Like it or not, Urban SDK is a growing, profitable company, and if the council approves this agreement, Stillwater's data becomes part of its business model.
The community conversation has raised questions nobody has fully answered yet:
- Will Urban SDK data be combined with the Flock or PTZ cameras already in place?
- What exactly gets shared and who can access it?
- Can any of this track a specific person or vehicle or just traffic patterns?
- Residents have also asked how these systems address everyday complaints like late-night racing on Hwy 96 or whether the technology has ever actually solved crimes here.
- And the bigger question several commenters raised: where's the line between public safety and a surveillance state?
West St. Paul ended its Flock trial this summer. Stillwater has kept its program so far. The Oct 20 agenda packet posts on stillwatermn.gov before the meeting, and the meeting is streamed live. Showing up, or watching, is how the answers start.
Where Are Surveillance Cameras Located in Stillwater?
Community-maintained surveillance maps identify approximately 29 camera locations within Stillwater city limits, including 28 identified as Flock Safety cameras.
Other previously reported figures include:
- 20 cameras referenced in Stillwater's transparency information.
- 17 automated license plate readers referenced in the existing article.
- 18 cameras reportedly operated by Stillwater Police, according to the Minnesota Privacy Project.
These figures come from different sources, may overlap, and have not all been independently verified.
Reported Camera Location
A community report identifies the intersection of Dellwood Road and Highway 95 as a possible Flock camera location.
Dellwood Road and Highway 95 in Stillwater. A Flock camera has been reported near this intersection, although its precise location and ownership have not been independently verified.
Public Camera Resources
Questions for the October 20 City Council Discussion
Questions residents may want answered at the Oct 20 meeting:
- How many cameras are currently operating in Stillwater?
- Who owns and operates them?
- How long is collected information retained?
- Which outside agencies can access the information?
- What does the technology cost taxpayers?
- What oversight and accountability measures exist?
Learn more about Flock cameras, license plate readers, and privacy concerns.
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