Jonathan Coffman, Pflugerville City Councilmember

06/13/2026

Coffman’s Council Update: June 9 Council Meeting

This meeting kicked off Council’s side of the FY2027 budget process. It was our first major review of current-year revenue and expenditures, early assumptions for next year, and the tradeoffs we will need to work through before adoption.

A few other big items stood out.

First, staff presented a Pflugerville Broadband Master Plan. I was a hard no.

I support better broadband access. I support more fiber in Pflugerville. I support making sure residents, businesses, and city facilities have reliable, competitive internet options.

But this plan was not the right approach.

The methodology was weak, the recommendations were pointed in the wrong direction, and the plan leaned toward the City incentivizing private broadband companies or even evaluating a city-built network. That is not where I think Pflugerville should be spending taxpayer dollars.

We already have multiple providers who want to invest here. The City’s job should be to make it easier, faster, and more predictable for them to install fiber and expand service. That means better permitting, clearer right-of-way rules, faster coordination, and the removal of unnecessary friction. It does not mean adding a new layer of city regulation, creating new public subsidy programs, or putting taxpayers on the hook for broadband infrastructure that the private sector is already willing to build.

After I raised those concerns, staff and the Mayor pulled the item rather than asking Council to vote on it. That was the right call.

Second, we continued reviewing the five-year Capital Improvement Plan (CIP). This is the City’s long-term plan for major infrastructure projects like roads, drainage, parks, facilities, water, and wastewater.

Council is still working through what should move forward, what needs more scrutiny, and what may need to be pushed out because the city's growth is slower than previous projections. My focus is pretty simple: critical projects need to move forward, but we cannot pretend that every project is equally urgent or equally affordable. Council provided solid feedback on prioritization across several departments, focusing on finishing long-promised projects before starting new ones.

Third, Council considered several related items for the Lakeside Meadows development near Lake Pflugerville.

The development is still moving forward, but the developer is selling its equity stake in the project to a private funder and stepping back from certain aspects of the business arrangement. As part of that, they asked to update and refine their remaining responsibilities.

One item crossed a line for me.

The developer had been responsible for helping build a pedestrian bridge or crossing from the development over to Lake Pflugerville. Anyone who has been out there knows the crossing condition is not good. It is a dangerous area for pedestrians, and a safe crossing is needed.

The proposal would have shifted that work to the City, with $1.5 million set aside from the development-related assessments. The problem is that the $1.5 million figure appears to come from 2022 or earlier. A bridge like this could easily cost far more today, possibly $3 million to $5 million, depending on design, right-of-way, engineering, drainage, utilities, and construction conditions.

Staff did not have a current estimate. There was no current design. There was no clear plan for how the City would deliver the project or what the final taxpayer exposure could be.

I am not comfortable making the City contractually responsible for building a bridge when we do not know what it will cost. If the real cost is several million dollars higher than the old estimate, taxpayers would be stuck with the difference. That is not a responsible way to approve infrastructure.

Finally, Council considered whether to renew the Mayor’s emergency water declaration. I voted no, along with Councilmember Rogers.

The original emergency declaration made sense in March. At that time, Lake Pflugerville was dropping quickly, the raw water line was broken, and there was a very real risk that we could lose access to our primary water supply. That was an emergency.

But by this meeting, the lake was full, the pumps were starting up again, and we were no longer facing an 'imminent failure of the public water supply'. There is still normal construction risk. There is still work to finish. But emergency powers should be tied to an actual emergency. I did not see a justification for continuing them when the conditions had materially changed.

The bigger theme from this meeting was accountability.

Broadband policy should make private investment easier, not create a new taxpayer-funded broadband experiment.

The CIP should prioritize critical infrastructure rather than treating every project as equally urgent.

Development agreements should not transfer unknown costs to taxpayers without current estimates and a clear delivery plan.

Emergency powers should end when the emergency has passed.

That is the standard I will continue to apply as we move through the budget, CIP, and economic development work.

05/29/2026

When people talk about the Pflugerville City Council being a team sport, this is what they mean! The Mayor and Councilmember Ruiz had breakfast with these visiting business leaders, Councilmember Rogers and I took 'the lunch shift', and Councilmember Metayer met with them at happy hour. All in an effort to show how great Pflugerville will be for this business accelerator, investors, and the current cohort of small businesses interested in relocating to Pflugerville, what we're all about.

05/22/2026

During National Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Week, I want to thank the Pflugerville Fire Department for its continued service and first response to our community.

A couple of things residents may not know: 100% of Pflugerville firefighters are EMTs, and 27% are also certified paramedics.

Because of that training, around 85% of their fire trucks can provide Advanced Life Support (ALS)- level care every day, in addition to the staffed ambulances serving our community.

Over the last several years, our local fire-based medical readiness has provided a critical backstop while the City of Pflugerville has contracted with a for-profit EMS provider, especially during times when that provider's ambulance availability has been strained.

That depth of local training and readiness matters when seconds count. I’m grateful for their service today and everyday.

05/20/2026

Storm cleanup and road closures are still affecting parts of Pflugerville today, so please keep an eye on city updates before heading out.

My personal story this morning: city leadership sent Council messages about storm cleanup and upcoming road closures... Then I got the PF Alerts texts like everyone else. Then I saw the city’s social media posts. And then, despite all of that, I still drove down Heatherwilde and had to divert to get to a meeting with a resident.

Councilmembers are people, too!

So, here is your reminder to sign up for PF Alerts if you haven’t already. It’s one of the fastest ways to get updates from the city about road closures, severe weather, emergency notices, and other time-sensitive information.

Make sure you are signed up for emergency alerts and know where to go for critical information before an emergency.

05/19/2026

An update on Pflugerville’s use of AI, surveillance, data security, and civil liberties.

Forgive me, this is a long one, but I want to be completely open and direct about what is going on, what the issues are, and how two other Councilmembers and I are trying to drive this forward.

With the answer up front, my position remains that Pflugerville should adopt practical, enforceable rules now:

* No city use of facial recognition technology.
* Human review of AI-generated work products or decisions before the city relies on them.
* City control over city-generated data, including images, video, license plate reads, metadata, and search history.
* No outside agency access to Pflugerville data without a court order or a written agreement.
* A public inventory of AI, surveillance, and data-sharing technologies, including contracts, order forms, purpose, retention rules, and access permissions.
* No renewal or expansion of high-risk technology contracts until basic privacy, transparency, and data-control rules are in place.

Today, Council finally had the long-awaited lunch-and-learn with city staff on AI, surveillance, data sharing, and civil liberties. This came after I proposed several months ago to establish basic guardrails and oversight for how Pflugerville uses emerging surveillance and AI technologies. At the time, the Mayor, at the City Manager's advice, chose not to move forward with that proposal and instead asked for this staff presentation so staff could specify which rules they believed were reasonable.

I’m glad we had the discussion. It was productive. I’m also frustrated.

Pflugerville residents deserve public safety that does not infringe on their civil liberties through undisclosed surveillance systems, broad outside access to resident data, facial recognition tools, and third-party data practices that the public has never had a real chance to examine.

We should not allow third parties to retain our residents’ images, videos, license plate reads, metadata, or location patterns indefinitely for training AI models we do not control. And residents should not have to drag basic facts into the daylight to learn what surveillance technology their own city is using.

Here is what stood out to me today.

Pflugerville does not just have license plate readers. We learned today that the city has roughly 28 Flock license plate readers and more than 70 video surveillance cameras across the city feeding into FlockOS's AI systems.

Council and residents had been led to believe there were only a handful of AI-powered video cameras in places like Moose Park and 1849 Park, following specific vandalism and damage at those locations. That was not the full picture. The city has a much larger AI-enabled surveillance footprint than residents and Council had been led to understand. It was also disclosed today that two new surveillance cameras are being installed at Lake Pflugerville this week.

To be direct about it, city staff and the Chief of Police could not tell us today how many surveillance cameras there are, where they are located, or what technology they use. In previous Councilmember and public information requests, the city did not disclose this larger system or provide copies of the contracts and order forms when requested. We were told there were no such documents.

That is unacceptable.

Multiple times over the last several months, I have requested that city leadership and staff update the “public safety cameras” page on the city website to reflect that we do have surveillance cameras, AI-powered capabilities, and related technology in use. None of our public transparency pages or portals reflect that reality yet. At the time, none of us realized just how pervasive the system was.

Nor did we know, except for what appears to have been an accidental reference in the Police Department’s annual report to Council, that the city has a subscription to Clearview AI. Clearview is a facial recognition company that allows police to search for individuals using images, including full and partial faces, based on a massive database built from online images, including social media profiles.

That technology was not proactively disclosed to Council or the public.

As we have known for a while, 80+ other law enforcement entities have access to search Pflugerville-generated data from the Flock system. We also learned that several local HOAs and retailers have granted the Pflugerville Police Department access to their license plate readers and cameras.

That is not inherently bad. But none of this has been clearly disclosed to Council or the public. It remains unclear which entities have access to our data, which entities provide us with access on a 1-way basis, what rules govern that access, and why those relationships are not listed on the city’s transparency portal.

Some of the outside agencies with access are well outside our city limits. I do not believe Pflugerville residents’ movements, vehicles, images, faces, or travel patterns should be available to outside entities without clear rules, a written agreement, or a court order. Today, those rules and agreements do not exist.

Yes, searches and results from outside agencies are auditable. That does not answer the more basic question of why agencies outside Pflugerville, including private or special-purpose police and security departments without direct accountability to Pflugerville residents (or any publicly elected entity), should have access to our residents’ data, images, and locations in the first place.

Our PD leadership appears to believe that because Pflugerville has a contract with a surveillance vendor, and other agencies have contracts with the same surveillance vendor, that is enough. It is not.

A vendor relationship is not a public oversight policy. A shared platform is not a city-approved data-sharing agreement. And an audit log after the fact is not the same thing as requiring clear rules before access is granted.

This is not about being anti-police. I ran on public safety. I want our police officers to have strong tools to solve crimes, find suspects, and keep people safe.

But public safety and civil liberties are not mutually exclusive. We can catch criminals without giving nearly a hundred outside agencies broad access to Pflugerville residents’ data. We can use modern technology without individual, personally identifiable facial recognition and tracking of our residents. We can support our police department while still requiring transparency, data controls, human review, and public oversight.

Council has received dozens of emails on this issue. Residents have shown up during public comment. In my time on Council, I have not seen another issue draw this much sustained concern and scrutiny. Not even our water emergency this year had this many people make comments on the official record.

And it is worth noting: many residents are not asking for guardrails. They are asking for these systems to be shut down entirely. That is also what other cities and counties in Central Texas and across the country have done.

I also want to recognize Councilmember David Rogers and Councilmember Melody Ryan. None of us agrees on everything politically. That is not a secret. But on this issue, we agree that basic privacy, data control, and transparency are not partisan ideas and that we need to be proactive.

I appreciate their support and their agreement that Pflugerville needs to be proactive about protecting residents’ data.

Pflugerville residents deserve public safety. They also deserve a city government that tells the truth about what technology it uses, who has access to residents' data, which rules apply, and how residents’ civil liberties are protected.

That is what I am going to keep pushing for.

05/18/2026

Today was a public “lunch and learn” about AI policy wherein city staff, Police command staff, and council had an in-depth conversation about public safety, privacy, and civil liberties; and I appreciate that Councilmember Rogers and Ryan have been willing to engage alongside me on the issue. The three of us have been seriously considering the importance of our city having practical, common-sense guardrails for the city’s use of advanced technology to protect our residents.

05/15/2026

This is National Police Week, don’t forget to go check out the profiles of some of Pflugerville’s Pfinest - https://www.facebook.com/share/18MhQj4hBA/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Inspiring trust and respect to keep those we serve safe.

Terms of use at pflugervilletx.gov/terms.

05/13/2026

The biggest discussion at Tuesday’s Council meeting was the city’s 5-year Capital Improvement Plan, or CIP.

That is the plan for major city projects: roads, drainage, parks, public facilities, water, wastewater, and reclaimed water. It doesn't mean projects are approved, funded, or anything like that, but it is our roadmap of what the city's needs and wants are on behalf of residents, and it does shape future debt, tax-rate pressure, utility-rate pressure, staff capacity, and what residents can realistically expect the city to deliver. It's a 5-year plan that gets updated every year.

The Planning & Zoning Commission sent the CIP forward to Council, but it was not a blank-check recommendation. Several commissioners raised valid concerns about debt, tax-rate implications, project timing, moving targets, and whether the city is prioritizing the right projects in the right order. I share many of those concerns, and am very happy that they took a stand and forced a meaningful conversation.

The good news: Matt Rector, our Public Utility & Engineering Director (~3-months on the job!), has already done substantial work to tighten next year’s plan. The direction he has taken focuses more on finishing projects already in progress rather than starting too many new ones at once. That is a big shift in priorities for our critical infrastructure investments, and I appreciate it.

The numbers are moving in the right direction as well. Based on the revised working version discussed, planned FY27 CIP items dropped from roughly $170 million to about $82 million (as a point of reference, the city's annual budget is typically around $700M, inclusive of infrastructure projects). For water, wastewater, and drainage, proposed future-debt funding for next year dropped from about $23 million to about $6 million.

That does not mean the work is done.

I still want sharper answers on timing, growth assumptions, which projects are tied to specific developments, whether those developments are still on track, and what we can responsibly defer without creating bigger costs later.

A few examples of where I pushed for more discipline:

The proposed $25 million Downtown parking garage is a no for me right now. We have been told the market may not support redevelopment of city-owned Old Town buildings for the next five years. Until we have a unified Old Town plan, including whether we are serious about full revitalization, underground utilities, traffic, pedestrian safety, and redevelopment strategy, I do not think a parking garage belongs near the top of the list. If we had $25 million sitting around, and we do not, I would rather have a serious conversation about the animal shelter, which is in desperate need of new facilities.

This improved and more rigorous budget discipline is what residents and Council should expect. Pflugerville has many very real infrastructure needs. We can't pretend we can defer everything, or even most things. But we also cannot keep stacking new commitments on top of unfinished work and then act surprised when debt, taxes, rates, and delivery risk become an issue.

Several of us on Council were clear: finish what we promised, tighten the project list, show the debt and rate impacts plainly, and make sure our plan matches staff capacity. I was encouraged that the staff heard that message and is making changes to support that direction.

We also took up updated park and Lake Pflugerville rules ahead of summer. We approved the Lake Pflugerville rule updates with some modifications (such as adjusting the hours to 5a-9pm, while still allowing trail use and fishing 24/7, and clarifying that electric motors are ok on the lake, just not internal combustion engines). My focus here is pretty simple: Lake Pflugerville is getting busier, and residents need clear, fair, and enforceable rules while we wait for more permanent shade and park improvements to come online. There have been a number of safety issues we need to resolve ahead of the busy summer season and the upcoming holidays. We provided quite a bit of feedback to the Parks staff on additional changes and directions to keep the rules fair for all, without 'ruining it' for the people who are respectful and responsible.

More to come.

05/08/2026

I would love to see more people fill out this survey. Please make your voice heard! City staff is proposing to bring forward a bond vote this November and we need more public input on 1) whether this is a good idea or not and 2) of the projects they’ve identified should be priorities or not.

Do you have questions? Add them to the survey. I’m also happy to give you my take if you comment below, or contact me directly.

We want to hear from you!📣

The City’s Bond Advisory Committee is reviewing projects for the 2026 Bond Election, and your input helps shape what moves pforward. These projects are long-term investments in Pflugerville’s pfuture, and your pfeedback plays a key role in what may appear on the ballot this November.

The community survey closes on Monday, May 11, so don’t miss your chance to speak up.

🔗Learn more and take the survey at pflugervilletx.gov/1048.

05/07/2026

Today was Pflugerville Mayor Doug Weiss's first annual State of the City Address. It was a pretty packed house, and the Weiss HS Choral group did a wonderful job performing.