The Gunter City Council took up Flock license plate reader placement and city rules for data centers at its Thursday, Aug. 20, regular meeting, according to the posted agenda. For local readers, the paired items concern where police camera technology may be used on city traffic routes and how Gunter writes rules for data centers before those projects raise questions about power, water and land use.
The agenda listed a discussion of Flock license plate readers and camera placement, followed by a separate discussion of Gunter’s data-center regulations. The same agenda included another item for the council to determine which matters should be placed on later city council agendas.
Gunter’s police-camera issue has a record dating back to 2025. A May 20, 2025, council packet said the Gunter Police Department planned to lease five Flock Safety license plate reader cameras if the city received an SB 224 grant from the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority. Minutes from that meeting show the council approved Resolution 2025-05-20-1 authorizing the mayor to apply for the grant.
The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles’ FY2026 MVCPA grant list later showed Gunter receiving about $57,000 for the police Flock project. The 2025 Gunter packet put the city’s share at about $2,500 a year for the five-camera lease, with grant funding covering the rest. The same state list also included a Cooke County Flock Safety development award and Flock-related awards for North Texas cities including Collinsville and Celina.
Flock Safety says its license plate reader cameras are designed to capture traffic in one direction, meaning placement decisions affect whether a location records incoming traffic, outgoing traffic or both. In an August 2026 company post, Flock said customers could adopt a weeklong data-retention recommendation and use offense filters to limit outside-agency searches by categories such as stolen vehicles, missing persons or violent crimes.
The data-center item comes as Texas officials and other local governments debate how much say communities should have over power- and water-heavy developments. Grayson County Commissioners Court Resolution 26-009 says Texas counties do not have the same general zoning authority as municipalities, limiting county power over the location and operation of large data centers in unincorporated areas.
That Grayson County resolution says support for data-center development should depend on safeguards for grid reliability, water use, agricultural land, county roads, drainage systems, public health and environmental quality. It also asks state regulators to require public reporting of projected electricity demand, water use and infrastructure effects before proposed data centers receive final approval.
At the state level, Gov. Greg Abbott’s office said June 10 that he directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT to require data centers to pay for electric infrastructure needed for their operations so those costs are not shifted to residential ratepayers. Abbott’s office also said he would work with lawmakers on water-efficient cooling, electricity and water reporting, tax incentives, setbacks and noise reduction.
A Texas comparison is San Marcos, where that city’s June 16 council recap says council members amended local code to prohibit data centers in every city zoning district while approving a broader development-code update. Federal energy data give the issue a longer horizon: the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected in its Annual Energy Outlook 2026 that data-center server electricity use would keep rising, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s 2026 update estimated data centers could account for roughly one-tenth of total U.S. electricity use by 2030.
The Aug. 20 Gunter agenda identified both matters as discussion items. Any policy change, camera-placement decision or follow-up data-center regulation would have to appear in city minutes or a later posted agenda.
_Editor's note: Everyone charged with a crime is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law._
Join the conversation
Comments