05 A years-long state-permit fight the public never saw
Caltrans encroachment permit 0424-NSV-0053 ran unresolved for years, with at least one denial.
The single largest thread in the records is Caltrans encroachment permit 0424-NSV-0053 — the approval needed to place Flock poles in state right-of-way. It runs from 2024 into December 2025 and was never cleanly resolved; Caltrans denied at least one installation (see #2) and repeatedly sent the permit back for “structural” review. Flock rotated multiple project managers across the account during the delay.
Why it matters: For an extended period the deployment sat in regulatory limbo — cameras billed and, per the “Cameras In Service / Cameras pending permit” tallies in the records, some operating — while the state permitting question stayed unresolved. Whether any camera operated in state right-of-way without an approved permit is worth a direct question to the city.
Source: numerous …Permit Application 0424-NSV-0053… files (PR-2025-159, PR-2026-7).
The documents behind this
Read them yourself — that is the point.
| Document | Request |
|---|---|
| PR-2025-159/text/ — multiple documents in this request | PR-2025-159 |
| PR-2026-7/text/ — multiple documents in this request | PR-2026-7 |
Full write-up source: BENICIA-FLOCK-FINDINGS.md in the records archive. Every
quotation is transcribed from a PDF the City produced under the California Public Records
Act. Redacted and image-only scans were run through OCR, so minor spacing artifacts may
remain; wording is unchanged.