Tick tock tick Flock

July 13, 2026

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Visalia Police Department Public Records Request – update

On April 19, 2026, I posted “What the Flock?“, my first entry about the proliferation of Flock Automated License Plate Readers in Visalia, California.

On April 24, 2026, I posted “Well, Flock Me!“, about a nearby community (Merced, California) disabling their Flock ALPR system after problems with unauthorized access were discovered. On that same day, I filed a Public Records Request with the Visalia Police Department, about Visalia’s recent installation of Flock cameras. The City had ten days to respond.

On May 5, 2026, I posted “Flock you later“, where the City of Visalia takes advantage of a 14 day extension to provide the requested documents.

On May 11, 2026, I posted “Flock the Lawyers“, wherein the City informs me they have to run it past the lawyers first, and they were targeting June 1, 2026 for release of the documents.

On May 27, 2026, “Flock Me A Little Bit” is the next chapter, in which the City is initially refusing to provide some of the requested documentation, since I was requesting the images in the system of a particular license plate. My license plate. I sent them a copy of my vehicle registration. The next target date for complying with my request was June 20, 2026.

On June 29, 2026, I posted to Facebook, tagging both the City of Visalia and the Visalia Police Department, that they were nine days past their own due date for information. That was at 1pm. By 3pm, I received a “supplemental response to your public records request”, via email. This response stated “The attached document shows the result of a Department audit searching for any monitoring and investigating activity for JJRJR. No data exists.” Except that wasn’t what I asked them to provide. I had no reason to suspect the Police Department deliberately did a search for my license plate, for whatever reason. What I asked for was every instance of my plate being recorded by the system. Those are two different things. They are not going to convince me that my plate has never been recorded by their system.

In that response, they also moved the date again. More information was supposed to be available July 20, 2026.

On July 10, 2026, I received this letter, and a link to a DropBox file with audit logs.

2026.07.10 RB Ltr to J.ReevesDownload

There are tens of thousands of pages (PDF file pages) in response to this part of my request. In case the link in the letter doesn’t work, you can see them at my Dropbox, at this link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/6u6l4w0jwe54w6y1fvllu/AAZ4mAaSF8XPUJfqUpd2lwo?rlkey=iuqasfx1t6r8hhwgz02h36us1&st=qkgkdqht&dl=0

They state “The Department’s staff is continuing its diligent search and review of requested records. The Department’s staff members estimate they will be able to supplement this response on or about August 20, 2026, earlier if able.”

Tick tock tick Flock

Visalia Without Oak Trees

June 24, 2026

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“Chainsaws roaring”

If you ask Google “what oak tree is common in the area of visalia, california?” the following are parts of it’s response:

The Valley Oak (Quercus lobata) is the most common and iconic native oak tree in the Visalia area. Visalia is home to the largest remaining stand of native valley oaks in California’s entire Central Valley.

Also,

Because these magnificent trees are tightly woven into the city’s heritage, Visalia strictly enforces a Valley Oak Ordinance. This policy requires public and private property owners to secure official permits before pruning, trimming, or removing any mature valley oak.

That is no longer true.

Something recently happened to change the status of oak trees, which had been protected by City ordinance since 1971.

Visalia’s webpage states: The City’s Valley Oak Ordinance establishes policies for the care, trimming, and removal of valley oaks. Public property owners are required to ensure the protection of these magnificent trees and must obtain permission to remove or prune valley oaks.

Check that bold text. Only “public property owners”, i.e. governments, are required to obtain permits and/or permission to trim or remove Valley Oaks in Visalia.

Here’s what went down.

More

Visalia Unified School District – Public Records Request – Where We Stand So Far

June 17, 2026

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It started with “Hate In A Small Town 5 (Visalia Edition)“. In “The Devil Made Me Do It“, I covered how one of the Trustees of the Visalia Unified School District said the incident was simply “A mistake”. The community doesn’t view the incident as a “mistake”.

On April 17, 2026, I initiated a Public Records request. On April 27, 2026, the District sent me a letter acknowledging my request, and saying they would respond by May 18, 2026. On May 18, 2026, they sent a response saying they would have documents no later than June 17, 2026. Well, today is June 17, 2026, and this email arrived:

Letter_06172026Download

After figuring out how to navigate a Mimecast download, I was able to access and download a 40Meg file of emails, and text messages. I’ve scanned through them, and there’s a lot of duplication due to everyone forwarding everything to everybody else. There are also other records still pending, and some they’re probably not going to give me at all. They’re giving themselves another month to comply.

We’ll see how it goes, and I’ll keep you updated as I get further information.

A Tale of Two Cities – 2026 edition

June 15, 2026

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On June 15, 2013, I posted a blog called “A Tale of Two Cities“. I headed it “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

That blog was about the stark difference between two local cities, and how they handled a Pride Month Proclamation. Visalia’s was historic, for all the right reasons. Porterville’s was historic as well, but for all the wrong reasons.

I just left a Visalia City Council meeting. A huge consent calendar, with several items pulled, and five regular session items. The big item on the agenda was the final budget proposal for fiscal years 26/27, and 27/28 (Visalia does a two-year budget cycle).

A $408 million budget for 26/27, and $358 million in 27/28, Visalia manages to have a surplus in it’s General Fund, even after including deposits into the emergency fund (set to maintain a balance of 30% of the yearly budget). Each year expenditures increase, and every year the City is able to either meet the reserve goals, or to only fall short a small amount. A lot of assumptions go into the budget, but Visalia has a history of managing the citizen’s tax monies, and the city, well.

Porterville, on the other hand…

The Porterville Recorder says the 2026/2027 budget for the city is over $37 million, with expenses forecast at $36.6 million. That’s not much of a cushion. The budget also includes $107 million in planned capital improvement projects for the upcoming year. Seems like a gap, but I’m no expert in city budgets.

But all of that is not what I was going to talk about.

In Visalia, the Mayor was absent for the meeting, and the air conditioning failed early in the afternoon. City staff was able to restore the A/C before the evening regular session, and the council moved on with business. With a consent agenda of 37 items, and 5 items on the regular agenda, Monday’s meeting could have gone on for seemingly forever. It did not. Two hours was all it took the Visalia City Council to pull four items from the Consent Calendar, deal with them, and then pass a two-year budget, put contested special assessments on county tax rolls, recertify a sales-tax measure, authorize a zoning change and General Plan amendment to sell some property it owns, and approve new rates and fees for City operations.

Public comments were made by several citizens (including me, twice), only one of which was hostile towards City Council members or the City Manager. One gentleman was not happy about his dealings with the city, and let them know about it. The rest of the comments were general commentary on issues before the City, but at worst were expressing disappointment with some decisions. The meeting ended at 9pm.

A well oiled, well operating machine.

Porterville, however…

Their meetings drag on. And on. And on. Public comments are often angry and upset. Many people in the City are not happy with the current council. Decisions to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on playground equipment (for parks already neglected by the City), a miniature Washington Monument, and bus wraps. $20,000 (edit: $15,000) for a “celebration” of the nations 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, (how watching a MMA fight held at the White House on a big (not that big of a) TV is supposed to celebrate the Declaration of Independence I don’t know) held in a residential neighborhood. Fireworks. In a residential neighborhood. Loud music. In a residential neighborhood. Attendance in the tens (edit: Council member Beltran says about 70 attended) instead of the thousands expected by those on Council who arranged it. Parking headaches in the neighborhood.

In Visalia, public comments are heard by the Council, who sometimes direct City staff to take the speaker out to the hall and discuss the situation to see how the problem can be resolved. I’ve only seen one example (OK, maybe more than once, but they seem to have gotten over that and have returned to a polite decorum most of the time) of a council member chastising the public for comments made.

Porterville Council members routinely chastise the public for being “disrespectful” and “condescending”. Council members demand respect, but don’t show it to speakers. Several of them denigrate people who disagree with them politically and religiously. One council member accused a charity group of being “angry”, because when he (deliberately, no doubt) said “Merry Christmas” to them, someone responded “Happy Holidays”. That kind of thing is a regular feature of Porterville City Council meetings, and something several Council members regularly indulge in. It’s embarrassing.

This blog could go on for pages, comparing these two cities. It won’t. I’ll end it here, with the statement that I’m really glad I live in Visalia.

VUSD – favoritism, retaliation, and nepotism?

June 8, 2026

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Image credit: VUSD

The Visalia Unified School District has been in the news a lot this year. Much of it was not good. My own blogging has been this, this, this, and this, regarding not recording ‘Special Meetings’. Then the real mess began, for me, with an incident at Redwood High School on February 12, 2026, when graduating Seniors at class pictures decided to us their lettered tshirts, originally organized to spell out “ALWAYS LEGIT CLASS OF 2026” into a homophobic slur. My blogging on that can be found here, here, and here. Another item, buried in the next School District Board of Trustees consent calendar agenda is here.

That’s only the stuff I’ve been following. Layoffs, cutbacks, and new administration-level hirings have been roiling Board of Trustee meetings for some time now.

I was contacted recently by a person who wanted to remain anonymous, about problems at El Diamante High School. The District, Board of Trustees, the Superintendent, and teachers were sent an email, from another anonymous person (not the same one that contacted me), about the issues at El D. Concerns about favoritism, nepotism, and retaliation are discussed.

Click on “MORE”, for the entire email as sent to the District, educators, the Board of Trustees, and the Superintendent.

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Flock Me A Little Bit

May 27, 2026

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The next chapter in our Flock Me series is here! Today I received this email from the Visalia Police Department’s lawyers. (I’m going to have to ask why they have an out-of-town law firm doing this, and not the city attorney.)(UPDATE: It’s not actually an out-of-town firm. It’s a local, Visalia law firm. Not sure why I was thinking it’s an out-of-town company. Oops.)

2026.05.27 RB Ltr to J. ReevesDownload

I’ve sent them an image of my vehicle registration, so I hope to get the images of every time my car has been photographed by the system in Visalia. We’ll see.

Here’s the data on the agencies who can access the Visalia Police Department’s camera system. I’m going to have to study it a bit to figure out exactly what it means, and it does not (so far) answer the question of who *actually* accessed the data. This seems to indicate who is allowed to have access, which is not really what I asked. We’ll see if future information dumps include that little detail.

Flock Shared NetworksDownload

For those new to the saga of the Flock Automated License Plate Readers, here’s the blog posts I’ve done so far:

What the Flock?

Well, Flock me!

More Flock, more fun

Flock you later

Flock the Lawyers

Visalia Unified School District – Public Records Request

May 19, 2026

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Have you been following the saga? No, not that one, this one. You know, the one where ten Redwood High School students, after the Senior class picture, rearranged some lettered T-shirts to spell out “2FAG6OTS”? Yeah, that one. Here’s some more, about one of the School Board Trustees who said it was nothing more than a “student mistake”. It wasn’t Visalia Unified School District’s first rodeo, however.

The District quickly let us know they’d conducted an investigation, and put out this notice on February 13, 2026 – (the incident happened the day before, February 12)

That seemed rather quick, didn’t it? Yeah, I thought so, too. Then a few days later, this appeared:

“…please know that as we continue our investigation…”

Wait – you said on the 13th “…following a thorough investigation…”

I have questions. I addressed them in the format of a public records request.

To: Custodian of Records / Public Information Officer

Visalia Unified School District

5000 W. Cypress Ave. | Visalia, CA 93277

Date: 4/17/2026

RE: CALIFORNIA PUBLIC RECORDS ACT REQUEST – SLUR INCIDENT INVESTIGATION AND COMMUNICATIONS

To the Custodian of Records:

Under the California Public Records Act (Gov. Code § 7920.000 et seq.), I am requesting the following public records held by the Visalia Unified School District (VUSD):

Investigation Results (Feb 13): All reports, final results, and documentation regarding the “thorough investigation” referred to in the VUSD Facebook “Community Alert” posted on February 13, 2026.

Investigation Results (Feb 17): All reports, preliminary or final results, and documentation regarding the investigation into the “anti-gay slur” incident referred to in the VUSD Facebook announcement posted on February 17, 2026.

Staff Communications: Any and all emails, text messages (on district-issued or personal devices used for district business), or internal memoranda related to the senior class picture incident and subsequent investigations. This request specifically targets communications from:

VUSD staff assigned to the senior class picture event where the photo was taken.

The Principal and Vice-Principal of Redwood High School.

Named District Officials/Staff: Kirk Shrum, Andrew Di Meo, Monica Andrew, Dennis Dyck, Cristina Gutierrez, Jordan Markham, and Lesha Weatherford.

Named Board Members/Personnel: Todd Oto, Walta Gamoian, Paul Belt, Kenneth Dejonge, Jacqueline Gaebe, Joy Naylor, and Randy Villegas.

Redactions and Privacy: I recognize that certain information, such as specific student names or protected personnel records, may be exempt from disclosure under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) or California law. Pursuant to Gov. Code § 7922.525, please provide all reasonably segregable portions of these records. I accept legally required redactions (such as the masking of student names) so that the remaining public portions of the investigative findings and staff communications may be disclosed.

Request for Digital Format: Please provide these records in electronic format. If the District maintains these records in a searchable digital format (such as PDF), I request them in that native form.

Timeline: I look forward to your response within ten (10) days, as required by statute, indicating whether this request seeks disclosable public records and the date on which the records will be made available.

Thank you for your assistance in this matter.

Sincerely,

Jim J. Reeves

Visalia, CA

I received this response at the ten-day deadline required by state law:

Response – 2026-04-27 Correspondence to Jim ReevesDownload

On May 18th, I got this response:

Further Response – 2026-05-18 Correspondence to Jim ReevesDownload

So we wait some more. I’ve had several people contact me through social media, commenting on my Facebook posts about this request. Basically, they’re saying, “good luck! I’ve had very little success with records requests with other school districts or governmental bodies!”

We’ll see what happens, but be assured that I’ll not stop my digging until I get everything legally available to me. And lest anyone think, and they have been thinking this and yelling at me about it, I’m not looking for information on the students or their individual punishments. That part doesn’t interest me at all. This is all about the Visalia Unified School District and it’s perpetuating of an environment of homophobia, and allowing a school culture that led these students to think this was something that was “funny”, a “prank”, or a “mistake”.

I earlier in this post said this wasn’t VUSD’s first rodeo when it comes to homophobia in their schools. Apparently their first rodeo didn’t teach them to keep a halter on their herd.

Flock the Lawyers

May 11, 2026

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2026.05.11 RB Ltr to J. ReevesDownload

Oh my…

Now the City of Visalia is running it by the lawyers. It also manages to push the “final” date out to June 1, 2026.

As you’ll recall, my first post about it was “What the Flock?“, where I looked at all of the locations where Visalia Police Department (VPD) had installed cameras.

The next post was about a public records request I submitted to VPD concerning the cameras, “Well, Flock me!”

Another blogger, Paul Flores, had the AI system DeepSeek create an interesting look at what I was doing. “More Flock, More Fun“

The first response to my Public Records request was this, “Flock you later“.

Tick Tock

How I’m voting, 2026 CA Primary

May 9, 2026

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Here’s how I’m voting in the California primary election for 2026.

With sixtyone(!) candidates on the ballot just for Governor, and sixteen for Lieutenant Governor, this ballot is a mess. The top two vote-getters for each office will move on to the general election in November. (For some offices on the ballot)

Since I recognize exactly zero of the candidates for many of these offices, I tried something I’ve never done before. I asked Gemini AI to create a political profile of me based on my blog posts here on Jimmiejoe.com, and at AlternatingCurrents.net. I then had it compare the profile of me it created to the public information of some of these candidates, and suggest which ones best match my politics. On some of the suggestions, it was difficult to choose between the top candidates who it said matched.

Here’s what we have. Not all of the candidates I’ve chosen were chosen with AI help.

More

Flock you later

May 5, 2026

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The Flock Automated License Plate Reader saga continues.

As you’ll recall, my first post about it was “What the Flock?“, where I looked at all of the locations where Visalia Police Department (VPD) had installed cameras.

The next post was about a public records request I submitted to VPD concerning the cameras, “Well, Flock me!”

Another blogger, Paul Flores, had the AI system DeepSeek create an interesting look at what I was doing. “More Flock, More Fun“

Today, I got a notice from Visalia PD, advising me they were going to extend their deadline by fourteen days, as provided by law.

I didn’t think I was asking for that much, and I really expected to get very little, with them citing confidentiality laws! 😉

The timer is reset. tick tock

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