Paonia yanks – In Paonia, Colorado, a town of about 1,500 people has been consumed by a cascading conflict over AI-enabled surveillance. Robots and then cameras appeared without broad public input, a contract was rejected and later ended, staff resigned, a recall effort is u
The blue lights were what people noticed first.
In Paonia—an agriculture-centered town of about 1. 500 in Colorado’s North Fork Valley—artificial intelligence-enabled cameras trained on public spaces began turning up on poles and walls last fall. They watched town hall. They watched people coming and going from the town’s water plant. They were even there during the kind of moments a small town would rather be left alone to enjoy—like dancing in front of the town park’s bandstand.
“They weren’t happy to be unknowingly caught on camera,” the dispute later boiled down to what many residents feared: that the town was quietly expanding its reach.
The controversy did not start with the cameras. Last summer, robots had already been trundling along Paonia sidewalks, gathering data about how accommodating the thoroughfares were for people with disabilities. Townspeople were surprised by the wandering machines.
What comes after that kind of surprise is often a question—not just of technology, but of control.
In Paonia, the question sharpened into an argument that the town has not escaped since: how much surveillance is acceptable, and who gets a say before it arrives.
The robots and cameras were tied to a larger sense of unease dating back more than two decades. when a mosquito fogging effort ignited a controversy that culminated in the bombing of the town’s mosquito-control building. That history has made this latest fight feel different to locals—not because it is the same crime. but because the town seems to have repeated the same pattern of escalation.
After residents started noticing the cameras—with their telltale blue lights—one Paonia resident began raising questions. Those questions grew loud enough that town officials recently caved and removed most of the cameras.
That should have ended it. It didn’t.
The discord widened into a power struggle inside town government, with consequences spreading outward.
Within weeks, town administrator Stefen Wynn decided not to renew his contract. Wynn complained to Paonia police that he felt some townspeople were threatening his life by posting “86-Wynn” on social media.
Not long after, the town’s public works director resigned. So did one of the newest members of the six-person town board.
Now, a petition is circulating to recall the mayor, and the intensity of the fight has left some residents saying the town might simply need another kind of operator—one that’s automated, like a robot, instead of humans battling over the controls.
The argument over labels has become part of the dispute itself.
Pete McCarthy. a software engineer who moved to Paonia from Silicon Valley five years ago. has been at the center of questioning the town’s high-tech expansion. He sits in the driver’s seat of the pushback. calling what the town did “surveillance.” Paonia Mayor Paige Smith says “security” is the proper term.
Smith said the cameras were purchased to deter vandalism and other crimes. She said the robots were meant to carry out a short-term job of gathering specific information.
McCarthy insists the record tells a different story about what those devices were actually doing. He said that while he recognized the robots were collecting data on sidewalk accessibility, he also saw them capturing images of children on bicycles.
He tried to slow the momentum with a “robot moratorium” measure, but it was rejected.
Smith said she didn’t know that hiring a company to gather data on the town’s compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act would be accomplished with roving robots.
McCarthy then focused on the surveillance cameras and said they were capable of facial recognition—something he argues can violate civil rights.
In public meetings, McCarthy brought up past scrutiny of the company the town purchased the cameras from: Verkada. He said Verkada had been charged and fined for serious transgressions around the country, including failing to secure customer data. He pointed to hacker access of camera systems of nearly 100 clients, and described compromised privacy at hospitals, prisons and schools. He also said the Department of Justice fined the company $2.95 million for “severe” data breaches. deceptive business practices and marketing violations.
McCarthy’s summary of Paonia’s situation landed with the bite of a courtroom quip: “I guess you could say that we are on the cutting edge of violating citizens’ privacy.”
Last week, he announced he had started a recall petition to remove Smith from office for going along with mistakes he pins on Wynn.
To force a recall election in a town this size, McCarthy needs 81 signatures. He has already used his digital skills to create professional-looking “Pete for Mayor” posters.
The fight over the cameras wasn’t only about what they could do. It was also about how they were adopted.
A year after the robots arrived and then disappeared, the cameras still cast a shadow—particularly because residents said they had no say in approving the choice of Verkada or for paying that company $53,000 for around two dozen cameras.
Town officials said the cameras were meant to deter vandals, and they denied the cameras were using AI facial recognition.
McCarthy pushed back with paperwork.
He used Colorado Open Records Act requests to pry 88,000 records from the town. He said his analysis found that cameras around the Paonia Town Hall had been used to surveil employees and that they appeared to be a factor in the firing of one employee. He also said Paonia police chief accessed the facial-recognition capability of the cameras around 100 times.
McCarthy said he also learned the town had created permanent video archives of images from inside town hall, and that data from the cameras was on the web.
All of this, he argued, happened without the town having any written policy about how surveillance cameras and the data could be used.
When new town board members voted to remove the cameras after “rowdy and lengthy public input,” the board released a statement saying the cameras were not used to surveil any private property and had not used face recognition.
“The statement read,” in full, that “Instead, they are a tool used routinely across the country in cities and towns to monitor and protect the public use of publicly provided spaces.”
There is truth in that too—at least as far as the existence of such tools goes. Similar camera systems have been controversial in other places across the country, from Dunwoody, Georgia, to Mountain View, California. McCarthy’s broader list of recent troubles includes York. Pennsylvania. San Antonio and Boulder. where dust-ups have involved cameras sweeping up more information than anticipated and that information landing at federal agencies or on the internet.
Paonia is one of the smaller towns to grapple with these dilemmas, and the stakes feel bigger because the town’s government is small enough that every decision lands close to home.
The cost of backing away is real. Getting rid of the cameras means Paonia forfeits $53,000 already paid to Verkada.
Wynn, who approved the contract, did not respond to requests for comment.
In a letter to Paonia police he wrote about what he described as “an escalating pattern of harassment, intimidation, threatening conduct and retaliatory behavior directed at me, and increasingly, toward my wife and children.”
He then withdrew his children from the Paonia school before announcing he would not renew his contract.
His interim replacement, Greg Sund, won’t be on the job until June 15. Smith said she expects Sund—who she said comes with high praise from the Colorado City County Managers Association—to calm the turmoil.
Smith said the town has a healthy pile of grant money to use for projects that don’t involve surveillance. She pointed to more than $20 million in grants for reconstruction of a major town intersection and for badly needed upgrades to the town’s water system.
The pressure on that system is not hypothetical. The pipe bringing water to Paonia from nearby Lamborn Mesa has long been crumbling. The system failed and left the town with no domestic water for 13 days in 2019.
McCarthy says he wants the projects to move forward if he becomes mayor.
But he also says Smith is wrong about where the information-gathering impulse ends.
The water-system upgrade plans call for installing “smart meters” that transmit water usage data using cellular signals. The town says the new technology will lead to better water management and earlier leak detection.
McCarthy claims the meters are planned to link to owners’ cellphones and that the information gathered that way could show when residents are home or away. He calls it Paonia’s latest assault on citizens’ privacy.
Smith said she hadn’t heard about the controversy brewing over water meters. She was surprised, and the news elicited a sigh.
“I guess this is just what happens in small towns,” she said.
Paonia Colorado surveillance cameras AI facial recognition Verkada robot moratorium recall petition Paige Smith Stefen Wynn smart meters Americans with Disabilities Act Colorado Open Records Act