SIDNEY -- The Sidney City Council approved a one-year agreement with Placer.ai with a 4-1 vote Tuesday night. Councilman Brandon Bondegard voted against the proposal.

Prior to the vote, Placer.ai representative Rodney Fraser made a remote presentation on the tool. 

"Placer.ai is a web-based market intelligence platform powered by mobile data. What we've basically done, we've gone out and partnered with a number of different app programs to leverage a panel of roughly tens of millions of devices," Fraser said.

He said they use the information to make estimations of visits to locations across the country. Fraser said Placer.ai requires its partners to get consent and follow all applicable laws. He added Placer works with communities from a population of 500 to major metropolitan areas.

"I've had a lot of great conversations with the team there, whether its from the tourism side, event analysis, but also looking at things like retail analysis and improvement," Fraser said.

Councilman Paul Strommen confirmed with Fraser that Placer.ai has already aggregated the data; it is not installing software onto devices in a community.

Economic Development Director Brandy Stone said she talked with Dawes County officials and Grow Grand Island.

Cory Keen told the council Placer.ai is "collecting anonymized data." 

"It's cleansed data, where it does not include PII (Personal Identifiable Information). But, it does include things like household spend," Keen said.

He said information is often made available through other apps seeking various permissions on cell phones and other electronic devices. Unless a consumer diligently reads all of the terms of conditions, personal information may sold to a third party.

Cheyenne County Tourism Director Kendra Mitchell spoke about tourism's interest in the program.

"Our Visitors Committee did review this program, and vote to help support the purchase of this program with Economic Development at our meeting in May. This is something we've been looking at since last fall. I've done at least four demos with Rodney (Fraser) over the last few years, the last eight months I guess.," Mitchell said.

She said they want to use it for event planning, and how to realign their marketing strategy. 

The agreement is for one year. At the end of one year, if city officials do not see a benefit, the contract will not be renewed. Cost of the one-year agreement will be shared with the Cheyenne County Visitors Committee.

After the council meeting, Mayor Brad Sherman took a pie in the face as a fundraiser for Keep Sidney Beautiful. Councilmen Brandon Bondegard and Brock Buckner, Sr., also had a cream pie waiting for them.