Municipal technology contracts are written to be skimmed and approved. That is not a conspiracy; it is a formatting choice. But if you know where to look, most of them give up their secrets in about ten minutes.
Start with term and renewal. A contract that renews automatically unless someone objects behaves very differently over a decade than one that has to be re-approved in public every year.
Then find retention. Retention is the whole ballgame. A system that deletes in 30 days and a system that keeps records indefinitely are not the same product, no matter how similar the hardware looks on the pole.
Next: sharing. Does the agency opt into a network with other agencies? Which ones? Can that list change without another vote?
Then: access and audit. Who is allowed to run a search, does the system require a reason to be typed in, and does anyone ever read those reasons afterward?
Finally, the number people skip: total cost over the full term, not the monthly line item. Small monthly numbers are excellent at hiding inside a budget.
None of these questions tell you whether a program is good or bad. They tell you what the program actually is, which is a prerequisite for having an opinion worth defending.