The Newburgh City Council approved on Monday, May 13 for the city manager to enter into a license and service agreement with Placer.ai,  in the amount of $22,000 for an AI program, a location- based data analytics software. This would be for a one-year subscription for the city.

City of Newburgh Director of Planning and Development Alexandra Church explained the program at the May 9 work session. “Placer.ai uses apps that are already on your phone and they collect the movement of that data. They do it anonymously, so they don’t know that it’s tied to you as a person,” said Church.

The purpose of the software, Church said, is to help the city to better understand how people move around the city at any point in time. Recorded data could be used to study the movements in the downtown areas and the parks in the city.