The City of Austin is paying $1 a year to lease space inside a Texas Department of Public Safety building.

The City of Austin is now paying $1 a year to lease space inside a Texas Department of Public Safety building for the Austin Police Department.

"Our intentions are absolutely to keep people safe, to bring criminals to justice and to bring justice to the victims of crime," APD Chief Art Acevedo said.

In order to do that, APD said they need something called a fusion center. Basically, it is a computer system that allows local, state and federal law enforcement to gather and share information.

"We have a lot of concerns about personal privacy rights," American Civil Liberties Union spokesperson, Laura Martin said.

		WATCH THE VIDEO
	Fusion Center News 8's Reagan Hackleman explores what caused an uproar in city hall on Thursday and why it has people concerned about their privacy.

According to the ACLU, It's not what APD said they will do that has them worried, it's what the fusion center could potentially do.

"Fusion centers are creating these massive databases where they're drawing upon, not only suspicious activity reports, investigations and arrest data but also all this private sector data you hear about is fair game," Martin said.

"We are going to have oversight at highest levels of the police department to ensure that we have accountability and to ensure that we are doing the things that we are telling the public we are going to do," Acevedo said.

The City will pay for the fusion center. In this particular case, the city paid for the office space for the fusion center using grant money that was already awarded to APD.

The police department applied for the grant months ago, but never notified the public about it until late last week when it showed up in the city council agenda.

The process of applying for grant money and then going to council to ask permission to accept the money has at least one Austin City Council member asking for change.

	The passage of the new center caused uproar at City Hall on Thursday.

"What I would like is for the public vetting, input process to happened up front and open and then to allow council to make that decision whether or not we seek those grants," Austin City Council Member, Mike Martinez said.

That did not happen this time, and for now the city and APD are moving forward with Austin's fusion center.

The passage of the new center caused uproar at City Hall on Thursday, and there is still more debate ahead before Austin's fusion center is up and running.

To learn more about Fusion Centers and guidelines from the Department of Justice regarding the operation of the centers click here.