Lodi Planning Commission considers drone restrictions
Due to public safety and privacy concerns, the Lodi Planning Commission discussed the possibility of creating an ordinance to regulate recreational drone usage in Lodi during its meeting last Wednesday night.
According to City Attorney Janice Magdich, there are already FAA requirements for recreational drone usage.
“There are a lot of other municipalities that have implemented ordinances because the federal guidelines are kind of vague,” Planning Commission member Steve Hennecke said. “Any time you have federal guidelines they‘re hard to implement, so you need to implement that type of stuff at a local level.”
With the ordinance, Hennecke would like to have a designated place for recreational drone usage as well as commercial usage.
He noted that there are an array of issues and concerns to be considered when it comes to drone usage, and Magdich agrees.
“It does pose lots of issues,” Magdich said. “It’s new technology and when you have new technology the more it’s used people realize there are other issues.”
Drones can pose safety issues if not operated properly within the federal guidelines. Magdich said there have been reports of people operating drones at night, adding that there were reports of people flying drones during last year’s Fourth of July celebration at Lodi Lake. FAA regulations prohibit operating drones during night hours and require that the drone be operated within line of sight. There are also requirements for how close a drone can be flown to an airport — another concern raised by the commission.
“We do have airports in close proximity, and we do have the helipad at Lodi Memorial Hospital, and that could pose another interesting factor,” Magdich said.
“The last thing you want is drones interfering with medical helicopters flying in and out,” she said.
With the possibility of drones hovering over people’s property, privacy is also a concern.
“Residents probably don’t want a drone hovering over their house with a camera on it. I’ve gotten complaints from citizens about that type of thing” Hennecke said.
According to Magdich, some cities have restricted the use of recreational drones within the city.
“Burbank adopted an ordinance several years ago restricting the use of drones, and that was driven by the movie industry,” Magdich said. “People were complaining because drones were flying over what were closed movie sets, but if I’m filming outside, it’s kind of hard to close something from right above us, and so that was becoming problematic.”
Magdich said she will conduct more research on drone ordinances and bring her findings back to the commission. She plans to take a look at what other cities in San Joaquin County have done to regulate drone usage and present the commission with what options are out there and what they might be looking at in terms of land-use issues.
After conferring with the commission, Magdich said the next step would be to present the idea to the city council at a shirtsleeve session. If the council gives direction to draft an ordinance, then the ordinance would be drafted with the restrictions considered for regulating the use of drones in city limits.
“At this point, what the ordinance might contain, that would be up to direction from the council, and obviously we are going to get input from the planning commission,” Magdich said.