Proposal grounds drones for some special events in Schaumburg
Schaumburg trustees Tuesday hammered out a revised version of their proposed drone-regulation ordinance that would specifically keep the eyes-in-the-sky away from special events on the village's own property.
Village Attorney Lance Malina rewrote the ordinance not only to keep other local governments' property from being affected but to ensure that the rights-of-way of Schaumburg's own streets were.
And so, the proposed policy prohibits not only the flying of drones over the village's municipal grounds during Septemberfest over Labor Day weekend, but also over Summit Drive while the Septemberfest parade is taking place.
Most of the special events intended to be protected by the ordinance are on Schaumburg's municipal grounds, but the policy also prohibits the use of drones during Schaumburg Boomers baseball games and concerts at Boomers Stadium, which the village co-owns with the Schaumburg Park District.
The initial draft of the law, which the village board rejected last week, would also have dictated the local park, school and library districts' drone policies.
“It was too broad in its initial write-up,” Trustee Tom Dailly said.
Violation of the ordinance would incur a penalty of between $100 and $750 depending on the gravity and number of violations a person has committed, Malina said.
He added that the ordinance isn't intended to apply to such other flying objects as remote-controlled model airplanes or kites, even though it defines a drone broadly as “an unmanned aircraft and all of the associated support equipment, control station, data links, telemetry, communications and navigation equipment, etc., necessary to operate the unmanned aircraft.”
Malina said a true drone can be operated from much farther away than a remote-controlled airplane or kite can.
The intent of the ordinance is to protect people at special events from physical injury by a drone. Though village officials also had concerns about drones' surveillance abilities, protection from these was found to be covered by existing state and federal laws.
Trustees are expected to give final approval next Tuesday, July 28, to the policy they've now recommended.