Proposed revisions to Jefferson County park regulations call for a ban on radio-controlled devices, like drones, planes and cars, in county parks.
The Jefferson County Council voted unanimously Oct. 22 to give initial approval to the revisions.
A final vote is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 12.
The rule regarding radio-controlled devices is a safety issue, said Tim Pigg, director of the county’s Parks and Recreation Department.
“We’ve had a recent incident where a man was flying his airplane and it went into some electrical lines,” he said. “No one else was around and no one fortunately was hurt, but what happens next time?
“Some of those RC cars and trucks – they really fly. Some of them go as fast as 40 mph. If one of them runs into your foot, you’re most likely going to have a broken foot. I know some other parks allow them, but our parks are not really conducive to these things.”
Pigg said RC devices could be operated in large, open, flat fields, and that doesn’t describe most of the county’s parks, which are relatively small and have lots of trees and overhead power lines in some places.
“We have a lot of people using our parks, and they’re congregated around playgrounds, and that doesn’t make for a good place to be using RC equipment,” he said.
The exception, Pigg said, is radio-controlled boats.
“If you’re using them on a pond, they’re not likely to hurt anyone,” he said.
Under the changes considered by the council, radio-controlled devices could be used on parks property only with prior written approval by the Parks Department.
“You always want the chance to make an exception, but I don’t see us doing that very often,” Pigg said. “Maybe for someone wanting to fly a drone for a school project, but we’d consider that very carefully. We’re all about safety. That’s our goal.”
The other proposed revisions to the parks regulations mainly deal with wording rather than policy changes, he said.
“Most of the wording is being changed to modernize language dealing with what people can bring in and out of our parks,” Pigg said. “We don’t want people to take things like plants and rocks out, and we don’t want people planting things in our parks, especially invasive species. Basically, we’d like people to know that for everyone’s enjoyment, they should take out what they bring in, and leave what’s already there.
The Jefferson County Parks and Recreation Department maintains the Big River Saddle Club and Brown’s Ford Park in Dittmer; Cedar Hill Park in Cedar Hill; the High Ridge Civic Center and the Pleasant Valley Nature Preserve in High Ridge; Morse Mill Park in Morse Mill; the Northwest Sports Complex and Rockford Beach Park in House Springs; Sunridge Park in Hillsboro and Winter Park in Fenton.