County Issue: Using Blimps for Advertising...

* Don Conniff, Sales manager, Simi Valley Nissan Simi Valley says (a giant balloon can be used) twice a year, 30 days at a time. In fact, our permit just expired on the 3rd, so Godzilla was brought down. Under the current law we’re aware that it’s six months before we can do it again. I think that twice a year is insufficient and many, many cities in Los Angeles allow a lot more usage than that. But, again, this is the city we live in, this is where we work, so we’re going to follow the ordinance. The economy goes up and down, I think everybody needs something to show they’re different. It attracts attention and I don’t see any negative to it. It’s not a safety hazard. It’s not a fire hazard. I can’t think of one negative except for the one or two people who say it’s ugly. If you drive around in Los Angeles, there’s a lot of cities where you can’t drive more than four feet without seeing billboards and signs everywhere. You can hardly see the city through all the advertising, so in Simi Valley we’re pretty “de-signed” in comparison. I’m not really keen on having a billion signs all over the place, but advertising is part of America. * Marvin Banks, Resident, Simi Valley Yes. They’re an eyesore, first of all. They’re kind of ridiculous. They’re very distracting. And I just think they’re in bad taste; I don’t think that’s a good commercial. I mean, if they want to put something like that up for a weekend, for a special sale, I could see it. But when it’s up there for a month, it’s just an eyesore. It doesn’t go with the overall scenic community. This is a community that’s surrounded by hills, most people moved here for the hills and, to me, that’s a total eyesore. In this town we’ve had a giant dog, a giant tire, a giant clown, this is the second or third time with the giant dinosaur. A few years ago there was a (gas) station on Tapo Canyon Road and Cochran Street and they had a six-foot gorilla on a dolly that they wheeled out every morning and put away every night. I think that’s just advertising in really bad taste. I think we need some tighter enforcement. This is crazy. This is a rural community. We had a Chrysler dealer that had a blimp in the air a couple months ago. A blimp in the air! I don’t want to see it. * Manuel Lopez, Mayor, Oxnard In Oxnard we do have some regulations already in place. People cannot, without any concern for their neighbors, put things up that are unsightly. I believe we can regulate balloons as a danger to the public--for instance if they obscure the view and make things dangerous for drivers. You have to be concerned about First Amendment rights. You have to be concerned about a person’s ability to promote their business, but you also have to be concerned about intruding on a neighbor’s environment. I think there has to be a balance. I guess it goes back to that old saying about crying “Fire!” in a crowded theater. You can have free speech, but you can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Here we’re not talking about speech, but in essence we are because in a way it’s people expressing themselves. I run a small business myself, and I know that people are concerned about not getting lost in a crowd. They want to stand out and be noticed. On the other hand, you have to be reasonable. All of us have our own standards. So I try to strike a balance that’s reasonable. * Greg Stratton, Mayor, Simi Valley We have found that it’s very difficult to define the difference between a large balloon and a small balloon and, therefore, it is very difficult to come up with a fair and safe regulation. We tried to say, “We’re going to ban balloons,” and then we came to the conclusion, “Well, do you ban little balloons or big balloons? How big is a balloon?” And we got into some very difficult arguments about how we ban the Godzilla balloons without banning smaller ones. You could end up with a situation where somebody couldn’t give away balloons to kids as a promotion. It really got difficult and we came to the conclusion that balloons would be something that we would allow twice a year with a permit. There’s always going to be some people who say, “That’s too tacky.” Taste is in the eyes of the beholder and if these businesses felt that (balloons) weren’t accepted by the community, they wouldn’t use them. If people don’t like them, then they have to tell the businesses they don’t like them and they’re not going to give them their business. * Gary Tuttle, City councilman, Ventura I think that it is beginning to become a problem in certain areas of our city and I have heard increased complaints. If the balloon flying continues on a permanent basis, then I think we definitely should take a look at what we want to do as a city and decide what benefits the businesses and our environment as well. I’m not sure what that is yet. Personally, I don’t think flying a balloon really does much to sell cars or video appliances, but obviously the businesses feel it does. It’s something we’re going to have to evaluate sooner or later if it continues. If it becomes permanent, it becomes an increasing problem. If it’s a temporary thing, special events, grand openings--a couple times a year--I don’t have a problem with it. But if we’re going to start flying permanent balloons, I think there will be some increasing concerns. My concern would be that we need to evaluate it in terms of environment and sightliness, and as a business decision as well, and see what we’re going to do.