By time this is reaches newsstands, the election should be decided; some will celebrate, and others may complain that the process wasn’t fair. No matter the outcome, we are stuck with those elected for another couple of years.
Press deadlines prevented any commentary on local elections until my next submission, but I thought you’d like to know what the Lompoc City Council talked about during its last meeting before Election Day. Sometimes the selection of subjects leaves you scratching your head.
Mylar is a technical name for a product that is widely used in industry as packaging because of its strength, stability, transparency, reflectivity, effectiveness as a gas/aroma/humidity barrier, and electrical insulating qualities. You have probably seen it as packaging for electrical components, specifically computer components, because it resists static electricity and keeps them clean.
Mylar is also used for decorative balloons that announce births, anniversaries, birthdays, engagements, and many other festive events. The reason is simple: It is because balloons of this material can contain gases and can have the fun messages printed on their surfaces.
The gas used in these balloons is inert, just like that used in lighter-than-air aircraft, aka blimps. Because they float so easily, they are an entertainment for young children, but not so entertaining to the maintainers of our electric distribution system or their customers.
The voluntary release of these balloons is prohibited, but sometimes they slip out of the hands of the person holding them or come loose from required moorings. That’s when trouble can soon follow.
The Lompoc electrical utility explains it this way: “Every year electrical outages are caused when metalized Mylar or foil balloons filled with helium gas get caught up in electrical lines.” The staff report presented to the council on Oct. 20 indicated that there were three outages that impacted 265 customers in 2020.
In 2019 one outage, caused by an errant balloon, impacted 4,100 customers. In these cases, we don’t know how many people or businesses were impacted, just the number of electric meters (customers) that were shut off.
Not only are customers left in the dark, but someone must remove the balloon and restore power; that’s the job of the city electrical department. We are fortunate in Lompoc that the city and its citizens own the electric utility. So the wait for repair crews to arrive, even after business hours, is minimal and power gets turned back on quickly.
But they still have to de-energize the system, go up in their bucket trucks, untangle the balloon, inspect and repair any damaged equipment and then turn the power back on. Anytime these folks are working on our overhead wiring it’s dangerous work.
The council discussed for several minutes a staff proposal to ban the sale of balloons in the city, and local merchants were concerned that such a ban would “affect my business and fellow businesses that offer such service.” Each suggested an educational program at the point of sale as an alternative to an outright ban.
What was sort of a surprise to many council watchers was that Councilman Jim Mosby, who is no friend of government regulations and/or complying with them, was an advocate for a restrictive ordinance and a crackdown on balloons that provide pleasure to so many people.
Councilwoman Gilda Cordova said she understood the problem, but “I just have an issue with the fact that we would be creating another ordinance that we cannot enforce because we don’t have a body to enforce it.”
You see, it was Mosby who led the effort to eliminate the code enforcement officer from the last budget.
In the end, the council concluded that the education program was one way to reduce the number of balloon mishaps.
The city and state already have some programs in place. The state requires all retail shops that sell these balloons to provide weights attached to the balloons to keep them down to earth, to not sell balloons that are tied together in groups, and not use metallic ribbons on the balloons.
The city advises that users should not walk under or near power lines with the balloons, not detach the balloons from their weights, and to not try and retrieve them from power lines—leave it to the trained crews with the proper safety equipment.
So, what did we learn from the way this issue was discussed? First, we learned that the council apparently didn’t know that there was already an education program in place and that the city had provided an informational poster several years ago.
We also learned that the state had laws in place that prohibited people “from releasing outdoors balloons made of electrically conductive material and filled with a gas lighter than air as part of a public or civic event, promotional activity, or product advertisement.”
Keep in mind that once you purchase one of these balloons, it’s your responsibility to pay attention to where it goes; up is the direction it travels if it comes loose from its tether, and up is where the electrical wires are. Make sure your balloon stays near ground level, so your neighbors won’t be upset when their power goes out.
Lastly, we learned that some politicians have a knack for discussing a “hot button” topic like interfering with people who want to celebrate with a festive decoration and merchants who sell them just before an election. Talk about tone deaf.
Ron Fink writes to the Sun from Lompoc. Send your thoughts, comments, and opinionated letters to letters@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 5-12, 2020.
