Central Coast photographer and videographer Ben Schutzer has used drones to capture footage for surfing events in Pismo Beach for the past 15 years. But in October 2024, a $1,223 ticket for flying a drone made him stop in his tracks.
“I was just flying for some clients that were surfing on the south side of the pier,” Schutzer said. “I was sitting on the first diamond of the pier where I normally fly from. I am licensed. I am insured.”
Schutzer holds the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) drone license Part 107. It’s needed to commercially operate drones, also known as “unmanned aircraft,” over .55 pounds. To prepare for the Part 107 certification exam, he attended ground school—learning flight planning instruction called NOTAMs (notices to airmen), how to land drones, and how to read runways.
Despite his credentials, a Pismo Beach police officer believed he violated a city ordinance. Schutzer told New Times he hadn’t heard of the ordinance until then.
“It says that there’s no flying over city area, playgrounds, then ‘beach safety zones,’ which to them was all of Pismo Beach up 6 miles out to sea,” he said.
In August 2021, the Pismo Beach City Council amended its existing ban on aircraft in the beach safety zone to allow city-operated small drones to be flown for tourism and public safety purposes.
City Attorney Dave Fleishman defined the beach safety zone in an April 2025 meeting as the entirety of the city beach and the pier area.
Schutzer, who runs a company called RunAmuck Photography, consulted with the surfing event organizer to make sure they had a permit. He then contested his ticket at the San Luis Obispo Superior Court in January.
Following a trial involving the police officer who gave Schutzer the ticket, court Commissioner Leslie Kraut ruled in Schutzer’s favor. She cited a lack of signage prohibiting drone use. Schutzer told New Times that most of the signs at the pier talked about dogs, cigarettes, walking, and riding bikes, but there were none about drones.
While Schutzer was fighting his ticket, Pismo Beach staff worked on tightening the drone ordinance, according to City Attorney Fleishman. The City Council received a list of regulations on drone operation in April. During its second reading on April 15, Fleishman insisted that the new drone ordinance wasn’t a result of the city losing the court case against Schutzer but was a way to fix the existing law to help special events drone operators.
“They were coming to the city manager for waivers of our existing ordinance as part of the special events process,” he told council members. “That waiver was not explicitly provided for in the ordinance, and it’s something we were doing administratively. So there was a concern that we don’t really have the authority to be waiving it.”
But during the ordinance’s first reading two weeks prior, Fleishman said drones can pose a public safety hazard. He cited an incident of a civilian drone colliding with a Canadian “Super Scooper” aircraft during the Palisades fire in Los Angeles County. Super Scoopers are firefighting planes that draw more than 1,500 gallons of ocean water to extinguish active fires.
City spokesperson Mike James told New Times he doesn’t have information on the number of drone-related accidents that have occurred in Pismo Beach since 2019. There were two citations each in 2024 and 2025 for violating the city municipal code of flying drones in the beach safety area, according to James. The city didn’t cite anyone for drone violations from 2021 to 2023.
“Most of the ordinances that we have in the city, we don’t enforce on a regular basis,” Fleishman told the City Council. “They are there as a tool to allow us to both protect public safety and to prevent nuisances … in the city.”
Ultimately tabled by council members for being too restrictive, the proposed ordinance attempted to govern land use of drones. That means the city wanted to control where they could take off from and land because once drones are up in the air, they enter FAA jurisdiction.
Staff recommended a slew of regulations, like drones must launch and land within a person’s visual line of sight; they can’t launch drones within 25 feet of another person except the operator; they can’t launch or land drones from city property without permission by the city under the ordinance; they can only launch or land drones on private property with the owner’s consent.
Drones can’t be launched or landed within 250 feet of schools without authorization from school officials. They also can’t launch or land drones within 1,000 feet of any emergency response. People can’t launch or land drones to capture someone else’s image, audio recording, or other physical impression in any place where they would have reasonable expectation of privacy.
“There’s no way anyone could be expected to know where they can and cannot fly them,” Councilmember Scott Newton said during the second reading. “The bad actors are going to remain bad actors. We’re only going to hurt the people that actually follow the law, which would mean none of our commercial users are going to be taking footage off the beaches.”
Newton was the sole council member who voted against introducing the ordinance on April 1. At the April 15 meeting, the City Council asked staff to return later with a more streamlined ordinance proposal to regulate drone use.
“I’m not going to go out and put signage until we figure out what the council would like to do,” City Manager Jorge Garcia told council members. “If someone just wanted to go fly a drone on the beach for fun, we’re not going to go after that.”
But commercial users and those wanting to film off the beach using drones need to pay. Since the current ordinance prohibits flying drones in the beach safety area, launching off the pier for commercial purposes requires a business permit.
For a drone operator conducting a business, the permit application fee is $30 plus $4, which is required under Senate Bill 1186. On top of that, the operator must also pay annual gross receipts fees.
According to the fee schedule, at the minimum, if the business makes up to $25,000 a year, the annual gross receipts fee will be $20. At the maximum level, the fee amount applies to businesses making more than $750,000 a year. They’d have to pay an annual gross receipts fee of $230 plus $20 for each additional $50,000 chunk over $750,001.
Further, movies, TV shows, and commercials eyeing Pismo Beach as a shooting locale need to apply for a $1,400 film permit. If the City Council had approved the proposed drone ordinance, staff anticipated bringing forward a resolution to establish a fee for drone use for film production.
“What I was trying to do is shoot for the stars, land on the moon with an acceptable regulation for the council,” Fleishman said. “I looked at pretty much every other city that has done drone ordinances in place and tried to … put it into this ordinance.” Δ
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in May 29 – Jun 8, 2025.
If someone wants to be photographed by a drone, fine. Otherwise, they’re an obnoxious invasion of privacy.