Belvedere votes Monday on Marin's first drone delivery ordinance
The City Council gave the rules a 3-2 first reading on Sept. 14, with the only split over delivery hours. No drone company has named Belvedere, and no delivery drone has reached a doorstep there yet.
BELVEDERE: The Belvedere City Council will take its final vote Monday, Oct. 12, on Marin County's first commercial drone delivery ordinance, a set of rules that would govern where delivery drones can land, drop packages and stage operations inside city limits. The vote is the second reading of an ordinance the council advanced 3-2 on Sept. 14, with the only disagreement between councilmembers over how many hours a day drones should be allowed to fly packages to doorsteps.
The ordinance, drafted as Chapter 8.34 of the municipal code, regulates only what happens on the ground. Flight paths, altitude and overflight stay with the Federal Aviation Administration. The ordinance says so in its own text: Section 8.34.010 states that the chapter "does not regulate drone flights," and a later section defers to federal law wherever the two meet.
What the city would control is the doorstep. A commercial drone facility, defined as a site set up to send or receive 20 or more drone deliveries a month, would be allowed only in the city's mixed-use zones and only with a conditional use permit from the Planning Commission. Medical deliveries would not count toward the 20. Deliveries to a home would require the resident's prior consent. Delivery activity would be barred from public access areas unless the city authorizes it, and nothing could block emergency access routes. The ordinance also adds nuisance rules covering privacy, noise, lights and trash.
Delivery hours would track the city's existing noise code, which sets quiet time at 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. Friday and Saturday. Drones could deliver the rest of the day. That borrowing from the noise code was the entire fight on Sept. 14. Councilmembers Pat Carapiet and Jane Cooper cast the two no votes, not because they opposed regulating drones but because they wanted a shorter delivery window. Cooper proposed 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Carapiet backed shorter hours to head off complaints.
Mayor Sally Wilkinson, who helped staff draft the ordinance, made the case for moving anyway: "We want something on the books before this comes to life." Councilmember Peter Mark argued that cutting drone hours tighter than the noise ordinance would send the community a message about drones, calling that message fear mongering. The majority held the hours as written and directed staff to make minor wording changes before the second reading.
City Manager Robert Zadnik told the council the geography is the argument. "Belvedere is compact with narrow streets, steep hills and constrained emergency access routes," he said. Staff put the same case in writing in July, when routine drone delivery was described as bringing package retrieval, support vehicles, repeated noise, trespass and litter to streets with few emergency alternatives.
The ordinance took two tries. At a July 13 meeting, staff asked the council to waive the first reading and adopt the rules in one sitting. Cooper called the language vague enough for delivery companies to exploit, and Carapiet asked how it would be enforced. The city attorney answered that the vagueness was deliberate, and the council sent the draft back to be simplified.
Rules for a drone that has not arrived
No delivery drone has carried a package to a Belvedere doorstep, and no company has said one will. Wing, the drone delivery company, said in March that it would bring delivery to the Bay Area "in the coming months" and named the region again in June on a Walmart list of markets for 2027, without naming a city either time. Belvedere is a city of 2,126 people on two islands in Richardson Bay, and the ordinance would make it the first community in the county to write drone delivery rules before an operator arrives.
The council meets Monday at 5:30 p.m. at Belvedere City Hall, 450 San Rafael Avenue, the city's regular second-Monday meeting slot. If the second reading passes, the ordinance becomes the county's first standing framework for commercial drone delivery, built around a distinction the courts have already drawn: the sky belongs to Washington, and the doorstep belongs to the city.
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