Anaheim : Lack of Insurance Takes Air Out of Balloon Sales

Dana Kaiser may only be 11, but as president of a club called the Glow Worms, she has become familiar with city insurance problems.

Dana, her sister Michelle, 10, and friend Cynthia Phan, 11, wanted to sell red, white and blue helium balloons on Friday, the Fourth of July, at Yorba Regional Park, two blocks from their home. But city and county officials told the young entrepreneurs that they needed $1 million worth of liability insurance to receive a permit.

“It was all discouraging,” said the sisters’ father, Paul Kaiser, a commercial artist. “There ought to be something to help them. It’s good for kids to have that get up and go. It’s free enterprise. That’s what it’s all about.”

But rather than receive a lesson in free enterprise, Kaiser said, his daughter received a lesson in bureaucracy. She spent three or four hours on the phone Friday and Monday talking to 16 officials in both the city and the county, her father said.

The final answer was no.

“It’s a standard requirement of the county that someone selling have liability insurance,” said Bob Hamilton, a county Parks and Recreation Department administrator.

On Monday, Hamilton received a call from the young businesswoman, whom he described as “very mature and politely persistent.”

If the request had come earlier and if the Glow Worms had the necessary liability coverage, their request probably would have been approved, Hamilton said Wednesday.