Fireworks Measure on Next Year’s Ballot

There will be fireworks on the ballot in Cerritos in 1990. The City Council voted this week night to ask voters in next year’s general election if they want to ban the sale, possession and use of fireworks in the city.

Cerritos allows about a dozen, nonprofit community service groups to sell so-called “safe-and-sane” fireworks each Fourth of July. Some city officials, though, are having second thoughts about the wisdom of fireworks fund-raising.

Cerritos is a city of aging wood roofs. Two houses in the last three Fourths of July have gone up in flames ignited when fireworks landed on their roofs. Mayor Diana Needham said the city required wood-shake roofs for cosmetic purposes when its housing tracts were built about 20 years ago.

In another decade, the mayor said, most of the old roofs will be replaced with new, nonflammable materials. But right now, she said, there is danger from fire.