GARDEN GROVE : Council Defeats Ban on Fireworks Sales

A proposed ban on the sale of “safe and sane” fireworks in Garden Grove has been killed despite recommendations from fire officials that fireworks be outlawed.

On a 4-1 vote, the Garden Grove City Council Tuesday night voted to receive and file, without action, a proposal from the city’s Neighborhood Improvement and Conservation Commission to prohibit the sale of the fireworks. Councilman J. Tilman Williams cast the lone dissenting vote.

“I think that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” said Councilman Raymond T. Littrell in making the motion that prevailed. “At this point what we have is a minor problem, and we can work on that problem.”

City fire officials will continue to work with fireworks manufacturers on seeking to improve the safety of the Independence Day amusements, council members were told by City Manager George L. Tindall.

Councilmen Robert F. Dinsen spoke first against the ban, and was joined by Littrell. Councilman Francis L. Kessler expressed support for the concept but said, “I’m not sure it will be effective.”

The question was finally settled when Mayor W.E. (Walt) Donovan announced his opposition to the proposal, saying, “I think it’s a shame that a youngster never would have the elation of lighting something and watching it go off.”

A standing room only crowd heard 22 speakers made statements on the proposal. One speaker compared the proposed ban to a hard-line communist government “like they have in East Germany.”

Helen Wagner, a member of the commission whose actions prompted Tuesday’s special meeting of the council, urged the council to consider the extra cost for police and fire protection during the Fourth of July and the danger to children.

Williams said he sympathized with civic groups who sell fireworks for a four-day period in July, but drew a comparison between the sale of pyrotechnics and “people who sell dope and put the money in their pocket, or people who sell cigarettes and put the money in their pocket.”

Another motion by Williams, which also died for the lack of a second, was to put the issue on the November 1990 municipal ballot.

Currently only six Orange County cities permit the sale of fireworks: Buena Park, Costa Mesa, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Orange and Santa Ana. Fullerton’s City Council last week rejected a ban by a 3-2 vote. In September, the Westminster City Council outlawed fireworks.

The issue first surfaced in the community on July 20, when the neighborhood commission recommended that the council follow the request of the 1986-87 Orange County Grand Jury and impose a ban.

In 1989, 35 community, athletic and church groups in Garden Grove held permits to sell fireworks for fund-raising purposes. The fire department administers the program, and according to Bernard F. Heimos, Garden Grove’s fire marshal, an end to “safe and sane” fireworks would not only help suppress fires but free investigators to devote more time to battling the illegal variety.

Seven of the 14 Independence Day fires in Garden Grove in 1988 were traced to legal fireworks, according to city records. In 1989, one blaze started by an illegal bottle rocket-type firework is blamed for $105,000 in damage to a Garden Grove home.

Supporters of the sale of fireworks point to the fund-raising power of the pyrotechnics.

“There is no other fund-raiser that I can do in four days that will bring in the kind of money this does, and I’ve done every kind of fund-raiser there is,” said Mark Miller, head football coach at Rancho Alamitos High School in Garden Grove.