Palmdale Extends Fireworks Permit Deadline : Fund-raisers: City also drops two-year wait for new nonprofit groups to sell the items. Some have trouble finding locations.

PALMDALE —  To aid nonprofit groups that have had trouble lining up locations for selling Fourth of July fireworks, the Palmdale City Council has extended the deadline for obtaining fireworks sales permits.

The council also eliminated a two-year waiting period for new nonprofit groups that want to sell fireworks and erased a provision allowing groups to sell fireworks in the city simply because they had “Palmdale” in their names.

The revisions were adopted unanimously by the council Wednesday as an urgency ordinance, so they take effect immediately. Under the revised law, the April 15 deadline for obtaining a fireworks sales permit was extended to May 15 for this year only.

“This has to do with people who have already started their applications but are having trouble securing the locations they’ve historically used,” said Mayor James Ledford.

Nonprofit groups must get a property owner’s permission to set up a fireworks sales stand before they can obtain a city permit.

Palmdale is the only city in north Los Angeles County that allows the sale and use of state-approved “safe and sane” fireworks. The city permits nonprofit groups to sell these devices just before and after the Fourth of July.

Firefighters oppose the products, but Palmdale residents in 1992 voted to continue fireworks sales, largely because of their value as a fund-raising tool. During a recent holiday period, fireworks sales generated more than $200,000 for Palmdale school groups, youth sports leagues, service clubs and charities.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Councilman James Root said some community groups have had difficulty reserving sites this year because a new fireworks company has entered the market and leased many prime locations, often in front of supermarkets. Fireworks vendors lease the locations and then arrange with nonprofit groups to sell the supplier’s products from the sites.

“There are nonprofits that really got caught,” Root said.

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Extending the permit deadline will give nonprofit groups more time to make arrangements to use these sites or to find new ones, city officials said.

Under the old law, nonprofit groups had to operate in Palmdale for two years before they could apply for a fireworks sales permit. But a parent from Palmdale Swim Boosters protested that after spending almost two years to obtain nonprofit status from the state, it was unfair to ask the group to wait another two years to sell fireworks.

Responding to this complaint, the council dropped the two-year-wait requirement.

The fireworks law requires that sellers be nonprofit groups with 20 or more members. The group must meet in Palmdale or draw more than 50% of its active members from the city.

A third option--merely having “Palmdale” appear in the group’s official name--was deleted Wednesday because council members feared than a group from another city could divert fireworks sales from local organizations merely by adding “Palmdale” to its name.

Council members asked the city staff to look into other possible changes in the fireworks law that would not go into effect until 1995.

These include reducing the number of stands, imposing more restrictions on which nonprofit groups can sell fireworks and prohibiting the use of fireworks near Angeles National Forest.