Fireworks restrictions leave some groups out in the July cold

Deirdre Newman

The ink had barely dried on the new rules for selling fireworks, but

at least one school that has been shut out of the sales opportunity

wanted the rules to be changed.

Monday, a parent from Vineyard Christian School asked the City

Council to reconsider the restrictions it made on fireworks sales.

The school was no longer eligible to sell fireworks since one of the

new rules states that organizations applying for fireworks-stand

permits need at least 80% of their members to live in Costa Mesa.

Since the item was not on the agenda, the council needed a

supermajority of four council members to approve the discussion. That

failed. And now it will be much tougher for the school to pay for a

scheduled trip to Washington, D.C., next spring, said Ron Ross, the

vice-principal of Vineyard Christian’s middle school.

“We’ll see what other kind of fundraising we can do,” Ross said.

“When you have single moms, and they’re sacrificing to send their

kids to private school -- that’s real typical [here] -- it’s a

challenge, it really is.”

Many council members were sympathetic to the school’s plight.

“It’s one of those unintended consequences,” Mayor Gary Monahan

said. “I don’t think [the new rules] were meant to keep some of the

private schools or others from being able to qualify.”

On May 17, the City Council changed the criteria for selling

fireworks, after intensive public debate and a community meeting. The

goal of the changes was to limit the number of fireworks stands. The

council limited the number of stands to 40 and made the 80%

requirement but allowed high schools to qualify if they have only 50%

Costa Mesa residency.

This year, 37 organizations applied to sell fireworks and only 28

qualified. City Councilman Mike Scheafer, who initiated the

restrictions, said he was surprised that so few groups qualified.

“I thought more groups would meet the requirements than actually

did,” Scheafer said. “But it may bring the point home that we’re

doing fireworks to help our local residents, and it doesn’t appear

that these groups were doing that.”

Vineyard Christian School, a kindergarten through eighth-grade

school, mostly serves parents who work in Costa Mesa, Ross said. The

school has a hands-on philosophy and likes to take its students on

educational field trips to stimulating places like Washington, D.C.,

Sacramento and to a science camp on Catalina Island, Ross added.

To help defray the costs of these trips, the school has manned a

fireworks stand for the past four years. Last year, it raised close

to $20,000, Ross said. The funds from the fireworks sales have also

been used to help refurbish the computer lab and repair asphalt for

the school’s basketball court.

“These are major projects that directly affected the kids,” Ross

said. “It’s not like [the funds] are paying teachers’ salaries.”

Lori Hammarlund, a parent at the school who made the plea to the

council Monday, said she felt the new rules were too restrictive.

“You had a handful of people coming and complaining,” Hammarlund

said. “[The council] enacted what’s an overly restrictive law to

address those concerns. Those concerns are the illegal fireworks.

People will still get those, and I don’t think [the council] took

into account the organizations that they’re cutting out.”

Scheafer said he is considering holding a town hall meeting this

summer to help groups find other means of raising money without

selling fireworks.