Council nixes concert

Funding for July 4 fireworks uncertain after city decides a fenced-off music show would set a bad precedent.The City Council has rejected a Fourth of July beach concert that was intended to pay for this year’s fireworks show. Exasperated event volunteers said the city will now have to foot the bill itself if it wants pyrotechnics over the pier.

On the table was a proposal to hold a three-day concert series on the south side of the pier featuring acts such as the Temptations, Donna Summer or Earth, Wind and Fire, running from July 1 to 3. The concert would be fenced-off and admission would be $30. About $100,000 in proceeds would have been donated by Arizona-based organizer Face-to-Face Attractions to pay for the fireworks.

The high price tag of the show is mostly linked to the fees the Fourth of July committee must pay the city to put on the event; it costs the committee about $50,000 each year to pay for police protection on the holiday.

Organizer Pat Steir said the concert was a way to generate money for a celebration that was becoming increasingly expensive. Last year’s event was nearly $20,000 in the red; the committee made up for the discrepancy by tapping into its reserve.

This year downtown merchants have offered to chip in $20,000 to help defray event costs, but the committee is still short the $400,000 it needs to put on the parade and fireworks.

“It’s not necessary to have this concert, but it would certainly make things a lot easier for us,” Steir told the council.

In the end, the council unanimously rejected the concert proposal, citing concerns from Police Chief Ken Small that an enclosed concert was an inappropriate use of the beach during a time when so many visitors were in town.

“This is the busiest time of year for public safety personnel, and it would be the last time of the year that we would be in favor of adding events to the beach,” he wrote in a memo to the City Council.

City Atty. Jennifer McGrath said the city had a policy of not allowing enclosed concerts on the beach.

“If the next concert was heavy metal or something not conducive to the Huntington Beach persona, we would have very little ability to stop it,” she said.

Several council members suggested the concert be held at the high school instead, but after the meeting, Steir said she doubted the promoters would be interested in that location.

Councilman Don Hansen said he recognized the difficulties that a volunteer committee faced raising so much money and suggested the council take a hard look at the funding of the fireworks show.

“At some level, the city is going to have to address this through its own budgeting process. We’re going to need to make a decision about how much of an impact the Fourth of July is to Huntington Beach. The community responds tremendously positively to the fireworks on the pier, and it’s a huge success,” he said. “I don’t think a volunteer board can raise the dollars this event demands.”

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