Fireworks Ordinance Aims to Keep the City Safe

The lifting of the band on the sale and use of Safe-and-Sane fireworks in Dixon brought many questions with it.

Which groups will be allowed to sell the fireworks? How will the fire and police departments keep the city safe from threat of fire? How will the fireworks be stored? What, if any, fines will come with an ordinance that attempts to keep dangerous fireworks away from the city?

These are all questions being addressed by the Dixon Fire Department Dixon and Fire Chief Aaron McAlister as he attempts to draft an ordinance that will allow for the sale and use of Safe-and-Sane fireworks in the city while keeping residents and the city safe.

“We want to design a program that still provides some protection for the community,” he said. “So there is going to be a permitting process, there will be some regulations on the number of booths, the booth locations, the dates and the hours that they can be open.”

McAlister said that the city has many nonprofit groups, sports boosters and church groups and so the ordinance must be fair in the way it grants permits. The city, McAlister said, would perhaps institute a lottery system that determines which nonprofits get to sell the fireworks.

As far as the number of fireworks stands that Dixon will allow? McAlister said that many cities that allow Safe-and-Sane fireworks determine the number of booths by the size of the population.

“Tentatively, this (proposed ordinance) will come before the council … it will be at least 45 days,” McAlister said in late February. “We need some time to conduct something internally and we are going to have the community workshop.”

That workshop happens today inside the Dixon City Council chambers and will give the public an opportunity to help the fire department draft an ordinance that will go before the Dixon City Council.

Aside from the public’s input, the Fire Department has also sought input from Safe-and-Sane fireworks distributors Phantom Fireworks and TNT Fireworks.

“Our main thing is we just want to get in there and work with the city,” said Nick Gilbert, who works as an account manager and operational manager for Phantom Fireworks. “We supply the fireworks, we secure the permits, there is no upfront cost to the nonprofits. We do everything.”

TNT Fireworks spokesman Dennis Revell said that his group would meet with Fire Chief McAlister to provide input on the ordinance.

“I would hope that our fire department would come back to the city and represent an ordinance that the community wants and not something that the fireworks company necessarily wants,” Dixon City Councilman Rick Fuller said.

Fuller along with Mayor Jack Batchelor cast dissenting votes to lift the ban on Safe-and-Sane fireworks.

“I am not just looking at the best interest of the groups that want to sell the fireworks because their motive is to make money, my concern is safety,” he said.

Aside from today’s workshop on Safe-and-Sane Fireworks, Dixon’s nonprofit groups have so far had the opportunity to attend two fireworks forums conducted by TNT Fireworks and Phantom Fireworks.

Steve Lorente, who operates Lorente Productions in Dixon and volunteers for the Dixon Teen Center, was among the 25 individuals who attended the TNT Fireworks presentation earlier this month.

“Basically, the way I feel is that since the city is pulling their funding from the nonprofits because of the RDA issue, they got to give some way to raise some money,” he said.

Lorente said he went to the TNT Fireworks seminar to gather information to present to the center's organizing committee, so that it can make a decision as to whether or not it wants to be included in the lottery that will determine which nonprofits get to sell the goods.

The big unknown when the stands go up is how many dangerous fireworks will be set off alongside the Safe-and-Sane ones. Fire Chief McAlister has spoken with Dixon Police Chief Jon Cox to talk about ways to enforce the laws banning dangerous fireworks in the city.

One of the ways that the fire and police departments can work together to provide fireworks enforcement is to team a firefighter and police officer up during the Fourth of July holiday to patrol the city in search of unlawful fireworks, McAlister said. It was an idea that Cox said he would be open to doing.

Cox said in the years since he has been police chief, the department has seen both Safe-and-Sane Fireworks and dangerous ones in Dixon despite the ban that was put in place. But at the same time, he said the lifting of the ban on Safe-and-Sane fireworks will make for a busy Fourth of July holiday for law enforcement.

“The most important is, I think, working closely with the fire department,” Cox said. “Chief McAlister and I have met and talked about the prevention side and the education side, asking people to understand the fireworks that are illegal and the fireworks that are not.”

Tonight's community workshop will be held at the Dixon City Council chambers on 600 East A Street and begins at 7 p.m. For more information you can reach the Dixon Fire Department at (707) 678-7060.