Cloverdale council supports sending fireworks to the ballot

The Cloverdale City Council voted 3-2 to support sending the issue of whether or not to prohibit the sale of safe and sane fireworks to the ballot Wednesday night, directing city staff to prepare an ordinance to put out to voters. Mayor Todd Lands and Councilmember Marta Cruz held the dissenting votes.
Cloverdale is the only jurisdiction in Sonoma County that currently allows the sale and use of legal fireworks, though cities throughout the county do still issue permits for public firework displays.
For the last couple of years, fireworks and the sale and possession of fireworks within city limits have increasingly come up in both council discussions and letters to the council. Public comment sentiment reflected that, with the majority of people wanting to take the issue out of the council’s hands and put it to a community vote.
Historically, proponents of the continued sale of fireworks cite the use of fireworks sales for local nonprofit fundraising as well as maintaining family traditions surrounding lighting safe and sane fireworks on Fourth of July. Opponents of the sale cite increased fire risk caused by continued drought and Red Flag conditions.
“I think that’s a reflection of some of the concerns around fire, around some of the public safety power shutoffs that we’ve experienced,” said City Manager David Kelley during the Jan. 26 meeting. “We’ve seen fires result in evacuations in our community. But with that, I do want to know that these fire events have been largely related to causes outside of the city — they’re not related to fireworks, but nonetheless, it heightens the concern of the community around fires — I think some of that concern starts to have a focus on fireworks.”
When the issue of fireworks was last brought to the council in May 2020, a resolution to temporarily ban the sale and discharge of fireworks failed to gain traction with the council.
Wednesday night, the council was presented with four potential ways to address fireworks:
●      Adopt an ordinance to amend the city’s municipal code to prohibit the sale and use of fireworks in the city.
●      Prohibit the sale and use of fireworks in the city for one year under Cloverdale’s current municipal code.
●      Place a ballot measure on an upcoming election to enable voters in the city to consider whether to prohibit the sale, possession and use of fireworks in Cloverdale.
●      Implement no changes, allowing permitted fireworks sales and use to continue.
Following a recommendation at the beginning of the meeting from Vice Mayor Gus Wolter that the council cut to the chase and choose to keep the city’s firework regulations in place as they currently are, Councilmember Joe Palla said that the only way to ensure that the whole community is heard is to put the issue on the ballot.
“I’m not trying to take a side on whether we keep fireworks or not, but there’s a large number of people in this community who would like to see them banned and I think that their feelings need to be heard as well,” he said. “I’m more in favor of putting it on the ballot — I don’t think we should do an advisory, I think we should let the people weigh in and if it passes, it becomes the law of the city and if we change it, the people need to weigh in to change it.”
Councilmember Marta Cruz compared fireworks to the council’s past discussions around water rates, saying they’ve been “kicking the can down the road for years.”
“I think it’s time that we take a stand — either yay or nay — and we know how this community feels. It’s very strong for it and very strong against it,” she said.
“I look at it also from the perspective of how much it would cost us to put it on the ballot and how much staff time we have to manage this. Our staff is absolutely down to bare bones and this is not as big an expense as some of the other items we’ve discussed tonight, but it’s one more thing that we would have to put on the ballot and ask staff to manage. I think we got elected to make this decision,” said Councilmember Melanie Bagby, adding that she would prefer to pass an ordinance prohibiting the sale and use of fireworks.
Mayor Todd Lands said that the city’s current ordinance already affords the council the ability to address the threat of fire danger by allowing the council to enact a resolution temporarily banning the sale of fireworks, should the city be in increased fire danger over Fourth of July.
Addressing the notion that fireworks contribute to the increased potential of fires starting, as listed in the council’s agenda report, Lands said that the two main causes of fires in northern Sonoma County are homeless people and cooking.
“We had 84 homeless fires in two years on our own river just within the Cloverdale area. If we are so afraid of fires, why aren’t we combatting that this hard to where we want to actually do something more for them? It would be the same with things like outdoor fire pits, outdoor barbecues. If those are really truly a problem and we’re truly afraid of fire, why aren’t we combatting those and trying to get rid of those?” Lands said.
Palla said that, while Cloverdale hasn’t seen any fires caused by fireworks, the National Fire Protection Association has calculated an estimated 19,500 fires started by fireworks in 2018, causing five deaths, 46 injuries and $105 million in property damage throughout the United States.
In 2020, the Cloverdale Police Department had 34 calls related to fireworks and in 2021, it received 43 firework-related calls.
“I cannot tell you specifically if they were related to safe and sane or illegals. What I can tell you, and this is from my experience working the street on Fourth of July in 2020, the majority of these calls, if not all of them, are the result of the reporting party seeing aerial fireworks high up in the air and/or loud explosions that accompany those,” said Jason Ferguson, Cloverdale’s police chief.

During Public Comment

During public comment, community members largely advocated for the council to send the issue of whether or not to ban the sale and discharge of safe and sane fireworks to the ballot.
Of those who spoke during public comment, approximately nine people spoke in favor of sending the decision to the ballot — of those nine, three also said that they believed safe and sane fireworks should remain legal and one said that they believed they should be banned.
Individually, two additional speakers were in favor of the council voting to keep fireworks legal and two were in favor of the council voting to prohibit the sale.
“I think before you take a position of trying to protect people from themselves, allow them the opportunity to make that decision themselves … As you’ve seen as the years goes on, this topic comes back each year and it falls down on opinion about where we might mitigate risk. Therefore it is no longer something that I feel your expertise can accomplish alone,” said community member Jason Turner, who was on the council when fireworks were last brought forward for discussion. “I believe you need to afford the people of Cloverdale the opportunity to make this decision if this is where we continuously land.”
“I think the council needs to look at this, as they always have, with an open mind. Either put it on the ballot or leave us alone and let us do our stuff,” said John Taylor, who’s been a Lions Club member since 1985. The Lions Club hosts Cloverdale’s annual aerial fireworks show and is one of the nonprofits that sells fireworks to the community in the days preceding Fourth of July. “You guys have put restrictions on us, four-day sales, you look around on Fourth of July and things are going up in the air … our products do not do that, but they are safe … I think as a council, you guys either need to look at that or put it on the ballot.”
Matt Gloeckner said that an alternative to any of the options presented to the council would be to have increased enforcement by the police and fire department to crack down on the use of illegal fireworks.
Jane Elias said that she believes the council should vote to ban fireworks, but that if it doesn’t do so, they should send the decision to the ballot.
“Fire years of fire events in this county and surrounding counties and throughout this state, extreme weather events, the safety features that we have to deal with around extreme weather events, PSPS events, fires, the discussion has come up for the betterment of the last three years. It would be really nice to put a vote to this and have this done,” Elias said, adding that, given current drought conditions, fire risk will only become more heightened.
“I schedule my vacation around being in Cloverdale on the Fourth of July because it’s important to me that we are a special community and we have a special place and we are allowed and able to celebrate with fireworks. When I vote for city council members, my most important issue is ‘Do you want fireworks in Cloverdale?’ because I think it says a lot about traditions and freedom and letting people choose. I don’t want to live in fear,” said Helen Broughton.
Dennis Revell, a spokesperson on behalf of TNT, said that they believe the council should allow the sale of fireworks to continue. Should the council decide to send the decision to voters, Revell said that the council should put the potential ordinance on the November ballot, since it is likely to get the most voter turnout.

Final decisions

When it came time for the council to vote, Bagby motioned to approve the ban of safe and sane fireworks with Cruz seconding the motion, but the motion failed to gain traction with the rest of the council.
Following the failed motion, Wolter introduced a motion to put an ordinance prohibiting the sale and use of safe and sane fireworks on the November 2022 ballot, with direction to have city staff come back to the council with an ordinance. The motion received a 3-2 vote, and a request from Palla that the proposed ordinance include verbiage that supports having a permit process for continued public aerial fireworks shows.