Fire marshal was waiting to finalize a hearing plan
Gilroy – The fireworks have long since faded. But administrative citations for pyrotechnic foul play this July 4 weren’t issued until Friday, city officials report – and the fines, expected to total at least $7,500, still haven’t been paid.
“There’s no question – we should have sent them out earlier,” said city administrator Jay Baksa, who learned of the delay Friday morning, following an inquiry from The Dispatch. Friday he said, “They’re going out today.”
City fire marshal Jackie Bretschneider said she was waiting to finalize a hearing process before mailing the citations. At the hearings, residents can contest the citations, which bill property owners for firework violations on their property. The citations sparked a furor this June, when City Council approved fines of up to $750 for the ignition of bottle rockets, roman candles, M-80s, or any firework that shoots into the air.
“In June, there was a lot of talk about how [administrative citations] aren’t a constitutional process,” Bretschneider said. “The hearings provide a good process for people to be able to appeal, because there may be some valid situations for appeal.”
The city may hire a professional hearing officer to handle the appeals, or it may handle them internally, Baksa said. Once residents give “their side of the story,” he explained, the hearing officer will decide whether “to reduce the fine, amend it or change it, or leave it the same.”
But the citations needn’t wait on that process, he said.
“We don’t need to have a hearing officer to send the notices,” said Baksa. Though he praised Bretschneider’s attention to the hearing process, Baksa added, “We can work on that concurrently – we don’t have to wait.”
Bretschneider said the notices would be sent Friday by standard U.S. mail, along with financial waivers and requests for hearings. Though residents will be able to argue their case before a hearing officer, she added, the burden of proof lies squarely on the person cited. If the citation was properly completed, and the right person is cited, Bretschneider said, “there’s not a lot to contest.”
“The only two things you can appeal on are, it wasn’t me or my home, or it was the wrong law,” she explained. “In this case, that’s not an issue. If there was a firework going off, it happened.”
Fireworks are notoriously difficult to track down. They explode in the air, in the dark, and no one wants to claim responsibility. In the past, when Gilroy police tried to issue citations, they couldn’t prove who owned the fireworks, Sgt. Kurt Svardal said in an interview this June. That’s why police have favored administrative citations, which hold property owners accountable and avoid hostile confrontations on a hectic Independence Day. Police can spot illegal fireworks, note the address, and mail a citation to the homeowner, who may not know about it until it lands in their mailbox.
This year, police and firefighter issued 40 administrative citations, according to Svardal, and confiscated 8,469 illegal fireworks, 1,120 more than last year.
At 8371 Hanna St., a property cited for firecrackers, mortars and aerial fireworks, a 35-year-old resident says he hasn’t received any notices from the city, nearly three months after the alleged violation. The man chose to speak anonymously, to avoid offending police.
“I’ll probably contest it,” he said. “It was unfair. We had a lot of kids out here lighting illegal fireworks, throughout the whole neighborhood.” If police saw people setting fireworks on his property, the man asked, why didn’t they just stop and issue them a ticket?
Complaints like his aren’t rare. Baksa has heard them. Svardal has heard them. And Bretschneider has heard them, but she says administrative citations are milder than the alternative: municipal citations, which show up on a criminal record.
“The administrative fine is actually meant to be a kinder, gentler way of dealing with fireworks issues,” she said, comparing them to parking tickets. “A misdemeanor citation is a very serious charge, as an individual, to get.”
Code enforcement officer Scott Barron agrees. He wasn’t involved in the fireworks citations, but Barron regularly issues administrative citations for other violations. The city adopted the Administrative Citation Ordinance June 21, 2004, to process city code violations more quickly. Normally, administrative citations carry fines of $100, $200 and $500, but City Council approved higher fines for fireworks-related offenses: $250, $500 and $750.
No one has appealed the citations he’s issued, Barron said, but they have the legal right to do so. He uses the citations to put a little extra pressure on code-breakers who haven’t responded to previous requests.
“It’s milder” than misdemeanor charges, he explained. “It doesn’t go on someone’s record – it’s internal to the city.”
Police issued 18 municipal citations to people they witnessed lighting off-limits fireworks. One suspect, accused of setting off bottle rockets at 7370 Carmel St., pleaded not guilty and faces a court date on Nov. 16. Another resident pleaded guilty to lighting firecrackers on the porch of 7419 Alexander St., and a third, charged with setting off illegal fireworks at 71 Liman Ave., pleaded no contest. Both were fined on Sept. 17.
Nearly three months after safe and not-so-safe fireworks sparkled on Gilroy streets, some might barely remember July 4, and the pyrotechnic no-no’s that came with it. But delays won’t dampen the citations’ effect, said Bretschneider.
“The bottom line is, when people have to pay a fine, it makes them think differently about an activity,” she said. “It’s a wake-up call.”
What if someone else moved in since July? Bretschneider said “it’s a pretty easy thing to double-check on” using the county recorder’s list, but it’s possible for a new owner to be wrongly cited, since the list has a 10 percent error rate. But errors like that – like any complaint about the citations – can always be brought to a hearing, she added.
City officials plan to issue administrative citations again next year, but they won’t know until next July 4 whether the new methods worked, said Baksa. If fireworks violations dwindle in 2007, this year’s citations might be considered successful.
The Gilroy man is skeptical. As he waits for a citation to land in his Hanna Street mailbox, he says high-flying rockets won’t vanish from Gilroy’s Fourth of July skies.
“I don’t think they’ll stop them,” he said. “They’re everywhere. Just like drugs.”
