Council votes to restore annual fireworks show despite budget
deficit
GILROY
BOOM! Fireworks are back!
The city council brought back the bang Monday night with a 6-1 vote that resurrected the popular 4th of July fireworks show. But restoring the $13,000 event will only widen the city’s $3.9 million deficit, so at the behest of Councilman Craig Gartman, Mayor Al Pinheiro and Councilwoman Cat Tucker vowed to raise funds within the community to possibly reimburse the city by next summer.
Tucker called for the council to reconsider its decision to cancel the event at Gilroy High School. Slashing the $13,000 light-fest was part of $4.5 million in spending cuts the council approved last June, and it should have stayed that way despite residents’ complaints, according to Pinheiro, who voted ‘no.’
“We can sit here and bring back to this dais different things that have been cut and ask, ‘Well, what’s $13,000 out of this big budget?’ The bottom line is that we’ve frozen 23 positions and cut back to bare bones,’ ” the mayor said.
While the body imposed a hiring freeze on 23 unfilled and planned positions, the budget included no layoffs or wage reductions. Fireworks were among the many community services pared back in the budget the council approved 5-2 last month. Councilmen Dion Bracco and Craig Gartman voted no.
Had the show died, it would have been the first time in more than three decades that the city did not fund the event, according to Recreation Supervisor John Garcia. He has administered the show for the past 31 years and before that, he said he struggled to raise money for the bright celebration.
“We’d ask anyone for a buck … Some years we would get half the money, some year just some of the money, you know,” Garcia said of the $1,000 dollars or so he and others tried to scrape together in 1970s. The city would pick up the difference in the end, but in today’s competitive fund-raising market, Garcia said, “it would be even worse. There are so many agencies out there looking for funding.”
This won’t deter the mayor.
“I want to be creative and find (the money for the fireworks show) within the community,” the mayor said. “The greatest service would be for this council to find an alternative way” to fund the 4th of July show. Pinheiro specifically mentioned soliciting the Exchange Club and the Gilroy Rotary Club.
But the mayor saw the writing on the wall, and before the council voted to add $13,000 to a $3.9 million deficit, Pinheiro said: “I only have one thing to say. Why would you ever give up the opportunity to find money outside?”
After Monday night’s vote to restore fireworks, Gartman asked the mayor if he still wanted to pursue the private fundraising option and possibly reimburse the city later. (Cities must book popular pyrotechnicians as early as a year in advance, according to city staff.)
“I have great faith in you,” Gartman told the mayor.
“I’ll be glad to team up with you to go out and get money,” Tucker told Pinheiro.
Pinheiro agreed.
Councilman Peter Arellano – who fought and failed to fully restore nearly all of the $250,000 in community service and recreation cuts earlier this year – agreed with Pinheiro’s fiscal responsibility even though he voted with the majority to restore the show.
“We should not spend more than we bring in. We’ve frozen positions in the city … We don’t get food anymore,” Arellano said, referring to council members now paying for all their snacks – even 50 cents to the city clerk for a can of Coca-Cola from the miniature fridge behind their seats.
There was a third option to fund the show, though, but the council declined to endorse it. The city could have just charged the wholesale “safe and sane” vendor who supplied the community groups’ annual firework booths. But the council decided it would be too much to add a $13,000 fee to a vendor who already pays a 7 percent tax on about $400,000 worth of earnings between 2007 and 2008. The current tax pays for more police and fire personnel around Independence Day, and adding $13,000 would bring the wholesaler’s total tax rate to slightly more than 10 percent.
“We would price ourselves out of the market,” warned Gene Della Maggiore, Gilroy’s safe fireworks wholesaler for the past 30 years.
“I don’t think we should tack more money onto the sale of fireworks,” said Councilman Bob Dillon, meaning that any increase in the wholesaler’s costs would trickle down to the consumer. “The additional tack on fee does not strike me as fair.”
Fair or not, residents can go to sleep knowing that the show will go on.
