Bonney Lake City Council considers firework ban ordinance

Published 10:14 am Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Although Bonney Lake’s Town Hall meeting on a firework ban at the end of September didn’t produce the explosions many residents expected, the emotional testimony by several residents may have swayed the council to enact a ban on selling and lighting off fireworks inside city limits.

During the Oct. 6 council workshop, council members agreed to refer the issue back to the Public Safety Committee, where the topic of a firework ban has originated for the past several years, for review and recommendation.

Two members of the Public Safety Committee, council members Tom Watson and Mark Hamilton, have both stated they support a total firework ban.

Hamilton is not running for re-election this year.

The third member, Councilman James Rackley, has made it clear he believes celebrating Independence Day with fireworks is an important holiday tradition, and said he wants to put a referendum on the ballot and ask the public directly whether they want a firework ban in their city.

Bonney Lake ran an unofficial poll about whether or not residents support a firework ban. The poll was open to the public for a week before the Town Hall.

Out of the total 842 responses, 500 (59 percent) voted against ban, and 342 (41 percent) voted for a ban.

Although the poll only allowed one response per Internet Protocol (IP) Address, meaning one vote per computer or electronic device, it is uncertain whether all the responses came from Bonney Lake residents.

If a ban is passed by council in 2015, it will not take effect for a full year because of the Revised Code of Washington 70.77.250(4), which states “any ordinances adopted by a county or city that are more restrictive than state law shall have an effective date no sooner than one year after their adoption.”

This means a ban passed in 2015 will not effect fireworks used on New Year’s Eve or July 4, 2016.

Council compromises

In order to give residents a replacement outlet to celebrate the country’s independence, council members Katrina Minton-Davis and Donn Lewis discussed different compromises the council could make while still enacting a firework ban.

While Minton-Davis expressed her opinion that fireworks in the city have become unmanagable, she questioned how the city would enforce a total ban.

Lewis was originally on the fence about the ban, but admitted his support when the council began discussing moving the Bonney Lake Days firework show to the Fourth of July and giving firework permits to registered Home Owners Associations inside the city.

This would allow neighborhoods to organize their own celebrations with “safe and sane” fireworks.

Stances and questions

After the Town Hall and the following council workshop, it’s clear that whichever way the council decides to lean, it’s going to be a close vote.

Randy McKibbin: “Personally, I would ban them, but I look at the whole city, and would a ban actually help the problems described here? I’m not convinced it would.”

Mark Hamilton: “I think the Public Safety Committee has already gone through this. We’ve already sat down with the prosecutor, the fire chief, the police chief and the officers out there, and they say the existing laws in the books are not there. An outright ban is really the only way that we can get a handle on the fireworks problem.”

Dan Swatman: “I don’t have a good concept on where to go with this. How we are going to enact that ban? What does that mean? How does that work?”

James Rackley: “Fireworks have been a tradition of celebration for thousands of years. I’m not going to take away somebody’s presumed rights to set off fireworks or to celebrate.”

Tom Watson: “I think we should really consider banning them.”

Donn Lewis: “I am against fireworks going off indiscriminately all 12 months of the year, and I see no arrests or citations. I would like to see is a ban in the future, say a year from now. Give it a year to come up with resolutionary changes to give the police force the capability to issue citations. If we can come up with an opportunity to strengthen our enforcement of it, I would like to see us try that for a year, and if that doesn’t work, then we consider a ban next year.”

Katrina Minton-Davis: “Fireworks in Bonney Lake have gotten out of control. But before I would go for an outright ban, I would look for some kind of compromise.”

With Hamilton not running for re-election this year, his council seat will be taken either by Justin Evans or David Baus, who debated the pros and cons of a firework ban in the Courier-Herald in September. With Evans supporting a ban and Baus against it, the election of one over the other may cement success for one of the groups.