Illegal fireworks are an increasing annoyance for residents around SLO County, prompting elected officials to form a committee to increase enforcement and prevention.
With increasing fire danger from fireworks—such as the 3.65-acre burn in Paso Robles over Fourth of July weekend—2nd District Supervisor Bruce Gibson and 4th District Supervisor Jimmy Paulding are in the process of forming an ad hoc committee to help focus on improving the approach to firework regulations in unicorpoorated areas of the county.
“Setting off illegal fireworks is an increasing problem, raising serious safety concerns and creating a lot of noise nuisance problems,” Gibson told New Times. “So, we need to step up accountability and cite those responsible.”
Paulding told New Times that although he supports the appropriate use of safe fireworks, the county needs to do a better job at discouraging illegal fireworks, and he hopes the ad hoc committee will help with that.
“I’ve heard from a number of constituents throughout my district, many of whom are in Oceano, and the term that I hear a lot is that Oceano turns into a war zone, and then I was talking with Supervisor Gibson about what has occurred at Dog Beach in Cayucos, and we had a similar situation going on out there,” he said. “So, we decided we’d formalize an ad hoc committee with two members of our board to sit down with our Sheriff’s Office and our Cal Fire department and other departments to talk about what we can do.”
While the committee is still in the early stages of formation, it already had its first round of meetings with both the county Sheriff’s Office and Cal Fire to discuss issues such as enforcement. They are also looking for ideas about how to help community services districts across the county.
“We’ve seen other jurisdictions on the Central Coast do a good job at tackling the illegal fireworks issue,” he said. “For example, Grover Beach was pretty clear and up front with the community and said that they were going to have law enforcement active and present on the Fourth to issue citations. They did in fact issue nine $1,000 citations for use of illegal fireworks.”
Once the committee is officially formed, Paulding said its main goal would be presenting different solutions to the county to help combat illegal fireworks.
“One of our action items is to talk about what we can do at the county and make sure that our Sheriff’s Office has the resources necessary to do more enforcement,” he said. “But that we’re also using tools and techniques like drones in order to increase enforcement efforts.”
This article appears in Jul 25 – Aug 4, 2024.