Council Delays Plan to Curb Fireworks

Despite explosions and mortar launched rockets rattling a number of LB neighborhoods, the City Council has quietly let city management delay responses to a multi-part “Illegal Explosives and Fireworks Action Plan” that councilmembers had voted 9-0 on June 23 to:

1) Request city attorney to draft an ordinance that would include a person who owns, rents, leases or otherwise has possession of a premises as a responsible party for the illegal use, discharge, possession, storage or sale of fireworks on the premises;

2) Request city attorney and city manager to report back to the City Council with options for increasing the penalties for anyone cited or arrested for fireworks violations;

3) Request city attorney and city manager to report back to the City Council on the feasibility of including an administrative citation process for illegal fireworks use, to allow for additional enforcement capability in Long Beach;

4) Request city manager to assess the feasibility of establishing an online portal or GoLongBeach app feature for residents to submit video evidence of fireworks violations for referral to the city prosecutor;

5) Request the city manager to assess the feasibility of using OpenData or crowd sourcing to create a publicly accessible heat map of incidents of illegal fireworks and explosives in Long Beach;

6) Request the city manager to assess the feasibility of establishing a fireworks hotline for residents to report illegal fireworks and explosives; and

7) Request the city manager to provide an update on public education efforts this year that all fireworks are illegal in Long Beach

The June 23 Council motion omitted a date for Council action on the requested items. But on July 14 (after another July 4th period of “war zone” level fireworks), a separate council item sought tougher penalties for fireworks scofflaws and Councilman Al Austin (who’d brought the June 23 item) asked City Manager Tom Modica: “When do you expect to have a report back? When can we expect a report back on those items that we passed just a few weeks ago on the Fireworks Action Plan?”

City Manager Modica replied: “I don’t have a date yet for that. I think we had looked at about a 90 day, if I remember the item for the first kind of check-in, and this also calls for a 90 day, so we’ll set our clock to that and get as much of that information as we can by that time.”

Ninety days should have put management’s report and follow-up Council action in October … but there was no agendized management report or council action on any Council agenda in October.

On July 14, Councilwoman Mary Zendejas asked City Manager Modica to combine a report on her agendized request for toughened penalties with the council’s June 23 directed illegal explosives-fireworks fighting-plan. “Certainly,” replied City Manager Modica. “We can build on some of the research we’ve done in the past ... and we will combine these two together because they do speak to very similar items and bring those back. We’re hearing you, there’s a lot of questions that you have and [we] want to do kind of a bigger comprehensive report of all the issues.”

Councilwoman Zendejas said she believes the combination would create more “opportunities to make a difference for next year and hopefully next year we can say that this year was different because we didn’t see fireworks in our city.”

 Next year? Advancing the timeline to 2021 would effectively leave LB neighborhoods to months of explosives leading up to New Years Eve warzone fireworks.

In the interim, on Aug. 24, city management sent the Mayor/Council a non-agendized memo indicating it has formed a “Fireworks Committee” comprised of city staff, including the assistant city manager (chair), police chief, fire chief, city prosecutor, and two deputy city attorneys and said the committee “will meet monthly.” It didn’t include representatives of grassroots groups that had pressed City Hall to act on the matter.

The Aug. 24 management memo disparaged the use of administrative enforcement: “Currently, the city has the ability to issue administrative citations, which can carry fines up to $1,000, per California Government Code Section 36901, for violations of ordinances. The Committee will evaluate whether it would be possible to increase the fine amount through a new ordinance, or through the addition of new fees, such as the Fire Marshal fee ($250) and other penalties imposed by the City of Lakewood. Issuance of administrative citations, however, poses a number of challenges as have previously been communicated in a memorandum dated March 15, 2019. Criminal prosecutions have proven to be more effective.”

But as the Beachcomber reported on July 16 (visible online here: https://beachcomber.news/content/hefty-civil-fines-against-fireworks-work) the City of Lakewood successfully uses administrative enforcement allowing heftier civil penalties/fines and letting cities raise and apply them more easily. It avoids the criminal law courtroom. It bypasses issues that stymie enforcement by police or other city personnel.

Some speculate on a possible unspoken political factor: administrative enforcement could reduce the influence of the Long Beach Police Officers Association (union) in fireworks enforcement (since it replaces criminal law penalties with civil law fines.)

A City Council majority ultimately directs and decides policy on these matters. There’s currently no timeline or deadline set for follow-up council action on the illegal explosives and fireworks issue.

Bill Pearl publishes lbreport.com, an online local news source since August 2000.