Fire Chief Marquis' recommendations have been released, and are summarized as: "restrict sales of fireworks in GV to GV residents only". Full text of both his recommendations and the proposed ordinance can be seen within the agenda for the 2008-04-02 meeting
This proposed ordinance incrementally improves the fireworks risk to rural landowners, but stops short of motivating large improvements. It fails to encourage Dec 31 fireworks sales and use. It facilitates a "wink, wink" lack of enforcement. It will be easy for permitted vendors to sell fireworks to the many non-GV residents, on whose ID cards appear the words "Grass Valley, CA". (The municipal boundaries of GV are much smaller than the US Postal Service boundaries of Grass Valley, with the latter including hundreds of rural wildfire-prone residences). The ordinance *removes* the existing requirement for buyer street addresses to be recorded, so there is no paper trail to audit the effectiveness of the ordinance. But the good news is that the ordinance provides for the immediate shut-down of offending sellers, so it should be fairly easy for citizens to create a "sting" by purchasing fireworks with an ID that has a Grass Valley postal address which is outside the GV city limits, then demanding that GV enforce its own law, by shutting offending vendors down immediately.
If you cannot attend the GV City Council on 2008-04-02, consider sending your written comments to the City Council via: Kristi Bashor, City Clerk, kristib@cityofgrassvalley.com 530-274-4310 (written comments should arrive no later than end 2008-03-31).
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