ANTIGO — At a City Council Finance, Personnel, and Legislative Committee meeting Wednesday night, officials announced plans to increase communication with residents about existing firework regulations in the city.
The public awareness effort is arising after a citizen from the south side of the city made a public complaint about loud fireworks being set off excessively in past years near his residence in the lead-up to July 4th.
City Administrator Karin Derauf said the city will try to circulate information about its current firework ordinances through a number of avenues.
“We have notices that will be going out,” Derauf said. “There’s an insert that will be going out in the utility bill. So all residents will receive that that receive a utility bill with information that we have an ordinance about fireworks or noise. So that’s getting sent out. Information on our web site, information on social media — those are going to get pushed out as we get closer to the date…in the next week or two that notice will be inserted into the utility bills.”
As July 4 and the firework season approaches, Mayor Terry Brand suggested the city sharpen messaging of this kind.
“We’ll have an opportunity again in June to send it out in the utility bills, and I think we should include what the consequence is,” Brand said. “If they know there’s a chronic person doing this outside of the 4th of July or the day before or after, we could send them a notice and say, ‘This is your warning.”
“And when the officer comes, he’s not going to be giving you a warning because we sent you a letter notifying you,” Brand said.
Though city ordinances technically prohibit all use of fireworks within city limits except for those with permits, city officials suggested they are largely unopposed to residents recreating with them on July 4. Several at the meeting, however, including Seventh Ward Alderman Glenn Bugni, suggested the crux of the problem might be firework usage at unpredictable times.
“Typically, July 3 and 4 have been the nights when people shoot off fireworks,” Bugni said. “When it becomes something other than that, then it becomes a nuisance.”
The resident that lodged the complaint wished not to have his name disclosed, but agreed, saying he believed a number of citizens in the city — particularly those with conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder or autism — wanted to curb unpredictable detonations.
Brand named another group he said is adverse to the untimely firework usage: pets.
“Particularly, the dog population gets upset,” he said. “When it’s one time on 4th of July evening at the high school, dog owners can plan for that and protect them, put them in the basement, take them for a ride, whatever that might be. But when fireworks are going on for a week before and a week after, it’s hard to manage the pet population.”
Derauf said the ordinance could prove difficult to enforce for the police department, particularly if after launching their fireworks, violators simply move locations.
“Unless somebody actually calls at that exact time that something’s happening and PD can get there then, but if they’re calling after the fact or the next day, there’s not a lot the PD can do to enforce anything at that point. So it has to be at that moment,” Derauf said.
Brand said that because of that complication, the focus of the initiative should be the chronic scofflaws.
“It doesn’t take long to issue a couple tickets, and the word gets around in that community of people that we’re enforcing the laws,” Brand said. “I think it’s just a constant awareness thing about having some respect for the other people that share the city and for the needs of the other people and their pets to not make it weeks of annoyance.”
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