At it’s regular meeting on Wednesday night, the Price City council,  after much discussion passed Ordinance 2021-002 banning the discharge of fireworks within the boundaries of  Price City.

With the ongoing fire danger and continuing drought conditions the council remains concerned about the possibility of potential fires started by fireworks.

Before the discussion began the council heard from Joe Hollis, owner of Kaboom Baby Fireworks LLC. based in Price. Hollis stated that being a former fire fighter himself, he truly appreciated everything that the men and women who were fighting the local wildfires are doing to keep us all safe. Hollis and his wife, Samantha, started the business to pursue their love of fireworks. He went on to ask the city for a compromise with possible designated areas for citizens to light off fireworks possibly the fairgrounds or a parking lot with the fire department providing support.

Council member Terry Willis opened the discussion by responding to Hollis’ comments by telling him that his type of business has weighed on their decisions.

“Every time we have tried to figure out what to do, knowing that businesses that sell fireworks would be deeply impacted by this has not gone unnoticed. We have tried, we have looked at the least restrictive ways over and over again and we have talked about places, the fairgrounds was at one time a consideration but the county has put an overall ban and it actually comes from the state level on all unincorporated areas of the county.”

There was also talk about the location that was used previously which is now the soccer fields on the campus of USU Eastern. After discussion with the school it was decided that it was not viable because of the damage that it would do to the field and the investment that has been made on them.

The idea of the parking lot by the museum was brought up and the main point of the discussion was it really needed to be an “all or nothing” scenario, as far as selling fireworks but then telling the public you can only light them off in this area. Also the question was brought up about enforcement.

It was also noted that the current ordinance will expire on November 1, but if anything were to change they could remove it as a council at anytime before that.