Salisbury Council To Help Fund Fireworks

SALISBURY – The City Council agreed this week to help fund fireworks for the Red, White and Boom 4th of July celebration this year while encouraging local benefiting businesses to start making contributions.

An ordinance in its final reading approached the City Council on Monday evening to amend Fiscal Year 2014 General Fund to appropriate $10,000 for a contribution to support the 2014 Red, White and Boom fireworks display on 4th of July.

The ordinance states, “a committee of citizens has organized to stage a fireworks display to celebrate the Nation’s Independence Day this year for the third year in a row, and a number of businesses, institutions and individuals are supporting this event through both cash and in-kind contributions. It is important that the City join with the other supporters in the community and to express their appreciation for the efforts of these citizens to stage this celebration.”

The ordinance furthers, “it was determined during first reading on March 21 that the appropriate course of action is to direct $9,000 to the Red, White and Boom 2014 celebration and $1,000 to the endowment fund for the support of future celebrations.”

“The amendment gives $1,000 to the endowment fund but I spoke with the Community Foundation of the Eastern Shore today, and they are actively pursuing additional funding for that endowment fund,” Council President Jake Day said. “They were very excited to be able to provide administrative services and financial guidance purposes for that endowment fund to see it grow, which brings up something that we discussed last time as well, which is the City’s growing contribution over time to an endowment fund and decreasing contribution in cash over time. Obviously that is something that we won’t be able to address this year but something that we can maybe adopt a plan for.”

Councilman Tim Spies said he is happy to see 90 percent of the donations were made by individuals.

“I was rather dismayed to see only a couple of businesses, one in particular who made a sizable donation, but there were very few donations from businesses, and we had talked about this about being an event by which businesses benefit momentarily, so I would like to see the businesses come out there and chip in a bit for this event,” he said.

Spies added in the upcoming years he will be proposing a matching contribution from the city instead.

“I don’t believe in us funding this event in a big way by city taxpayer money,” he said. “I don’t believe it is where we should be going.”

Councilwoman Laura Mitchell acknowledged the formation of the endowment fund is to help jump start future funding for the event.

“The estimates from last year were there was about 10,000 people that came into the city from surrounding areas to watch the fireworks, and this is $10,000, so I am pretty confident 10,000 people will spend at least a dollar in our city … and I agree a lot of those businesses surrounding that area are benefiting from the increase in people watching and enjoying the fireworks, and I would encourage them to step up as well,” she said.

Mike Dunn, chair of Red, White and Boom, reminded the council before three years ago Salisbury citizens were traveling to view fireworks on 4th of July.

“The people who live and breathe in this community were getting into their car and they were going to Snow Hill because Salisbury didn’t have fireworks on the 4th of July. Snow Hill is a wonderful community. We applaud them and respect them, and we thank them but the citizens of Salisbury should have fireworks on the 4th of July because without them nothing we are trying to accomplish in this city matters if we can’t put fireworks on, on the 4th of July,” Dunn said.

The council voted 4-0, with Councilwoman Terry Cohen absent, to allocate the $10,000.