Who wins with the new fireworks legislation?

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The fireworks bill that went into effect earlier this year is turning once-peaceful neighborhoods into areas that sound like war zones.

Take my downtown Howell neighborhood for instance.

I live one block off Grand River Avenue. We are used to the sounds of emergency vehicles zooming along the main drag. I always think, “Someone, somewhere, is getting the help they need.” We are used to visitors from surrounding areas flooding our neighborhood during special events and parades. I always think, “I hope these folks discover what a great town Howell is.”

It’s all part of the life where I chose to live.

But this fireworks bill Gov. Rick Snyder signed into law has turned my neighborhood into something else entirely.

I find myself thinking, “Why would anyone sacrifice the peace and quiet of nice little neighborhoods for money?”

What used to be a Fourth of July/New Year’s Eve kind of event is now every late afternoon to evening, unless it’s raining, with big booms blasting the quiet. One *$$%&#! set off a bottle rocket at 7:30 a.m. Sunday, June 10, as I was enjoying my first cup of coffee of the day on my screen porch.

I don’t mind the sound of fireworks on New Year’s Eve, or the Fourth of July. Heck, we’ve put on a little show on my son’s mid-summer birthday using the boring, old-fashioned, ground-based fireworks we bought at the drug store, the kind that mostly sizzle and hiss.

The newly legal fireworks are something else altogether. Bottle rockets, Roman candles, M-80s — they’re the new normal in my neighborhood.

We can’t walk our dog in the evening anymore because he’s scared by the noise, and I was distressed to find a spent bottle rocket in my yard, close to my house. What would have happened had it landed on my roof, or in a bush?

Score a big one for the rude *$$%&#!s.

The whole point of the new legislation is money. Under the new law, those who sell the high-powered stuff have to pay an annual “certificate fee” of $1,000 for a permanent location and $600 for a non-permanent location, and they have to purchase additional insurance. So far, there are over 500 retailers who bought certificates this year; you do the math.

Score one for the state and one for insurance companies.

A “fireworks safety fee” of 6 percent is added to the retail price of the fireworks, on top of the usual 6 percent Michigan sales tax.

Score two for the state.

The new law is one way to increase revenue without raising taxes, but it leaves folks like me, who live in regular neighborhoods, paying the biggest price as we lose our right to live in peace.

That’s just too high a price to pay, wouldn’t you say?

The only recourse I can come up with is getting a local ordinance passed like in other communities that restrict the use of fireworks to certain time-frames on certain days of the year.

Think of the revenue the city of Howell could rake in by ticketing violators of this possible law.

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Maria Stuart worked at The Livingston County Press/ Livingston County Daily Press & Argus as a reporter, editor and managing editor. These days, she runs The Livingston Post.