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To: City of Santa Ana City Council Subject: Banning of Safe & Sane Fireworks Good evening Mayor, City Council, City Staff and the public watching from home. My name is Rick Niedermayer and I have lived in the city of Santa Ana for over 42 years. Growing up in our city as a child I always look forward to the 4 1 of July, as a time to be with family and enjoy the freedoms that were fought for over 200 years ago. As has been reported in the Santa Ana Register the public safety commission held a special meeting on February 22nd to address whether the city should continue to allow non - profits in our city the opportunity to sell Safe and Sane fireworks in Santa Ana. I as one of those non - profits found out about this meeting earlier on the same day of the meeting. If believe that if a special meeting was necessary, then all of the non - profits that are effected should have been notified of this meeting. The city has a record of the every non - profits that ran a stand in the past, as they city requires a special license for each! I hear that each of you want to be transparent in your decisions that affect our community. This meeting was not transparent, as only three non - profits were in attendance, and only because there schedules were open they were available to attend. Drive -byes, murders, and assaults are all at an all -time high in Santa Ana, and the Public Safety committee is calling a special meeting to talk about banning safe & sane fireworks. I truly believe that the priorities of our public safety committee are a little not correct! As mentioned in the meeting the city saw an extremely large amount of illegal fireworks, on the 1" thru the 4`h of July. In this special meeting the police department noted that in their presentation that there are 9 cities that allowed firework, in reality there were 10. There were other facts presented that were not completely true. One of the police representatives made a statement that they do not have the personnel to handle the call of illegal firework, and when they did go to a call as soon as they got out of the car the people shooting off the illegal firework took off running, and they were not able to catch them! I wanted to ask what they do when they arrive at a location and illegal drug are being distributed or used, and the suspects take off running, I do not believe that the officers say that they are too fast and we could not catch! In the same example the police representative ask how would the officer know the safe n sane from the illegal fireworks, once again the public could not respond as public comment had already happened. This is an easy answer the state fire marshal stamp is on all safe & sane fireworks. Our city fine or citation for illegal fireworks is only $100. How many of those were issued last July 1" July 4th. I would guess lees than 101 Here are the State of California penalties' for "possession of illegal fireworks" Penalties Should a person be in possession of no more than 25 pounds of illegal 'fireworks, that person is immediately guilty of a misdemeanor. After conviction, the person will also receive a fine of at least $500 and no more than $ 1,000 by the judge. A judge might also decide that the person should go to jail for up to a year or upon a combination of fine and jail time. A conviction based on possession of up to 100 pomids of illegal fireworks results in up to one year in jail or tines up to $5,000. Those possessing up to 5,000 pounds of 65A -9