News

ELLY GRIMM

   • Leader & Times

The 4th of July holiday has officially come and gone, but there are still some messes being cleared up from the festivities.

Local citizen Hayden Olive came before the Liberal City Commission at its most recent meeting Tuesday evening to share his experiences.

“I feel like you all knew this was coming, so I guess I’m the one who didn’t want to disappoint. I’m here to talk about a problem we have. I take good care of my yard, as do most of the people in my neighborhood and last Thursday, everyone was out mowing their yards and making them look nice for the 4th of July weekend,” Olive said. “Saturday morning, I woke up to a bunch of fireworks trash in my yard, and there was also some out in the street. I spent almost two hours picking stuff up in my yard and cleaning up my place. The people across the street have been shooting off fireworks basically since the day they started being on sale, including that weekend when we had solid 40 and 50 mph winds, so I called the police because that’s just not safe. I told the police ‘If you’re going to just drive on by, don’t even bother to come,’ because that’s typically what happens. When I saw the police coming up the street, I flagged him down and pointed to the house across the street and told him that’s where everything was happening. The officer said ‘We have to know for sure that’s the house that’s doing everything,’ and I told him ‘That’s the house, they were shooting stuff off when you were going up and down the street.’ The officers did go to the house and prepared to knock, but I had to tell them ‘They’re not going to answer the door, I’ve called on them before and they run like cockroaches as soon as they see your lights on. They’re all hiding out in the backyard, that’s where you have to go if you want to talk to them.’ After the officer knocked several times, a little kid finally answered the door and then the parents HAD to talk to them. They got a warning and told me if it continued to let them know. Three times between then and the 4th of July, I called on them for shooting fireworks – not just that the fireworks were being shot off, but they were being shot off way after hours and not according to the ordinance. I was already very irritated by this point, and when I got up Saturday morning and saw the mess in my yard, I had a few very choice words I kept to myself.”

However, that was not the end of the trouble, Olive continued.

“Lo and behold, about 4 p.m. Saturday, all the people who had been at the house across the street the night before started congregating again, so I called them and asked if they were planning on shooting off fireworks, and he said ‘Well, we haven’t decided yet – we’re going to drink beer and eat some food, but we haven’t decided on the fireworks yet,’” Olive said. “I went and got my bag of trash and showed it to him, and he gave me a ‘What do you want me to do about it?’ look. I told him, ‘I don’t care if you shoot your fireworks, but clean up your mess when you’re done, because this is ridiculous. I don’t care if you take pride in your yard, but I take pride in mine, and I shouldn’t have to pick up your mess. I didn’t spend a single penny on fireworks this year, so it’s unfair for me to be the one cleaning up after others.’ He then said to me ‘You do realize this is the 4th of July,’ to which I responded ‘I know, I’ve spent probably twice as many 4th of July holidays as you have, and I’ve never seen a mess like this.’ Something needs to be done, I know I’m not the only person in town who has this kind of mess. When you start selling fireworks almost two weeks before the holiday, that’s far too long a period, and if people can buy them, they’re going to shoot them. Something needs to be done about the selling period, and I don’t know what else can be done in terms of enforcement, but people need to know what the rules are and what the ordinance says and all of that. But something needs to be done, because this is ridiculous, and I don’t think you all fully realize the amount of trash that gets left behind afterward.”

The commissioners agreed there remains some issues when it comes to fireworks.

“I know we made it mandatory for the fireworks vendors to include a sheet with the ordinance and rules with every purchase, I know that was approved by the commission at one of the meetings in June from the Liberal Fire Department,” commissioner Janeth Vazquez said.

“I definitely don’t disagree there’s a problem, it started about a week before the holiday. We made things very clear in the ordinance and how we wanted things done, I know we adjusted some things in the ordinance so it was a little more strict this year and included the ordinance sheet, and there were still issues a solid week before,” Liberal Vice Mayor Matt Landry added. “It’s bigger fireworks every year, and I had a mess in my yard I had to clean up. I know this might not sit well with some people, but I do think it’s a problem. This isn’t necessarily about trying to take away the rights of people to have fun or anything like that, but there comes a point where you give people an inch and just keep taking more and more and more, so this is something I do feel needs to be addressed and talked about before the 2026 4th of July holiday. We don’t want things to get to the point where they’re just completely out of control. I’ve heard multiple stories of people needing to have their pets sedated for multiple days just to get through the holiday, and that’s rather ridiculous. It’s a lack of respect for neighbors and the rules that have been put into place. We made it extremely clear this year what our expectations were and what we wanted, and there are multiple people who flouted them and just did what they wanted anyway, which is not right or fair. I definitely think we’re at the point now where we’ve given the public enough benefit of the doubt and trusted them to follow the rules and do the right thing, but hardly anyone’s actually fully following those rules. This isn’t about punishment, it’s about responsibility and respect.”

“I’d gone to the 4th of July Bee Jays game and left before the fireworks show and came home to find a vehicle parked sideways across the street so I couldn’t get into my driveway, and there were even a few cars parked in front of my driveway and yet another one parked in such a manner blocking the street,” commissioner Ron Warren said. “I went to my neighbor’s house and told him it’s illegal to block the street, and a police officer happened to come onto the scene shortly after I started talking to him. The next morning I woke up to see a huge mess of fireworks trash in the street and had to pick up some stuff in my yard. I don’t really know what the solution is ... I know there’s part of the population that doesn’t want the fireworks and another part of the population that does want the fireworks, and I do think there’s a lack of respect from some people that needs to be addressed.”

Liberal Fire Chief Kelly Kirk and Liberal Police Chief Chet Pinkston also shared their experiences from the weekend.

“The police department and fire department had met with the city manager a few months ago to come up with a plan to send people out from our respective departments and proactively address some of the issues going on with the fireworks,” Pinkston said. “I was personally out Saturday night, there was a very low call load, and we only received four or five fireworks complaints that entire evening. As you’ll remember, the ordinance stated fireworks could be shot off July 4 until midnight and then July 5 until 11 p.m. We had about 20 different interactions with groups we happened to come upon, and about 50 percent of those were groups shooting off fireworks in the street. We also saw a significant volume on a private lot, that was one of our dispatched calls, and there were 10 or 15 families there that had a big mess. To the best of my knowledge, we didn’t have any repeat calls or any chronic problems to be dealt with. I thought the city did a great job being proactive, and we tried to educate people as best as we could before bringing the hammer down, so to speak. During the week, we had approximately 50 dispatched calls and around 60 that were self-initiated, meaning we came across those incidents. There was one guy we caught at 12:07 a.m. on July 6, he thought the cut-off time was midnight and was hanging out and shooting off fireworks with his family, so we had to talk to him about that, and he stopped basically immediately. Every interaction I had with the community Saturday night, everyone was polite and apologetic to us, so I’m rather disappointed to hear we had those instances of people blatantly not following the rules.”

“I would echo a lot of what Chief Pinkston said, the majority of interactions we had were apologetic and just had a few things mixed up,” Kirk said. “Like we said when we were setting all of this up, we went out seeking compliance first and enforcement second. We ultimately ended up with six permitted vendors in the city, they started selling June 27 and were able to sell up until midnight July 4. When we went out for our enforcement patrols, we did stop by those vendors to make sure they were staying within those guidelines, which they did, so we were happy to see that. We did run into multiple issues throughout the week that did merit some concerns, and we documented those in our permitting software for next year so if those folks come back we can address those at that time. Some of those were pretty serious violations and some of them were more minor. In terms of enforcement, from June 27 through July 2, we only went to called in complaints, but we didn’t have any of those – anything that went through dispatch went to law enforcement, and they took care of it. We put three LFD trucks with two guys in each one each night, and everyone was out and about with that enforcement. We did have a few times when we had to call law enforcement to the scene for backup, but the majority of our interactions were civil. We did have multiple dumpster fires we responded to during the holiday weekend, and while our side of the enforcement didn’t go quite how we’d planned, we did have multiple interactions. The only major incident we heard about was about a gentleman who got hit in the head with a firework after it had tipped over, and he was able to drive himself to the hospital for care. There was also that fire on Academy Avenue last Saturday evening, but that investigation is still ongoing and we can’t confirm or deny fireworks being involved there. We ended up with 77.5 man-hours of patrolling for the holiday weekend, and we were definitely kept busy during those hours.”