Economy snuffs out rockets' red glare

EUCLID, Ohio, June 29 (UPI) -- A growing number of U.S. towns and cities, faced with budget cuts and reduced services, are doing without traditional holiday fireworks shows, officials said.

Euclid, Ohio, Mayor Bill Cervenik told the Los Angeles Times the city will not hold its annual July Fourth celebration in Memorial Park this year. Officials couldn't justify the cost of police and fire safety for a crowd that normally adds up to about 30,000 people.

"It came down to this: Did we want to spend $150,000 on something that would be over in a few hours?" Cervenik said. "Or did we want to use that money to keep city workers employed?"

San Jose will not hold its America Festival, said Michelle McGurk, a spokeswoman for the city, because the city faces an $84 million budget shortfall.

"We don't have the money to support a lot of things we'd like to," she said.

The decisions to dispense with fireworks displays are drawing some complaints, the Times said in the story published Monday.

Robert Baker, a shipping foreman who has been unemployed for a year, runs the Fourth of July festival committee in Abington, Mass. It came as a disappointment to him when the city pulled the plug on the festival because of budget trouble.

"This is one more blow in a year of blow after blow," he said.

Montebello, Calif., Mayor Rosemarie Vasquez told the Times the City Council voted unanimously to redirect the $39,000 budgeted for July Fourth fireworks, sending it instead to local food banks.

"The last food bank line I saw had more than 1,000 people in it," she said. "We figured that, instead of burning the money in the air, why not give it to people who need it."

This is the second consecutive year Carrollton, Texas, has called off July Fourth fireworks.

"We all would like to get the fireworks going again," Mayor Ronald Branson said, "because it would mean the economy had turned around."