Lavonia Looking At Instituting Fireworks Regulations

By MJ Kneiser, WLHR Radio, Lavonia

The Lavonia City Council is looking into how to best regulate the use of fireworks in town.

Over most holiday weekends, fireworks can be heard going off all around Lavonia, especially near and on Lake Hartwell.

However, the city wants to curb some of that fireworks enthusiasm for the safety of the general public.

In May, Governor Nathan Deal signed HB110 into law that legalizes the sale and use of fireworks in Georgia.

That move has left local communities scrambling to come up with ways to regulate them without violating the State law.

The new law went into effect on July 1.

At their work session last week, Assistant City Manager Charles Cawthon said he and City Manager Gary Fesperman have been working on a resolution outlining the use and sale of fireworks, but he said there are some problems.

“Right now, they allow you to shoot fireworks anywhere you want to basically on private property between the hours of 10a and midnight,” Cawthon said. “As a city or county, you can’t restrict it any tighter than that. Gainesville’s city attorney looked at it backwards and forwards and they concluded the only thing they could restrict was in city parks and that was it. I there’s a lot of unhappy customers with this.”

Cawthon said they pulled the resolution back in order to rework it.

He said they expect the new law to have some changes made come the next General Assembly in January.

“Because the state mandates are so restrictive, there are only certain things you can do regarding the sale and use of fireworks. So we have pulled that resolution back for now. They still have a little bit more crafting to do,” he said.

Hart County and the City of Hartwell are also working on regulating the use and sale of fireworks.