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Greencastle fireworks issue still smoldering
The pungent sulfur smell of fireworks has finally faded from our nostrils. The clouds of smoke have long disappeared. And even the post-July 4 fireworks mega-sales seem to have finally evaporated.
Yet the annual Greencastle fireworks celebration continues to live in infamy. The 2017 event may have gone out with a bang but it refuses to die.
Did the city get enough bang for its buck this year? Did the annual fireworks show at Robe-Ann Park start too late? And has the fireworks show itself outlived its interest and usefulness?
Those were some of the questions posed at the July meeting of the City Council at City Hall.
The issue exploded as Park Director Rod Weinschenk was giving his monthly report and Councilman Dave Murray asked him about the Fourth of July fireworks celebration.
Murray, who said he was out of town during the event, said a student intern he talked to called the fireworks show “lackluster,” while a local business person Murray encountered after the July 4 program said the fireworks started late and “were not very good.”
Comments like that, Murray suggested, “obviously are not good for the city.”
“What you’re saying has been echoed to me,” Weinschenk responded. “People are saying the fireworks maybe were not as good as they were in the past.”
Noting that in the past the city has had a $10,000 budget for the fireworks show, Councilman Murray wondered if the funds for the program were less this year.
To the contrary, Weinschenk said the 2017 fireworks budget was the same as last year -- $12,500.
Meanwhile, several comments, including some made to the Banner Graphic website, have questioned how the town of Bainbridge could put on a better fireworks show than Greencastle.
For one, the Bainbridge budget is supposedly larger and the pyrotechnics experts involved there reportedly have ties to the town, Weinschenk said.
However, the city park director noted that he has already been approached by the company that put on the Bainbridge show about the possibility of doing the Greencastle fireworks next year.
Weinschenk took time to thank all the volunteers who helped in the Fourth of July effort, noting that one thing that could make the event better is having more volunteers step forward. And with a year before the next celebration comes around, that can hopefully be addressed, he reasoned.
He also promised to take the concerns and comments expressed to the Celebrate 4 Committee that plans and carries out the annual Independence Day event.
At the same time, Weinschenk suggested that perhaps the time has come in which the Park Department only hosts the Rokicki 5K Run in the morning and the fireworks at dusk.
Council President Adam Cohen offered a similar assessment, suggesting that perhaps the day-long celebration idea may have run its course.
“We need to re-evaluate it and determine what we want out of it,” Cohen said of the July 4 celebration before adding -- appropriately enough -- that maybe the city is not getting “enough bang for its buck.”