Our Vancouver City Council has come to a consensus that it’s time to ban all fireworks. Councilman Bill Turlay commented: “we’ve been elected to make hard decisions” implying that this was somehow an extremely difficult choice. Turlay has made no secret that he has wanted fireworks to be banned for years. For him to make it sound like this was on any level a difficult decision is laughable. Please do spend some time making some difficult decisions. Instead of hours spent on the fireworks issue, look at things that plague our community and affect our quality of life 365 days a year.
At the same council meeting, another issue was addressed, that of homelessness in our community. This is not a new issue, this is not a, “ban something and it will go away” issue. This is a complex, controversial and, may I suggest, “hard” issue.
However, the homeless and hungry who live this circumstance every day are not ones to write editorials or attend council meetings and rail about their plight. For the most part, they don’t vote. Their political clout is much less than the “ban fireworks” crew. They just live beside us in quiet, sometimes heartbreaking desperation. But our council’s solution for now — put up a tent. We won’t even arrest you for camping in public places … unless you light some fireworks.
