No July 4 Fireworks in Flagler Beach Until 2027, But City Intends to Reconquer the Day, and the Skies, That Year

Flagler Beach hasn’t had July 4 fireworks since 2019. It will not have them again until 2027, by which time the pier, the boardwalk and the beach will have been rebuilt, assuming hurricanes, which have a malicious mind of their own, don’t interfere.

The Flagler Beach City Commission last week gave up on July 4 fireworks until then. It also gave up on trying for July 3 or July 5 fireworks. Logistics, public safety, police and volunteer resources and a downtown already overburdened with upheavals of construction onshore and the coming rebuilding of the beach north and south of the pier starting in July all combined to convince city commissioners–with one exception–that fireworks would be like playing with fire.




“What I’m getting from this, from the remarks from the public and also from the city manager, is the strong desire to preserve those fireworks for us when these challenges are no longer here,” Commission Chairman Scott Spradley said after an hourlong discussion on the subject at a workshop last Thursday. “So we’re talking about closing a gap here of about three years.”

But the city is intent on staking its place as the home of July 4 fireworks in that future when it is able to host the blasts again, restoring that old tradition. Not July 5. Not July 3. Not in the shadow of Palm Coast or Flagler County. But July 4 fireworks in Flagler Beach. Martin will not have a Revere horse ride to Palm Coast to deliver the proclamation. But he will send a letter saying the city is intent on that reconquest.

“What we’re not here for, is to discuss whether or not the citizens of Flagler Beach want fireworks,” Commission Chairman Scott Spradley said. that’s already been concluded and determined.” He spoke of the committee he chaired two years ago, which concluded with a report recommending that July 4 fireworks continue “so long as they could be conducted safely.” The commission approved the report, in effect endorsing its findings.




“This time last year fireworks on Fourth of July was not something that we had envisioned,” and none were envisioned until late 2023, when City Manager Dale Martin and Commissioner Eric Cooley planned the New Year’s Eve fireworks. “That went over extremely well. Everyone was excited about that. And I think one of the unintended consequences of that was, there was a general view that Okay, now we’re back in the business of having fireworks and Fourth of July, but all I wanted to say is that it’s really apples and oranges about what happened on New Year’s Eve.”

There were also logistical realities: as magnificent as the New Year’s Eve fireworks were, Spradley said, the shells were smaller because they had to be set off from the pier nearest shore, with a limited blast zone, and the audience was much smaller: 500 people. So “the issue is going to be not whether we want fireworks, but whether we can have fireworks because of logistics,” Spradley said.

More to the point, Cooley said: it wasn’t a problem sealing off a portion of the beach on a cold New Year’s Eve at midnight. It would be on July 4, when beaches are thronged with people, whether fireworks are to be set off that night or not. “How on earth would anybody be able to manage the safety perimeter for the day on the fourth of July, because that is the absolute most crowded section of the beach.” The resources are just not there, he said.

“Even if you schedule it,” Cooley said, “trying to ask our law enforcement people to manage the brawls, manage the drunks, manage the underage drinking, manage everything that happens up on Central, manage traffic, and do all that while they’re understaffed,” all with several vacancies in the police department. (Three cops are on workers’ compensation right now.) “I think we would be setting ourselves up for either a volatile situation or for failure, one or the other.”




Police Chief Matt Doughney did not encourage having fireworks, and Martin, who’s all for having celebrations (he couldn’t believe the city didn’t celebrate New Year’s Eve) was just as cautious. “It would be a challenge,” he said, proposing to set down a marker for July 4, 2027, for city fireworks on that day.

“If we stake out and tell the county and Palm Coast now that Yep, we want to reestablish this tradition, which is very strongly desired by many people in the community, we at least put them on notice that Alright, let’s try it, perhaps let’s see what happens. And if you want to pursue every other year, whatever, you can make that decision at that time. But I think if you still subscribe to the theory that you cannot have simultaneous events, or even a day off from each other, then you have to look at the fact that the county and Palm Coast do have contracts in place for the Fourth of July.”

In fact, the Palm Coast contract is silent on the date when the city and the county would set off the fireworks, in effect enabling some flexibility. But those dates are set well in advance. The city, the county and the sheriff are meeting Thursday, for instance, in a planning session for the coming July 4 activities, a city spokesperson said today.

Palm Coast put out for bid its own fireworks contract. Two companies responded–Master Pyro Displays and My Three Sons. My Three Sons is the company that contracted with Flagler Beach for three years of New Year’s Eve fireworks. But it did not get the Palm Coast contract: its price was higher than that of Master Pyro Displays. Master Pyro offered a 15-16 minute show featuring 3,300 shells for $19,500, and an 18 to 20-minute show and 3,900 shells for $29,850.

The contract may be renewed at the sole option of the city for two successive years, while th city may terminate the contract at any point with 15 days’ notice, without cause. It may also terminate for cause. (See the full contract here.)




“We don’t want to develop a scenario where the county and or Palm Coast has fireworks while we’re reconstructing the pier, and then suddenly, we’ve given it up forever,” Spradley said. “We don’t want to have that. We don’t want to have that perception by any means. So to me, whether we have fireworks this year or not, it’s important to as [Martin] said, stake our ground or plant our flag in years coming up because we will have a new pier, we will have a new platform again.”

RJ Santore, the fireworks manufacturer based in western Flagler County, told commissioners that they could rent a barge to set off fireworks. Many communities do. But he said that would add a cost of roughly $25,000 to the cost of fireworks, and those barges are heavily used on July 4.

“And then you’re also going to be so far out with that barge, approximately 1,500 feet, the shells you’re used to seeing on the pier are going to look a lot smaller on that barge,” Santore said. “Alternatively, you can use smaller shells on the pier.”

Spradley recalled discussions at the July 4 committee about that and other alternative options, including drones, for fireworks. But cost was usually the conversation-stopper.

But any talk of considering fireworks in any fashion on or around Independence Day was scuttled by budget and safety considerations. The city spent the money it had budgeted for fireworks for this fiscal year, doing so for the New Year’s fireworks. The fiscal year runs through the end of September. Budget and safety are paramount, Commissioner James Sherman said, wanting clearer answers about both. That’s also Commissioner Rick Belhumeur’s approach.




Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly and local traffic volunteers who are vital on July 4 have made clear in the pas that Palm Coast and Flagler Beach should not have simultaneous events on July 4: there simply are not enough resources to manage both safely. That’s what Flagler Beach’s July 4 committee also concluded. For the decade between 2010, when Palm Coast began having fireworks, and 2019, the last year Flagler Beach held them, Flagler Beach generally held the honor of setting off its fireworks on July 4 proper while Palm Coast did so on July 3.

The 2010 fireworks were actually a Flagler Broadcasting production in association with Palm Coast. They were the brainchild of David Ayres, now the president of Flagler Broadcasting. He thought it silly that all of the county’s fireworks fired from Flagler Beach. His idea was to stretch out the partying and double the pleasure of booming up the skies over two nights, without stepping on Flagler Beach’s iconic Independence Day toes. A few Flagler Beach jealousies and some resentment aside, the plan worked. Palm Coast set off its show in Town Center’s Central Park. Resentments and jealousies died off, the Palm Coast show grew, and the city took over, with Ayres yielding.

The Palm Coast event grew so much that a few years ago it moved to the county airport and became a joint affair between the cities and the county. By then Flagler Beach’s fireworks had gone into their long hiatus, first because of Covid, then because of a scheduling misstep, then because the pier was condemned, and since because the pier is about to be demolished and rebuilt.

“I definitely want to head back toward having Fourth of July fireworks if it’s safe, and we have the coverage that we need to protect and maintain a good environment,” Commissioner Rick Belhumeur said. “I don’t see how we can do it this year, but I certainly hope we can push toward reestablishing July 4 fireworks.”




Commissioner Jane Mealy is the commission’s biggest fireworks fan as long as the fireworks are in Flagler Beach. She didn’t enjoy the fireworks in Palm Coast last year: it didn’t feel like Flagler Beach, didn’t feel like home. She doesn’t buy the empty coffer argument. “Throughout the year we find $15,000 for this study and $25,000 for that study, and let’s do this and it’s only $18,000.” The New Year’s show was $33,000. “I have a funny feeling that since we can find all this other money, that we could find that if it’s something the community really wants as much as I’m hearing that they do. I do agree that coverage for safety is an issue.”

She proposed having it on July 3 or July 5, with July 4 falling on a Thursday. But July 5 is essentially spoken for: that’s the day the long-awaited beach rebuilding project is scheduled to begin–a massive project set to dump some 1 million cubic yards of sand north and south of the pier. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineer is carrying it out. It had been scheduled to start in June. It may yet be delayed. But Cooley doesn’t want to take chances and risk interfering with what he considers to be the biggest project in the city’s history in half a century.

It’s not as if Flagler Beach would be cut out of the festivities. The “unified” Independence Day event, like last year, would represent all cities and the county, with Flagler Beach hosting a majority of daytime events starting with a 5K, the always-interminable parade sponsored by Flagler Beach Rotary, and events at Veterans Park. Only the fireworks would be at the airport.

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