Town officials on Tuesday approved a $30,000 contract with a Douglassville, Pa.-based pyrotechnic company to put on the fireworks show at the Waveny July 4th event this summer.
The Board of Selectmen voted 3-0 in favor of the contract with International Fireworks Mfg. Co., which has supplied fireworks for the massively popular Family Fourth event for four decades, Recreation Director and Family Fourth Committee member Steve Benko said during the Board’s regular meeting.
Selectman Nick Williams asked whether the town would ever consider “doing music with the fireworks.”
Tom Stadler, chairman of the Family Fourth, said the question has come up over the years.
“It’s been suggested, just like Macys and some of the others that while the fireworks are exploding in the air, boom boom boom, we have choreographed music,” Stadler said at the meeting, held in Town Hall. “We brought that to the committee and the committee has not been receptive to that. We have had the Town Band for 40 years, and another band Mind The Gap who now plays before them, but we have not had committee on board yet to have music during the fireworks.”
Williams said, “I don’t think it has to be choreographed to each exploding shell, and then the 1812 overture. It’s just to have some American music playing, just a suggestion.”
Stadler said he would bring the matter before the committee again. The Family Fourth is paid for entirely out of private funds, raised mainly through sales of passes as well as generous donations.
According to Stadler, International Fireworks hasn’t raised its rates with the town in the 10 years he’s been involved with the Family Fourth.
“They do a great show,” he said.
In addition to Williams, First Selectman Kevin Moynihan and Selectman Kit Devereaux voted in favor of the contract.