City leaders hear a familiar tune year after year — resident complaints about Mustang’s fireworks laws.

The complaints range from trash to noise, to safety hazards and fireworks’ curfew violations.

This year, Mustang Mayor Jeff Landrith is advocating tighter regulations governing when fireworks are legally allowed in Mustang and curtailing the the Fourth of July “free for all at Wild Horse Park.”

At City Council’s last meeting, Landrith proposed seven items he thought should be enforced or reviewed. Those items include banning fireworks in the middle of city streets; fining users who discharge fireworks near a moving car in a public street and ban alcohol from parks when fireworks are being popped.

Also, Landrith said the city’s ordinances should be enforced, and those who pop fireworks outside of the designated times should be fined. An immediate no-warning fine policy for littering should be adopted, as well as a ban on fireworks bought outside of Mustang, — rules he said are similar to those in other communities. He also suggested that fireworks should be banned at all public parks and commercial areas unless a permit is issued, which would automatically be issued to residents and commercial property owners.

Councilman Jay Adams said he isn’t supportive of a ban on fireworks.

He said Mustang’s fireworks laws are one of its unique aspects, and he isn’t “even close to wanting to limit the uniqueness Mustang has over anywhere else in the state.”

Adams said he first noticed Mustang because of fireworks, and he’d hate to be on the Council that robbed Mustang of that.

And, he said, he’d only received one complaint this holiday season.

“I didn’t see any problems to tell you the truth,” he said. “I know some City Council (members) have gotten phone calls … I know the mayor got a lot of calls, but I only got one on fireworks this year.”

Overall, Adams said he doesn’t think there’s a problem.

He said he realizes Wild Horse Park gets a lot of attention and a lot of trash, but in his own ward, things remained orderly and upkept.

He said he’d drive around in the mornings in subdivisions like Canadian Estates and Bittercreek, and didn’t see much trash in the neighborhoods.

“The main problem seems to be Wild Horse Park,” he said, adding community leaders put out additional trash cans and it was better this year than last.

As for banning certain types of fireworks, Adams said he doesn’t know how to go about doing that, especially with fireworks changing all the time — what was popular one year might not even be sold the next.

Long-time resident Walt Sirman recently suggested creating a committee to review the laws, but Adams wondered how the committee would keep up to date as things change.

One possible way to curb the cause of complaints might be to limit the number of days fireworks are legal, such as from July 1 to July 4. Even so, he’s not sure he is 100-percent supportive of that solution, he said.

Councilman Keith Bryan said he doesn’t fireworks in Wild Horse Park as being an issue with an easy answer.

“I would like to have some enforceable controls that would address the concentration of people, type of fireworks allowed and safety issues,” he said. “How and in what form that can be implemented will take an effort by multiple organizations.”

Councilwoman Kathleen Moon, though, said she is afraid she’s alone in her opinions.

“Even though I enjoy watching fireworks displays, and I am not anti-fireworks, I am opposed to the seven day free for all that Mustang hosts for anybody and everybody within driving distance of Mustang,” she said.

Moon said the city is too heavily populated to continue with its current policy, and possibly decreasing the number of days fireworks are permitted from seven days to three days might be an answer.

“Personally, I would be quite happy with just the fire department’s fireworks display, but I know that idea would never get passed,” she said.

She said complaints she hears often come from people who live in tightly packed subdivisions, as opposed to acreages.

“The noise is disturbing and very upsetting to many people,” Moon said. “The majority of the fireworks complaints this year came from Wards 2 and 5, which still have the highest population and have the highest number of subdivisions with quarter-acre lots.”

She added two local veterinarians said they dispensed “quite a lot of sedatives” for family pets this year — and every year during fireworks season.

Moon also said she’s received numerous calls from residents who have to wake up early for work, and lose sleep when they are kept up by fireworks.

“They don’t get the week off,” she said.

Finally, Moon questioned what would happen if the sparks from fireworks fell on land that hadn’t recently been saturated with rain.