Thanks To Eureka For Fireworks

For the second consecutive year, the Fourth of July celebration was saved by the Eureka resort and the family of Greg Lee.

The fireworks started a little late on Monday, getting underway around 9:20 p.m. after being advertised with a 9 p.m. start date, but that’s a minor inconvenience when you consider we could have been left without fireworks at all.

While I personally enjoyed the show from my mom’s back yard instead of battling the traffic and crowds near Mesa Boulevard, I was no less grateful for what the Lee family did.  In fact, that vantage point made me even more appreciative of the gesture.

Paying for the fireworks and bringing an orchestra in for a performance probably didn’t help, like a band or show which draws people into the casino with the expectation at some point they’ll drop a few dollars in a machine or on a table.  I suspect there were a lot of other fans like me who watched from home, which didn’t contribute a dime to the Eureka’s Monday night take.

Greg Lee is one of the smartest guys I’ve met during my time out west, so I’m certain he’s aware of this, which makes the gesture that much more magnanimous.

Following the fireworks, I ended up on the streets of Mesquite, and noticed that those streets were busy.  This town was alive.

And that’s the point.  It’s the thing that Mesquite city officials just don’t get.

Somehow, City Hall can find hundreds of thousands of dollars for consultants, hundreds of thousands more for environmental studies on the mating patterns of the desert tortoise, and even 30 or 40 grand for a new SUV which I noticed in the City Hall parking lot last week.

But they just can’t spare $7,000 for a fireworks show that brings hundreds if not thousands of people to Mesquite, something which would benefit the local businesses that are shouldering more than their share of the city’s cash needs with sales taxes and business license fees that have skyrocketed higher than that green and red circular firework that lit up the Mesquite sky on Monday night.

A Fourth of July celebration is exactly the kind of hometown event this community should embrace in a big way, an opportunity to show off our patriotism, put our shiny streets on display, and let the people from surrounding towns know that Mesquite is a happening place where people are friendly and welcoming.

Instead, the city abandons this responsibility and once again dumps it on the casinos to carry the load.

Without those casinos blasting the Mesquite name up and down the interstate and across TV screens, our town would be about as well known as Tonopah or Panaca.

It’s about more than money and budgets and this devious political tactic of cutting the most visible and most obvious expenditures to make sure the city has plenty of money to give to out of town consultants and lobbyists.

It’s about community pride.

The Lee family certainly has it.

A lot of the citizens do, too.

Apparently, the only place this civic pride is lacking is at City Hall.

We can only hope the new council will re-evaluate this short-sighted notion and embrace the idea that Mesquite must return to being a destination for visitors in search of fun.

The tourists will not return unless we give them a good reason, and it can’t all fall on the casinos alone.

Until then, the best we can do is thank the Lee family and the Eureka for caring more about our community than our own city government does, and express our gratitude for their kindness.