Published: June 10, 2008 10:50 am      

Court OKs fireworks

It appears Fourth of July fireworks will go on as usual, following a decision Monday at the Cooke County Commissioners Court meeting.

The Commissioners met Monday at 10 a.m. in a regular meeting, which featured an agenda item to consider banning certain types of fireworks in the county. The Commissioners vote unanimously to take no action on the item.

In years past when the grass and the soil was in drought conditions, the Commissioners voted to ban rockets with sticks and missiles with fins as a preventative measure.

Just last week, a fireworks show after a softball game in Fort Worth’s Gateway Park set off 10 acres, prompting concerns in the press about the safety of aerial fireworks in windy and relatively dry conditions.

Ray Fletcher, county emergency management coordinator, said aside from a few power line fires touched off by high winds, the fire risk in Cooke County “is very minimal, fortunately.”

“Not being able to predict what will happen in the next three weeks,” Fletcher said he would not feel comfortable recommending a fireworks ban.

Bill Freeman, county judge, said Monday was the last date the Commissioners could ban certain types of fireworks without an emergency disaster declaration.

“I don’t think the government should impose itself on the private sector unless there’s an immediate danger or threat to the public’s safety,” Freeman said.

Gainesville resident Alan Sheil said there are more dangers than just dry grass for which to look out.

“I think that we just have to see how letting people do the aerial fireworks go,” he said, “because there would probably be someone that will fire one wrong and catch someone’s field or house on fire because they didn’t know what they were doing or was drunk.”

In other business, the Commissioners voted unanimously to approve a service contract for a backup generator for the Cooke County Justice Center.

TNT Electric received the contract to service the generator, which provides electricity for the jail in the event of an outage, and will conduct an annual inspection and oiling of parts.

According to Freeman, the generator failed twice in the last year — once during an electrical outage and once during a weekly test.

In other business, the Commissioners voted 3-2 to deny approving an Internet policy for county computers. Freeman and Precinct 4 Commissioner Virgil Hess voted against denying the measure.

The policy would not affect public computer terminals owned by the county, such as those at the Cooke County Library, but would affect computers used by county offices.

Freeman said the policy, which was originally discussed in October, is intended to regulate Internet usage by employees, and forbids downloading social networking software and using sites such as MySpace or Facebook.

Precinct 3 Commissioner Al Smith said he was concerned the policy would be too much like “Big Brother” (a reference to the novel “1984” by George Orwell) and that department heads should be responsible for monitoring Internet usage.

Smith said the policy gives responsibilities to a county Information Technology (IT) officer, a position which has not yet been created.

Freeman said viruses have been introduced to the county network and hard drives have crashed due to personal misuse of county computers.

In other business, the Commissioners voted unanimously to:

• Approve a $300 grant from the Texas Library Association for the Cooke County Library to help replace items damaged in the June 18, 2007, flood.

• Enter contract with Prisoner Transport Contract with PTS of America, LLC.

• A list of consent agenda items including accepting donations from Joel Ferguson and P.D. Smith for the Cooke County Library and approving Precinct 2 clearing a fence row for County Road 215 resident Anne Griffith.

No action was taken following executive session, which pertained to real estate.

Reporter Andy Hogue may be contacted at andyhoguegdr@ntin.net