Taxpayers could have something to celebrate this Fourth of July.

It may mark the first Independence holiday period of this century that the city doesn’t end up “losing money” by the time the last ember cools.

Last year, Manteca Police cost $76,934.13 for 349.2 overtime hours.

There was $8,451.03 worth of fire department overtime for an additional engine company to handle the usual big surge in service calls plus 40 hours of overtime for fire inspectors costing $3,547.22.

The total for public safety overtime came to $83,385.16.

Toss in the city cost of the aerial fireworks display and the bottom line is a $140,000 tax expenditure.

Last year, there were 109 citations issued for illegal fireworks being discharged with $130,255 in fees assessed.

It was up from 2024 when 37 citations were issued and $34,965 in fees assessed as well as 2023 when 30 citations and $28,350 in fees were assessed.

Illegal fireworks fees in 2025 covered the overtime costs and then some.

And they also almost covered the cost of the aerial fireworks at the same time.

The fines were never intended to generate revenue per se to cover the city’s costs.

But thanks to the wanton disregard for public safety by those launching illegal fireworks, the city was almost made whole after the cost of staging the free aerial fireworks show, incurring police overtime to handle an uptick in everything from DUIs to domestic issues as well as enforce actions against illegal pyrotechnics, and the increase in staffing to respond to a jump on fire and medical emergency calls.

This year with a further fine tuning of the illegal enforcement effort, the city is likely not to incur a “net loss” when it comes to additional expenses.

The city didn’t take over the aerial fireworks display until about 25 years ago.

Before that, the Manteca Chamber of Commerce spearheaded fundraising efforts to stage the fireworks show.

The chamber stopped doing so shortly after the fiasco that followed a Fourth of July event with aerial fireworks at the East Union High stadium several years before development occurred north of Lathrop, Road.

The fiasco was an insurance claim filed by the owner of a nearby goat dairy herd that sought compensation. The loud blasts associated with the 15 minute or so aerial show disrupted the milk production of the herd for an extended period of time.

Originally in the 1970s, there was a separate non-profit Fourth of July Committee that staged a celebration as well as fund raised to stage an aerial fireworks show.

One of their efforts involved four years of selling limited Manteca editions of Coca-Cola bottles with different designs each year.

A subsequent revival of the committee after it went into hiatus given the Herculean task to stage a community event with volunteers on a holiday as well as fundraise for the fireworks, used things such as selling a Manteca-opoly board game to raise money.

The city took the lead after that in staging the aerial fireworks show.

They paid for the fireworks by using bonus bucks — the shorthand for unrestricted sewer allocation certainty fees that home developers paid. The bonus bucks started in the initial years of their existence at $1,000 per home.

That continued well into the last decade when the city started tapping into the general fund to pay for the fireworks.

When the city allowed safe and sane fireworks to be sold by non-profits, they kept one booth for their own point of sale.

For years, the Manteca Police Officers Association manned the booth splitting the proceeds with the city.

The city used its share to partially offset the cost of the aerial fireworks.

The city no longer taps into bonus bucks or has receipts available from Safe and Sane fireworks to cover the show that is now launched from near the Big League Dreams sports complex.

Now thanks to drone technology and lawbreakers, the city will likely have all of its increased Fourth of July expenses essentially covered from fines collected from those cited at $1,000 per incident for discharging illegal fireworks.

That’s “essentially” because fines aren’t earmarked to cover the legal aerial pyrotechnics and public safety overtime. Instead, the income will simply negate the increased holiday expenses.

Given the increased risk of fires as well as the irritation caused by the noise days before, on the Fourth and days afterwards, the current and future city councils should yearly look at fines to make sure they are charging the most general law cities are allowed to in California under state law.

The main objective is not to offset costs but to make the fines for illegal fireworks as draconian as possible under state law and police success at nailing offenders as high as possible that the message is finally heeded — you can’t afford to discharge illegal fireworks in Manteca.