Fireworks will be recommended to approve to County Commission

Residents of Madison County will be able to legally shoot fireworks in time for July 4, 2025.

Probably.

The fireworks subcommittee of the property committee of the Madison County Commission met on Thursday, Sept. 5, to discuss a possible recommendation to the Commission regarding sales inside the county – which are currently illegal.

The committee had determined that they were OK with legalizing sales and shooting in the previous meeting and began discussing the parameters of selling in the meeting.

Sheriff Julian Wiser had a suggestion for the group.

“Maybe before we decide when sales will happen, we determine when we’re going to allow times to actually shoot them,” Wiser said. “Then we go from there in setting the time for sales.”

The rest of the committee liked that suggestion.

There will be two periods of time each year when fireworks will be allowed to be shot.

The first one leads up to the July 4 holiday, starting June 30 through July 5. The second one will be around the New Year’s Day holiday and the countdown to that on New Year’s Eve. That will start on Dec. 28 and end on Jan. 2.

Fireworks will be legally shot between 11 a.m. and 10 p.m. on those days except on the night of July 4, in which shooting will be extended to 12:30 a.m. on July 5.

The New Year fireworks shooting will have a similar schedule with the extension happening on the night of New Year’s Eve to 12:30 a.m. on Jan. 1.

Sales will begin for Independence Day on June 20 through July 5. Sales for New Year’s will begin on Dec. 18 and go through Jan. 2.

Sales can begin at 8 a.m. during the selling period and end at 10 p.m., except on the night with the shooting extensions, and sales will be extended to 11 p.m. on those nights.

“I’m just thinking about the business owners who might could benefit from having the extra hour on what I could see being their busiest night for business,” Wiser said during the discussion.

The recommendation for all of that was unanimously approved and will be sent to the County Commission. They have until the end of the calendar year to vote by two-thirds majority (17 of 25 votes) to repeal the private act that’s been on the state’s code books for nearly 80 years that originally outlawed fireworks shooting and sales in Madison County.

If/when that is done, there is some formality paperwork that has to be done that probably can’t be completed by the end of the year, which means June of next year is when sales could begin.

The City of Jackson would still have to make its own changes in its city ordinances before shooting fireworks would be legal in the city.

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news