Fireworks are canceled and scaled back locally and across the country

Set-up for Freedom Blast ‘09 in Roanoke County’s Green Hill Park starts Friday evening, but won’t end until Saturday morning.
 
The celebration will include many activities, but the show stopper is usually the fireworks.
“They’re going to see the same type of firework show that they’ve seen for two year, it’s just going to cost us $2,000 less,” explained Donette Spence, Organizer of Freedom Blast,
   
For the past two years the display was worth $10,000, but this year they’ve cut back and so have many places all across the U.S.

“This year we cut back to $8,000,” Spence said.  “We don’t have the show completely taken care of yet.  We still have some money that needs to some in from sponsors.”

Music for Americans producer, Jan Wilkins, says that too might have been the case for Roanoke City’s River’s Edge celebration if the fireworks weren’t bought last year.
“Here in Roanoke we spend upwards of $30,000+,” Wilkins said.
   
However, many towns and cities can’t even afford that this year.
“The producers of the fireworks that we hire, they’ve lost a lot of contracts this year,” said Wilkins.

In a time when Roanoke City is facing a budge crisis and services are being cut and teachers are being laid off the fire work show is growing, because the corporate sponsors are paying for the display.
   
So co-sponsor Roanoke City doesn’t have to fork out any hard cash from taxpayers.
“Mostly what the city covers is in kind labor,” Wilkins said.  “I’m a tax payer here and I think this is a good return on my dollar a free show.”
   
Free always sounds good and looks good too.