Municipalities Can Affect Business By Extending Jurisdiction

A law in the Village of Vinton is making some neighboring communities change the way they do business for this upcoming 4th of July.

Depending on the size of the population, municipalities are allowed to extend the area they can enforce their health and safety ordinances by using extra territorial jurisdiction or ETJ.

El Paso County’s ETJ is 5 miles outside the city limits.

The Village of Vinton’s ETJ is 2,000 feet or 1/2 mile outside Vinton’s city limit.

Recently, Vinton’s fireworks law was extended to its ETJ.

But not everyone thinks it’s a good idea.

“It’s something I’ve been doing since I was a kid, ” said Jesus Navarrette, who for 15 years has been selling fireworks at his family’s grocery store in Westway. “It’s like vacation money, but I do it because I like doing it. I’ve done it for a long time.”

But that vacation may be postponed this year.

Across I-10 in the neighboring Village of Vinton a new law doesn’t allow anyone in Vinton or Westway to sell fireworks.

“They’re extending their ordinance to a community that’s not in their community,” said Navarrette.

“If he wants to put it right there he’s perfectly welcome to do that, ” said Vinton’s Chief of Police, Bill Mansion.

He says because of Vinton’s recent growth, the fireowrks ordinance was extended to the extra territorial jurisdiction or ETJ.

It’s a sort of buffer allowed to all municipalities by state law.

“Once you set off that firework, once you set off that bottle rocket you don’t control where it goes…and if you’re standing one inch outside our city limits, it’s going to affect our community, it’s going to shoot into our community, it may start a fire in our community,” said Mansion.

Chief Mansion explained the ETJ was put into place because many fireworks stands started popping up literally right next to Vinton’s city limit.

“We don’t have the fire suppression…ability at this point to just let things continue the way the way they’ve been continuing,” said Mansion.

Both the Village of Vinton and Westway depend on the volunteer West Valley fire department.

But Navarrette says in all the years, there’s never been a problem, “A lot of people here pop fireworks 4th of July its fun, everybody’s been doing it since they were kids.”

And they can keep having fun…as long as they comply with the distance requirements.

Violating the fireworks ordinance in Vinton is considered a Class C misdemeanor and is punishable by a fine of up to 15-hundred dollars.