People on both sides of Tampa Bay were disappointed with Independence Day celebrations.
In Tampa, the show went on, but many people called it a dud.
Tampa City officials say they don’t put on the fireworks show for the Fourth of July and never have.
They leave it up to private companies.
Wednesday, the non-profit group “Friends of the Riverwalk” raised money through donations for the display.
Many complained in Tampa the show lasted less than 8 minutes and the fireworks that were set off were disappointing.
The head of Friends of the Riverwalk says the group had to spend so much money for security for a safe family event, there wasn’t much left over for a fireworks display.
“I wish it was longer. So we didn’t choose 8 minutes for any other reason besides it was what we could financially afford,” said Jason Carroll with Friends of the Riverwalk
Carroll says the height of the fireworks explosions was also limited because of the location.
“Based on this location and that proximity to Tampa General hospital, those fireworks went as high as they are allowed to by the fire marshal,” said Carroll.
In St. Petersburg, the city is so disappointed with the vendor’s cancellation of the show that the city’s Leisure Services Administrator says they will not pay for the show and will never use the company they contracted with again.
St. Petersburg hired Creative Pyrotechnics of Orlando to set off fireworks.
Mike Jefferis, the city Leisure Services Administrator called the company a “premier” event maker and says the city has used them successfully for many other events, but Jeffries repeated several times the city will not hire Creative Pyrotechnics again saying, “We’ve lost confidence in them.”
Jefferis maintains city staff checked in with the company at several times on Wednesday and were assured that all was well.
“The vendor all along told us we were ready for a 9:15 show and we had staff touch base with the vendor multiple times, the vendor assured us over and over again that they were prepped and they were ready and again at 8:30 we touched base with the vendor and the vendor requested that we cancel the show.” said Jefferis.
At that point city officials had the option of putting on a partial show and canceling the entire production.
“While we would love to reschedule, to be perfectly honest with you we’ve lost confidence and faith in this vendor and we do not want to put this community through another show that’s not up to our standards,” said Jefferis.
Jefferis says they opted to not put on a show and decided to not pay the company for their failure.
