Cupertino cancels firework show amid budget deficit

Fourth of July day-time celebrations, including a pancake breakfast and children's parade, will still be offered.

Where are Cupertino’s fireworks? The city’s annual show typically takes place at a local park and is a highlight for residents every Fourth of July. But this year it’s fizzling out. Cupertino cancelled it to help close a multi-million dollar budget deficit, leaving some residents disappointed.

Cupertino resident Tom Sanford had been attending the shows for 15 years, ever since his now-adult children were little. He appreciated how close the display was to his home, compared to nearby ones at Santa Clara or Mountain View.

“We usually went to Creekside and had a blanket set up,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe how many people were in there.”

In approving its $146.6 million budget for fiscal year 2024-25, the Cupertino City Council slashed $8.7 million in operations and maintenance, infrastructure projects and city-sponsored community benefit events — like the fireworks — to meet a $15 million shortfall.

The city will experience a $30 million decline in sales tax revenue in the upcoming years. Last year, the City Council eliminated more than a dozen vacant staff positions and decreased its contract services and special projects to help reduce the shortfall by half.

“We’ve prioritized partnerships, actively involving the City Council and residents in budget discussions,” said deputy city manager Tina Kapoor. “The input and recommendations from this engagement have helped ensure our budget meets the community’s needs.”

Last month’s decision came after a 2023 state audit deemed that Cupertino had improperly received sales tax dollars from Apple. Since 1998, the tech titan has treated all online purchases of products within California as if they were made in Cupertino, abiding by a law that looks at orders based on the location of the sale and not the customer’s. The deal allegedly allowed the city to collect 1% of Apple’s 7.25% sales tax, and a third of the revenue was returned to the company.

Cupertino now owes the state a one-time repayment of $56.5 million, which is the estimated tax revenue the city collected from Apple between April 2021 and June 2023. The amount will be paid out of reserves, but the city says it needs to make the $30 million in cuts to prepare for the upcoming loss of revenue.

Cupertino will save $123,344 by cancelling the fireworks show. Other city-funded community benefits that were cut this year include Shakespeare in the Park, which cost $30,000 to operate. San Francisco Shakespeare Festival — the nonprofit performing arts group that puts on the free 90-minute Shakespearean shows to Cupertino residents — hosted a fundraiser to keep their shows running this summer.

Kapoor said the city council can direct staff to explore partnerships for funding firework shows in the future.

A Fourth of July daytime celebration will still take place at the city’s Quinlan Center and nearby Memorial Park, and include a morning pancake breakfast, flag raising ceremony and children’s parade. But the fireworks display, which took place at night at Creekside Park, was the main attraction for thousands of community members, like Sanford.

Cupertino cancelled its display in 2020 and 2021 because of pandemic-related shelter-in-place and social distancing orders. Since then, Sanford and his family have been going Morgan Hill’s July Fourth show instead — which can take 45 minutes to an hour to drive to. Even though the display is “phenomenal,” Sanford said he hopes Cupertino can find a way to bring back their show.

“I didn’t think that would be cut,” he said. “It really brings the whole community together.”