Two interesting Yorba Linda anniversaries: fireworks ban vote and Nixon enters politics

This year marks a couple of interesting anniversaries that continue to impact life in Yorba Linda – the 30^th year since residents voted to outlaw “safe and sane” fireworks and the 70^th year since native-son Richard Nixon was first elected to political office.

The fireworks ban resulted from a 1986 advisory vote, when residents chose to prohibit pyrotechnic sales and use by a 67 percent majority, 8,811 to 4,297. The City Council enacted the ban weeks later.

Council members had requested the Parks and Recreation Commission look into the possibility of a city-initiated fireworks program, but the first actual display was in 1989. Since then, the annual July 4 fireworks has become Yorba Linda's most-viewed event.

The 2016 display recently received approval with a $21,750 contract with Pyro Spectaculars, responsible for last year's show that Parks and Recreation Director Mike Kudron called “one of the best fireworks displays on record in Yorba Linda” in a report to the council.

After recent budget squeezes, council designated two revenue sources to finance the event: $26,300 yearly rent from a Brush Canyon Park cell tower and a $15,000 fee for using the vacant Imperial Highway/Yorba Linda Boulevard lot to sell pumpkins and Christmas trees.

Add cash from sponsorships, donations and sales at the event – they generated $11,259 last year – and the projected $56,029 cost is nearly met, with a small general fund outlay.

Nixon's 1946 election to Congress was a first step in a career that led to his private library opening in 1990 and becoming a National Archives facility in 2007. A major renovation is underway, with an anticipated October completion.

Past columns described Nixon's erroneous 1974 statement that oil was discovered on his father's property – “He sold it before they found oil on it” – and council's 1985 approval for condominiums on the site.

Now, the Rev. Canon John H. Taylor's “The Episconixonian” blog and a recent phone interview revealed two more fascinating facts. Taylor, a 26-year Yorba Linda resident and former Nixon chief of staff and past executive director of the Nixon Foundation and private library, currently is vicar of St. John's Episcopal Church and School in Rancho Santa Margarita.

His 2013 blog post “The Yorba Linda Plumbers” tells of the architect including a working toilet in the refurbished birthplace: Nixon “told me that the family had used an outhouse at first, though he conceded indoor plumbing might have been installed by the time they moved to Whittier....”

And amazingly, Taylor recounts that architects “wanted to pick (the house) up and turn it around” to face the library complex: “When I pitched the architects' idea, he didn't say a word; he just stared at me.”

The entry notes Taylor's response to Nixon's stare: “'On the other hand, Mr. President…we can leave it right where it is. I just wanted to let you know what these guys were up to.'”