Fireworks won't brighten the night sky over Freedom Park this Fourth of July and may be canceled all together if the Camarillo City Council can't find an alternate site to host the popular show.

On Wednesday night the council voted unanimously to accept the city's midyear budget, which includes the $31,000 needed to fund the longtime tradition.

City Manager Jerry Bankston said that although money has been set aside for the fireworks show, the council still has to find a new venue. Bankston said that Adolfo Camarillo High School would be the most likely location. For that to happen, city officials need to determine whether the show requires permits from Caltrans because the school's stadium is so close to the 101 Freeway.

Bankston said the city will also meet with the Somis/ Camarillo Pleasant Valley Lions Club, the service organization that has hosted the fireworks show for the past 10 years. Annually, the show draws 10,000 spectators.

Lions Club officials, tired of negative publicity aimed at them by animal rights activists who said the fireworks traumatized dogs at the nearby animal shelter, decided that unless the city stepped in to fund and sponsor the event, the pyrotechnic show would be shuttered.

"It's terrible, and it's really sad," said Mike Hall, a Lions Club member and the show's lead organizer. "We all have animals, and we love the animals, but we also have a beautiful city with a lot of beautiful people in it and children who love the Fourth of July, and 70 animals are dictating what's going to happen."

City officials said they were rankled by the show's possible end and frustrated that so much negative publicity was generated by people from outside Camarillo.

All the complaints "last year- we got every memo that the Lions got- most of those . . . were not from Camarillo," Councilmember Mike Morgan said. "They were from out of the area, and a lot of them were from foreign countries. I represent my people . . . and right now, I don't think the people here want their Fourth of July celebration to disappear."

Kathy Jenks, director of the Ventura County Department of Animal Regulation, said she didn't want the fireworks show presented so close to the animal shelter. "We've never wanted the fireworks to be here," Jenks said.

City officials contend that the show cuts down on the number of illegal fireworks set off in residential neighborhoods. They say the show affects far fewer animals at its current location near the airport than it would if it were held in a more populated area. Jenks said she agreed that professional displays reduce the popularity of illegal fireworks.

"The reason we have so many . . . dogs on the Fourth of July is that idiots go over to Fillmore, buy them, take them over to their neighborhoods, shoot them off and scare the hell out of the dogs," Jenks said. "The dogs run away and we get them."

Jenks said she supports moving the fireworks to the high school, where the show was held when it started in the 1970s.

The show will probably have to be modified so that it won't affect traffic along the busy freeway.

That may mean a ground display show.

"In 1976, we had a fantastic ground display," Morgan said. "It was the greatest Fourth of July show ever . . . So that's another option." The screech and hiss that aerial pyrotechnics create are especially disturbing to dogs.

If the show is moved, Hall said the Lions Club would probably not participate. "It's too late for us to relocate the entire event," he said.