Price of weekly fair passes to go up this year

Posted 2/11/16

The fair board voted Tuesday night to raise the cost of a weekly fair pass from $10 to $15. That applies to both weekly admission and weekly parking passes for the July 26-30 event.

“I think we all just feel that there’s budget cuts coming …

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Price of weekly fair passes to go up this year

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Folks will have to pay a little more if they want to enjoy the entire Park County Fair in 2016.

The fair board voted Tuesday night to raise the cost of a weekly fair pass from $10 to $15. That applies to both weekly admission and weekly parking passes for the July 26-30 event.

“I think we all just feel that there’s budget cuts coming because of the financial (situation) of the county,” explained fair board member Troy Wiant, referencing a predicted budget crunch. “And so we’re just trying to be preemptive on that.”

Park County Events Coordinator Echo Renner said she thought people would be willing to pay more for the weekly passes.

The board left the price of daily admission and parking passes at $5. Admission will also stay free on the opening Tuesday of the fair and — continuing a change that proved popular with vendors and fairgoers last year — there will be free admission offered until 1 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday.

The board briefly discussed doing a smaller increase on the weekly passes, but decided it’d be better to do one hike and be done with it.

“Take the heat for a year and then you can leave it alone for awhile,” reasoned board member Teecee Barrett.

Based on last year’s sales, the new weekly rates could bring in an extra $8,300.

The board’s biggest remaining task for the 2016 fair may be to find another grandstand event.

Pig mud wrestling slips back into Tuesday night, a new “Bump N Run” vehicle race will be featured Wednesday, country musician Terri Clark performs Friday and the popular demolition derby returns on Saturday. However, the Endurocross — a motorcycle and side-by-side race penciled in for Thursday night — is not a sure thing.

Organizer Nate Mainwaring of Powell had asked the board to let him stage the event Friday night, when he can draw more fans and racers, but Clark’s performance can’t be moved, Renner said Tuesday.

(She added that Clark’s recently-announced performance has drawn strong interest so far — including surprising popularity among “40-something men.”)

If the Endurocross doesn’t happen, it’s not clear what event would take its place.

Ideas thrown out by the board on Tuesday included finding someone else to put on a similar off-highway vehicle race, an iron horse motorcycle rodeo or some kind of relay race featuring horses, four-wheelers or wheelbarrows.

Meanwhile, the demolition derby is getting a shake-up as — after years of running the competition — the Powell Lions Club is bowing out. Local businessman and derby enthusiast Brock Ninker is taking over.

“It’s going to be a good show,” Ninker told the fair board at Tuesday’s meeting. “We’re going to make sure it keeps going.”

“We appreciate you being able to do it, because the derby’s a mainstay,” Fair Board President Steve Martin told Ninker.

Proceeds from the derby will first cover the fair’s costs, then Ninker and the fair will split the rest of the proceeds 50-50. By Ninker’s calculations, the fair should stand to collect hundreds of dollars more.

In deciding to get out of the derby — an event that long “held the Powell Lions Club together” — the club cited their declining membership and derby competitors “getting greedier.”

There’d been conflict between the club and some drivers in recent years, including about the amount of prize money, Renner said at a fall meeting. Fair board member Sara Skalsky said then that Park County’s derby had the area’s lowest payout.

“We tried to share more with them,” the Powell Lions said of the drivers in a January letter to the board. “However, this is cutting into our profits, making it really tight for us to do our Powell community projects.”

Ninker said he plans to use proceeds from the event to provide college scholarships through his H&G’s Foundation. They’d specifically be aimed at Powell High School students heading to Northwest College for careers such as welding or nursing.

Ninker — who’s also running the Bump N Run race — proposed taking over the derby back in November, but the board had not wanted to push out the Lions.

“I think this was better that they went out on their own accord, rather than us as a fair board saying we’re going to pick one over the other,” Martin said Tuesday.

Board members said they appreciated all the work the Lions Club has done for the fair and the demolition derby over the years.

The theme of the 2016 Park County Fair will be, “Proud of the past, poised for the future.”

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