For many Minnesotans, county fairs are the sweet, fried exclamation point at the end of busy summers. However, local businesses and nonprofits rely on income generated at county fairs to fund programming year round. St. Mary's school in Morris is re-budgeting after the cancellation of the Stevens county fair.
County fairs are a major economic driver for towns, local businesses.
Tanya Fisher, the principal of St. Mary's school in Morris, estimates that the school took in approximately $15,000 for the sale of their sweet Stevens County Fair staple last summer. "Our shakes are well-known here at the fairs, so often times if the weather is like this, we've got quite a line," she said. "It is our second largest fundraiser for the school. So now looking this year, especially with reopening under the COVID guidelines, I have technology pieces that I need to upgrade. Some of that money I was hoping was going to come from our shake shack, and that's just not there right now."
Ryan Sleiter, the Stevens County Fair board chair, said that as a no fee for admission event, this fair is the biggest event in Stevens County. Deciding to cancel it was extensive, and the fair's ability to enforce social distancing was a huge concern. Not having actual numbers, Sleiter predicted that about 20,000—and maybe even as many as 40,000 people make it to the fair each year.
"We do keep track of the people that come through the grand stand. The grandstand will hold roughly about 1200 people, and then we also rent some bleachers besides, that can carry about 300 people as well, roughly," Sleiter said. "In a night, we could have 2000 people just in the grand stand, and you come out here, and you wouldn't even know it outside of the grand stand because it will be just as many people, out walking around, enjoying the fair as well."
Steve Storck is the president of the Minnesota Federation of County Fairs. "There's 94 county fairs in the state of Minnesota which a lot of people question because there's more county fairs than there is counties, but some have two county fairs, or even three county fairs, in their county," Storck said with a laugh.
The Minnesota Federation of County Fairs didn't require any fairs to cancel, but as summer rolled along, and especially after the Minnesota State Fair announced their cancellation, more fairs were calling the MSCF for advice.
"We could give them all the tools that they need to make the decision on their own. We also are associated with The International [Association] of Fairs and Expos," Storck explained. "They had a lot of good information, we posted that on our website. We started distributing all that information along with links from the State of Minnesota."
Storck said that the first piece of advice the MFCF gave was don't rush the decision to cancel, and double check your contracts so that the fair boards, vendors, and entertainment are all on the same page. He said that, because most people planning county fairs in Minnesota didn't see this pandemic coming, they didn't include any contractual notes pandemics. "Most fairs just rolled the entertainment and all that got rolled into 2021, and they already have their planning for 2021 done for the most part," he said. "But there were a few of them that got into some contract situations where, and our suggestion was, if you gotta pay them, tell them to come out to the fairgrounds and perform, at least make him do the work even if it's in front of one or two people."
Sleiter said that they met with their carnival providers three or four different times a day. "They did say that if we did the fair ... that they would have to cut the number of rides and events at the fair just because of having to clean each ride after every time and the cost of what that would be."
A letter sent to house of representative leaders by a bipartisan group of congressional members asked for emergency dollars for county fairs across the country to be included in the next COVID-19 relief measure. The letter cites not only the loss of revenue, a projected $3.7 billion, but also a need to encourage the next generation of America's food producers. The main sponsors are from California and Missouri.
Collin Peterson represents Minnesota's seventh District in the US House of Representatives. He explained that some of the money in the original C.A.R.E.S Act was for counties and local units of government that could be put out by the governors, no governor has actually allocated any of this to county fairs, or agricultural fairs. "So what we're doing here is we're trying to have an inclusion in this bill, next bill, that would say that money would go to those fairs and to those rural counties, and then they would divide it up amongst the people that are involved, normally in the fair, try to be fair about it," Peterson said. "One of the biggest losses is the 4-H auction. The money that's raised in those auction goes to the extension service, goes to the fair and to the kids, and that is part of how they make all their stuff work.:
Only time will tell if Minnesotans will get their favorite fried and sweet treats next year, but we can still dream. "I think 2021 for the county fairs, are probably gonna be more than super good," Storck said.