Youth Groups May Get Bigger Fairgrounds Discount
The gnashing of teeth from kids clubs that use Spokane’s fairgrounds soon may be silenced.
For two years, nonprofit youth groups have warned that the county’s policy of charging them half-price for renting the fairgrounds might force them to eliminate shows or move into other counties. Now, county commissioners may cut the fee to 20 percent of what they charge everyone else.
“I’m really, really tickled with this proposal,” said Treva Norris, business manager of the annual Spokane Junior Livestock Show.
But other aspects of the rate structure proposed by the fairgrounds advisory committee don’t tickle those who testified at a commissioners’ hearing Tuesday night.
Commissioners said they’ll decide in two weeks whether to adopt the changes.
The advisory board suggested charging promoters a fee for parking, ranging from $18 a day for groups that rent the small goat barn to $519 if the massive exhibit hall is rented. It would be up to promoters to pass on that cost to the people who come to their shows.
Camping at the fairgrounds would cost $7 to $15 a night under the proposal, depending on whether the camper requires water and electricity. Currently, the county charges $10 a night, whether visitors shiver in pup tents or sleep in RVs equipped like homes.
The parking fee would have raised $100,000 for parking lot pavement and maintenance had it been in place last year. About $2,200 of that money would have come from the Game Fish Show, said show director Russ Oberlander.
“That’d be more than one-third of a fishing dock at Bear Lake or at Fish Lake,” said Oberlander, listing projects the Spokane Walleye Club has funded with money made at the annual fishing show.
Promoters couldn’t possibly charge customers a parking fee, said Richard True, organizer of the annual Inland Empire Toy Extravaganza, which is at the fairgrounds.
“I don’t care how much paint they put up, the glory of the … fairgrounds is the free parking,” True told commissioners.
Nonprofit youth groups would get a 25 percent break on the camping fee and an 80 percent break on parking, under the proposal.
That’s still too much, said Jim Wentland, a volunteer at the Junior Livestock Show. He warned that the 700 or more farm families who attend the show - some from as far away as Montana - will balk at the fees.
For 60 years, the county charged nothing - or just enough to cover some expenses - when shows at the fairgrounds benefited children. Organizers of the Junior Livestock Show - which lasts four days and uses eight buildings - paid just $2,500 to $3,000 to cover janitorial costs.
Commissioners in 1996 decided the county no longer should offer use of the fairgrounds - or any county facilities - for less than it costs the county for set-up, clean-up and utilities. Doing otherwise violated state constitutional prohibitions against “gifting” public property, commissioners said.
The fee was set at half the full rate, upping the livestock show’s bill to about $18,000 a year. Other groups, such as 4-H and horse clubs, also saw their rates climb astronomically and threatened to find new venues for their competitions.
The proposed rate change reflects the county’s actual cost of setting up the shows, paying utilities and cleaning up afterward, fairgrounds manager Dolly Hughes said. Groups can cut the cost still more by doing some of the work themselves.
Norris said she wasn’t yet sure how much the Junior Livestock Show will save under the new rate structure.
The show is partly funded through the pari-mutuel tax collected on bets placed on horse races. But the show’s share of that tax has slumped about $6,000 in recent years, Norris said.
, DataTimes