Lagging fair attendance a quandary for county

Next year’s Spokane County Interstate Fair will be significantly scaled back unless the fairgrounds can increase revenues or the county subsidizes the department with its general fund.

The preliminary budget calls for slashing entertainment spending by a third, reducing demonstrations by half, eliminating specialty livestock shows and the family stage, and reducing offerings at the grandstand stage.

Low attendance at this year’s fair means that the Spokane County Fair and Expo Center is projected to end the year with about $700,000 less in revenue than expenditures.

The difference will be made up in part with a $300,000 contribution from county real estate excise tax funds toward debt service on bonds issued in the early 1990s for fairgrounds improvements. The remainder will come from the fairgrounds’ reserve balance.

The problem is what to do in the coming years.

For years, the Spokane County Fair and Expo Center has been expected to support itself.

In good fair years that wasn’t a problem. But in the past few years, low attendance at the 10-day fair in September has forced the fairgrounds to continually dip into its reserve account. With this year’s rainy fair weather, admissions revenue was almost $350,000 less than expected.

But fair attendance has been going down for years. This year, it was less than half what it was in 1989. Fair Director Dolly Hughes said in September that trend is due in part to competing entertainment options.

If the trend continues, it’s unlikely that the fair will be able to make it without help.

“We may have to give some money to the fairgrounds,” said Spokane County Commissioner Phil Harris.

The fairgrounds reserve balance is now predicted to be just $150,000 going into 2005, leaving the department little cushion.

Harris and the two new commissioners yet to be sworn in are scheduled to meet in January with fairgrounds staff and advisory board members to discuss ways to raise fairgrounds revenues or, barring that, find money in the county’s general fund to maintain the fair at current standards.

The proposed $4.45 million 2005 fair budget is just slightly lower than the 2004 budget, but with increased expenses, services would have to be cut without additional funds. Commissioners won’t make any adjustments to that budget, however, until next year.

One possibility is charging for parking at the fairgrounds.

Cutting back on what’s offered at the fair is not an option, said Harris, who explained that decreased attractions and entertainment would only mean decreased attendance in future years.

Funding debt payments with real estate excise tax money does not affect the county’s general fund budget, but future subsidies of fairgrounds’ and interstate fair operating costs could be a drain.

In recent weeks, fairgrounds staffers were directed to keep revenue projections for 2005 low.

“The budget office and this commissioner were brutal on the fair. We said, ‘You can’t be so optimistic about revenues,’ ” said outgoing Spokane County Commissioner Kate McCaslin.

Debt on the latest round of improvements, including the brand-new concessions area, isn’t an issue because it is being paid off with revenues from the Public Facilities District, a public agency that operates big venues such as the Spokane Opera House and Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena.

McCaslin said the PFD should also be contributing to operating costs, as it is for the Opera House and Convention Center, but that suggestion was turned down when the city of Spokane, Spokane Valley, the county and the PFD were negotiating what would be funded with monies raised by a 2003 voter-approved measure to expand the convention center and fund other local projects.

“They pitched a hissy fit,” said McCaslin.

One other possible funding source is the hotel-motel tax, she said. Those funds are raised at local hotels and used to promote events and organizations that will increase the number of people staying overnight in Spokane.

“I think the fairgrounds generates enough heads in beds to warrant a subsidy,” McCaslin said.