Fair could still pay bills after wet weekend
By Turner Walston
Published in News on October 10, 2005 1:49 PM
Wayne Regional Agricultural Fair Director Milton Ingram said crowds were sparse after Saturday's rains on the last night of the fair. As bills begin roll in, Ingram said he hopes the fair will be able to break even.
"We had just a small crowd, not very many compared to a normal Saturday," Ingram said. He said attendance was about half of a normal Saturday. "We just had about 6,500 or 7,000, something like that."
Despite the weather, Ingram said he was pleased with the fair overall.
"We had a great fair in place, and all the evaluators and people from other fairs that came and looked were very complimentary," he said. "The fair was good and very successful as far as the exhibits, but the rain hurt our attendance immensely. The weather just didn't cooperate," he said.
Ingram said he knows well the amount of hard work that went into this year's fair.
"I want to thank everybody that helped make the fair such a success," Ingram said. "We have a lot of people that do a lot of hard work."
It could be several weeks before he knows the exact cost of the rain, Ingram said.
"It's going to be a long time before we have any final numbers," he said. "We've got a lot of our advertising bills that won't be in for another 30 days." As far as he could tell, Ingram said the fair will probably just meet this year's bills.
"That means limited funds to be doing any improvements for the next year or two," he said.
For now, attention turns to the State Fair. Agricultural fairs are allowed to bring two artworks from local competitions to compete on the state level, in the youth and adult categories. Fair officials chose a pencil sketch by Eastern Wayne High School student Jeremy Waddell for the youth division, and an oil painting by Jane Williford for the adult division.