Financial rebound on track for 2007

The El Paso County Fair is mostly self-sufficient two years after county commissioners decided to cut its direct line of funding.

Bills are still coming in, but fair volunteers and county employees reported to commissioners Monday that expenditures are on track to match the $239,774 revenue the event brought in this year.

Breaking even for the second year in a row would be in stark contrast to the years leading up to the board’s 2005 decision to eliminate the $140,000 subsidy for the fair.

“It appears to me that we’re in pretty good shape financially,” said El Paso County Parks and Leisure Department Director Tim Wolken, whose department manages and supplies one full-time employee to the fairgrounds.

Organizers attribute the fair’s financial turnaround to the banding together of several organizations that would rather pour their own resources into the event than see the fair fade away.

Although county commissioners still provide broad but distant oversight of the fair, the volunteer El Paso County Fair Board, the nonprofit County Fair Association and Resource Development Association, the 4-H organization sup- ported by the Colorado State University Extension Service, and the parks department play major roles in ensuring the fair continues.

“We view the fair as that vital link to show the children of our community that there are other things than video games,” Wolken said.

Attendance totaled 22,877 at the weeklong fair in late July, a 1.5 percent increase over 2006, when gatekeepers began counting fairgoers only once per day.

In past year, attendees were counted each time they went through the gate.

The increase is small but notable, considering clouds and rain possibly kept many fairgoers away during the July 21-28 run.

The boost in attendance may be attributable to the heightened profile of the fairgrounds, which is looking to provide more entertainment for county residents.

In association with the Resource Development Association, the Fair Board groomed the grounds to hold auto racing, although those have prompted noise complaints from some nearby Calhan residents.

The parks department is working with affected organizations to brainstorm more revenue-generating uses of the grounds.

“The more we can do of that, the more we don’t have to rely on the fair itself as the sole revenue producer,” Wolken said.