NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Kansas State Fair gets some help from state government, but not as much as you might think, according to Kansas State Fair General Manager Bryan Schulz.
"The Kansas State Fair is a fee funded organization," Schulz said. "What that means is we are a state agency, but we receive $135,000 a year that goes into an account that is utilities only, so that's all it can be used for, and that doesn't even cover the fair. They used to give us a stipend every year, they went away from that. They said, what we'll do is we'll give you a percentage of the taxes that are collected on the grounds during the fair and off season for a sales tax. What we get is whatever's collected, uh, at the state fair, we get 5% of that that goes into our capital improvements fund. That's how we do upgrades to buildings. That's how we do upkeep on the grounds. Also when Senate bill two was put into play about three, two years ago, it stated in there that the revenue that was generated, the tax revenue that was generated there, 30% of it would go back to the state general fund, and 70% of that would go into the state fair's capital improvement fund there. Again, that money can only be used for improvements on the grounds that can't be used to pay salaries that can't be used to pay for anything else. Each one of them maybe generates between 275 to $350,000 a year."
That's one of the reasons why the 1861 Club is going to be such an important source of revenue for the Fairgrounds Foundation, is to be able to look out a little farther into the future for what's next for the fairgrounds.
"The whole mission behind the foundation is to give back to the state fair, so it's for improvement," Schulz said. "When we see a project that we need, we can go to the foundation and say, hey, we need some additional dollars to do this. That's where they will go out and do fundraising with us."
If you'd like to learn more about the foundation, go to https://ksfairgroundsfoundation.org/.