HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The long-awaited public meeting on the future of the racetrack at the Kansas State Fairgrounds is Tuesday beginning at 5 p.m. at Dillon Hall in the Encampment Building.
Larned Mayor William Nusser said to the Hutchinson City Council last week, "We're kind of in a weird gray, that we're going to get proposals about future promotion, but we don't know yet if there's a racetrack to promote, so there's going to be an hour session there for public comments, but the meeting will be open with the proposals."
State Fair General Manager Bryan Schulz is not publicizing the number of proposals received prior to the Nov. 14 meeting, but he did tell Hutch Post via email that if the board wants to dive deeper into any proposals they think might be viable after hearing them on Tuesday, it would likely take a special session of the board on a separate day to do that.
State Rep. Paul Waggoner is looking forward to the meeting, as he posted on social media,
"The Fair belongs to the people of Kansas, and is ran for the benefit of the people of Kansas. I am cautiously optimistic that the Fair board will justify that trust we have placed in them on Tuesday.
There are, as a backstop, multiple actions the Legislature can pursue in January to weigh in on this issue. I truly hope it does not become necessary for us to do so."
At this point, the next scheduled Fair Board meeting after this one is not until January and that would be too long to wait if they want to go forward with keeping the track.
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