By ROD ZOOK
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — After insisting they would host this year’s fair the Kansas State Fair Board will meet on Monday where they will take action on a proposal to reconsider holding the event after all.
If approved by the Board the fair would be canceled for the first time in over 100 years. GM Robin Jennison says the change comes more from things outside of their control.
“We have a couple of issues with the vendors,” Jennison said. “ Some of them couldn’t get enough help. They legitimately wanted to be here, but when it came down to it they couldn’t get enough help.”
Jennison says fairs being canceled in Texas, Oklahoma and Nebraska also weighed into the equation.
“We have vendors that really run the circuit that when it came down to it with Nebraska scaling back, Oklahoma scaling back and now Texas scaling back, it didn’t make much sense for some of those guys to come up to Kansas when that was the only place they would be going.”
Jennison says that there were also fears expressed by the public regarding close contact with each other during the pandemic, but expressed confidence that the fair could have been held safely.
“We heard from people who quite frankly were concerned for themselves,” Jennison said. “I really believed that when we get into September you’re going to see a lot of people doing exactly what our staff recommended and that’s the universal use of masks. I don’t think this society is going to stay shut down.”
Jennison says that people would have adjusted to the pandemic by the time the fair came to town.
“We’re confident that we would have gotten a good response from the people that come to the fair to social distance and to wear the masks, and we think it would have been safe,” Jennison said. “We were just putting a plan together to keep our staff safe. That was my goal is that we not have any of our 600 people that work the fair get sick, and so we were putting all of those plans in place and I think we had a good plan.”
The board is scheduled to meet Monday morning at 10 a.m. where a decision on this year’s fair will be made.