(Spencer)– The fact there will not be a Clay County Fair this year is going to result in a significant financial hardship for those nonprofit organizations that rely on food stand operations at the event for a major portion of their revenues each year. Clay County Fair CEO and General Manager Jeremy Parsons says they recognize the impact it will have on those groups. He says the Fair is working on a possible event to help them out atleast a little bit…
“Can we figure out a way to do some sort of small food event where the local nonprofits can set up? You know those are all the discussions now that, I hate the word pivot, but now that we can pivot towards those types of things we can start looking at some options going forward. But definitely not the fair and we know it won’t replace the fair but still something to give people a little bit of essence.”
And it goes without saying commercial vendors, who already had their spaces reserved for this year, will also be impacted. Parsons says they, like grandstand ticket buyers, will have a couple of options available to them…
“Basically what we’re doing for commercial vendors is really we’re telling them no action is required; wherever you were in the process for the 2020 fair, we’re just rolling it over to 2021. Now obviously we’re going to work with some vendors. We understand some of our commercial vendors as I mentioned are mom and pop operations. They may need a refund of some of their money. We’re obviously going to work with them on that. You know we absolutely understand that but for the most part, just like the grandstand ticket buyers, everything you know, just gets postponed, it just gets pushed out a year. But again if there’s refunding that needs to happen we’re going to work on that but really it’s just moving everything forward.”
Parsons made the comments in a press conference Thursday that came on the heels of the announcement the Clay County Fair’s Executive Committee had voted to not have a fair this year due to the pandemic.
