Fair board dealing with budget shortfall

The Great Northern Fair Board will hold a special meeting Thursday at 5:30 p.m. as it deals with a budget shortfall.

The meeting will take place in the Lakeside Excavation Inc. Community Room at 220 22nd Ave. W.

Lakeside Excavation is owned by board Vice-Chair Tyler Smith.

The shortfall is the result of increased expenses due to wages and less than expected revenue from camper storage, the members said Tuesday during the board's regular monthly meeting in the Timmons Room of the Hill County Courthouse.

The board voted unanimously to limit fairgrounds manager Dave Brewer to a five-hour work week, one hour a day. The time will be enough for Brewer to check phones and other basic duties, board member Scott Doney said.

Doney, who made the motion to limit Brewer to five hours, said any other work that needs to be done will have to be done by board members.

Ray Kallenberger, chair of the board's Finance Committee, said he and fellow committee members Doney and Jack Solomon, along with board Chair Paul McCann, met with the Hill County commissioners Thursday and made them aware of the situation and the need for the board to watch its spending.

"We are getting to the point where it is critical," Kallenberger said.

He said the board has a reserve fund, but digging into it is not something the board should want to do if it can avoid that action.

"It's something that, as a board, we have to sit down and take a look at," he added.

Any further spending done for expenses related to the fairgrounds must be submitted to members of the Finance Committee, he continued.

Brewer's overtime and comp time made up a "huge chunk" of the budget shortfall, Kallenberger said.

"Between the overtime and comp time, it cost us. I figured, about $6,300 is what we are missing," Doney said.

McCann said after the meeting that Brewer's position is 30 hours a week, and around the time of the Great Northern Fair in July his hours exceeded that amount.

Aside from about $5,000 in revenue from the county, the fairgrounds also generates money from membership fees, charging people in campers and RVs who stay on the fairgrounds camp site, stall rentals for people to board their horses up at the fairgrounds, seasonal storage, fees for events and money generated from the Great Northern Fair.

Doney said during the meeting that while the board is trying to keep the grounds operating, they are running up against increased infrastructure needs on the grounds.

He said that, moving forward, the board will need input from the public.

In other business, Smith said that people can now pay for riding memberships, camper fees and stall rentals for horses at the fairground's website https://www.greatnorthernfair.net.

People can pay with their credit and debit cards by clicking on a green "click to pay now" button at the top of the homepage and enter their information.

Hill County Commissioner Diane McLean introduced a likely new member of the board to other board members, Ron Koneski.

Koneski applied to fill the seat vacated by Karla Vaughn, who resigned from the board in November.

McLean said this morning that the commissioners expect to vote to approve Koneski's nomination at their Thursday meeting.