After a few years of trying different tactics to turn around financial deficits, the board of directors of the San Joaquin County Fair in Stockton, Calif., decided to not hold the 2014 event to buy some time to figure out new strategies.
“We’ve been having difficulty for a number of years,” said Joe Valente, the president of the board of directors. “Financially, everything else has been making a profit or breaking even. All other aspects of the fairgrounds except the fair itself, for the last six out of seven years, has not made budget projections. The fair has been losing money.”
Currently, the fair is about $200,000 in the red, about the same amount of funding previously received by the state of California, which cut all fair funding in 2012. However, Valente does not blame the situation on the loss of the money.
“With or without it, you have to put on a fair that either breaks even or is making money,” Valente said. “We have to operate as a business. You can’t be relying on the state – ‘We’re not making money but the state is going to give us money.’ We have to run it as a business.”
The fair typically runs for five days in June; however, the 2012 fair was moved to September to coincide with horse racing. The board of directors made the 2011 and 2012 fairs free but for the past event, held in June 2013, a $3 admission was charged.
“Years ago, it was up to $9 and it still wasn’t working at $9,” Valente said. “So we thought, ‘Let’s make it free. We’ll get more people there and make it off parking, concessions and carnival rides.’”
However, that did not work either, Valente said. “We’re trying to figure out the right mix and rather than going in and risk everything, we’re not going to have it this year. We can’t risk losing money on it. We will jeopardize the whole business structure.”
The fairgrounds will operate other year-end ventures, including horse racing, however. Attendance hit 128,000 in 2011 with the free admission in June and then increased to only 132,000 the next year when the fair expanded from five to eight days in September. So in 2013, fair days were scaled back to five and the small admission fee was charged, and 60,000 fairgoers attended, 30,000 of them paid.
“You add in gate admission and what we’re getting off concessions and it just didn’t work,” Valente said. “People say, ‘You need to bring in big-time entertainment.’ Unfortunately, that costs a lot.
“There are numerous fairs in California going through the same struggles.”
Representatives from the fair’s carnival, Elk Grove, Calif.-based Johnston Amusements, and the owner is Ken Johnston, were at the meeting where the decision was made to not have the fair, Valente said. Johnston did not return phone calls to answer questions about how the lack of a 2014 fair would affect his business.
In an effort to turn the fair around, Valente said, fair officials have turned to the community, both for input on what area residents would like to see and do at the event as well as a plan to seek more sponsorships from area agricultural businesses and associations, some of which are doing well.
“What we’ve been doing since September is trying to get the community involved,” Valente said.
“We’ve had a number of community outreach meetings and we broke up into committees and met through the fall, trying to come up with new ideas and new ways of presenting the fair. We were very pleased that the community stepped up and got involved. They all understand where we are financially.”
In 2013, agricultural commodities, which include crops such as wine grapes, walnuts and almonds, have done well and increased from bringing in $2.2 billion to the area to $2.8 billion, so Valente hopes that will be a source of sponsorships.
The city of Stockton has seen better times, Valente said, but other area cities, such as Lodi, home of the Lodi Grape Festival & Harvest Fair, and Manteca have been doing well.
“Those areas are doing fairly well except Stockton has had financial struggles,” he added. “That’s why we want to take a year off and reevaluate the fair. Maybe we’re not giving people what they want. We’re not sure. So let’s evaluate what we’re doing and try to evaluate what consumers want. Maybe we need to rebrand it.”
The fair’s current CEO, Janet Cavello, only took the job on an interim basis, so a search for a new one is under way, Valente said. The current plan is to have a board of directors meeting at the end of February to start planning the 2015 fair, with the hope that a new leader will be in place by then.
Valente also plans to reach out to other area fairs, such as the Calaveras County Fair & Jumping Frog Jubilee in nearby Angels Camp, Calif., which went through some tough times before some tough decisions were made that turned things around.
The fair’s CEO, Laurie Giannini, said the event had a 22-percent deficit in its reserve a few years ago.
“The board of directors laid off seven part-time employees and asked the manager to resign and I asked myself if I would take the position,” Giannini said. “I said I would, and I worked part time technically. But I was more than willing to do that.”
Her husband’s family has been ranchers for 100 years, she said, so the fair is important to her.
In addition to the layoffs, fair officials also questioned every expense, turning lights out more often and using the back sides of paper. The junior livestock show also became independent and that expense was taken off the fair’s back.
“All the little things started to add up,” Giannini said.
The fair made money in 2012 and in 2013, she added.
Valente noted that the San Joaquin County Fair’s junior livestock competition still will be held in 2014.
Stephen Chambers, executive director of the Western Fairs Assn. in Sacramento, Calif., said the decision for the San Joaquin County Fair to skip 2014 surprised him.
“I can only remember one (member) fair canceling a year, and that was Trinity County Fair (in Hayfork, Calif.), because there were raging fires and the fairgrounds was a fire camp,” Chambers said.
Although Chambers has been vocal about the loss of fair funding from the state, he believes other factors are in play for the San Joaquin County Fair’s situation, namely, problems in the city of Stockton.
“One of the articles I read talked about how the area surrounding the fairgrounds has become depressed and that is keeping patrons away,” Chambers said. “The longtime concessionaires, that’s what they see, that the area of Stockton has become difficult for families.”
However, he also believes fairs stand a good chance of receiving state funding back in 2014, which he said would be a topic discussed during this week’s annual Western Fairs Assn. Convention & Trade Show, which began Sunday and runs through today at the Anaheim (Calif.) Marriott.
“We believe 2014 is the best shot at restoring funding,” he said. “There is an election, the state economy and budget have bounced back and there are a few fairs that are at a crisis point because of a lack of funding.”
Interviewed for this article: Joe Valente, (209) 466-5041; Laurie Giannini, (209) 736-2561; Stephen Chambers, (916) 927-3100
