January, 2011. For those of you that think these are quiet times on the fairgrounds.... oh boy! We started the week with MAJOR power issues. Aging power lines on the fairgrounds gave out, caught on fire in a ground vault and melted big wires together. All I know is it involves high voltage lines and will be expensive to fix. Nothing we could have done about it, and we can't say it's lousy timing, because ANYTIME would be lousy for this.

Then we got the new Governor's budget proposal. It has lots of stuff in it, but what jumped out at us was....no funding for California Fairs. To us, that's around $200,000 a year. We don't know if his proposal will go through, and if it does, we don't know what we will do. Cross your fingers and call your congressperson. What we have going for us is our excellent return on investment. Throughout the State, fairs return over $1 billion in economic activity for only $32,000,000. It seems like a no-brainer, but we shall see. I know the Plumas Sierra County Fair generates over $6.5 million in wages, taxes, local spending and corn dogs. That's a lot of action for $200,000 in State money.

I don't know what will happen, but please know that Kathy, Oran, Willo and myself love this Fair and will do anything we can to make it something our community can be proud of. Thanks for your support!