COLUMBUS, Ohio — Communities across the state are set to receive $50,000 each for their respective fairs.
On Monday, Gov. Dewine signed Senate Bill 109 into law providing financial relief from the CARES Act for county and independent fairs. The bill calls for $4.7 million to be spread evenly between Ohio’s 94 county and independent fairs.
“Ohio’s fairs not only provide us fond memories of our childhood, (but) they are also important to our local communities and provide a valuable forum for the next generation of responsible food producers,” said Dorothy Pelanda, Director of the Ohio Department of Agriculture.
“We sincerely thank Governor DeWine and the General Assembly for this generous support of our fairs that have lost significant revenue and have struggled over the past year. It is my hope that this funding can help breathe new life into our fairs as they move toward a successful 2021 season,” she said.
Spectrum News 1 agriculture expert Andy Vance said the funding is necessary.
“For sure. It was necessary,” Vance said. “When you look at the county and independent fairs, they had to really go out of their way to make sure they were abiding by those public health orders and a lot of times what that meant is that they could still have a junior fair, maybe some modified fair where the 4-H and FFA kids could complete their projects, but you couldn’t have the ‘midway.’ You couldn’t have the rides; all of those things that are sort of endemic of the county fair experience. That means no revenue.”
Vance also discussed how he expects the money to be used.
“My guess is that this will be spent a little differently at all 94 different fairs because they will all have different needs. Some will probably put it to use just covering the shortfall of not having revenue last year. Others, I imagine, might use it maybe for capital expenditures. Perhaps there were buildings or repair or modernization projects that didn’t get to happen last year,” he said.
