Northwest Washington Fair potentially looking to overlap Skagit County Fair

We have heard the recent news that the Northwest Washington Fair is considering going to a 10-day event in 2O21, dates that would overlap with the Skagit County Fair. I know many of you will say to just reschedule the dates to our fair. To do this, they would have to overlap another neighboring existing fair. The small Silvana Fair, then the Stanwood proceed the Skagit. Moving the dates is just not a possibility.

This would have a huge negative impact on the Skagit County Fair, they currently share vendors, equipment, food trucks, and carnival entertainment. The Skagit County Fair would potentially not survive the competition with the much larger fair in Lynden. The Skagit and Northwest Washington Fair share over 20 vendors on an annual basis, this is one-third of the participating vendors. Skagit County Fair manager Aric Gaither also mentioned “ln addition, the carnival and gate revenue could be negatively impacted. The Skagit County Fair, while it is supported by County leadership and is a County department, is 1OO% funded by event revenues, meaning no taxpayer dollars support our operations on a yearly basis.”

The negative impact is not only financial The Skagit County 4-H and FFA Clubs would also suffer greatly. These kids work year-round with their animals and projects to compete at the fair each year.  Lee McNeil from SeaTech 4H writes “Without the Skagit County Fair we will suffer and possibly fail for lack of crucial support. The Skagit County Fair has always played a pivotal role in our club’s program. In fact, most of our membership and all of our leaders were people we initially met at our fair display. Having this local connection, and a venue where we can show our community what you, the club students have accomplished is very important to us. The local support we receive from businesses in our county is typically dependent on our ability to display to the community the sponsorship they provide to our project.”  Bonita Elfstron from Tails-Up 4H also said “Smaller fairs are struggling to exist and Skagit County Fair has managed to produce a very lovely little county fair that benefits all of our county families that take part in 4-H and FFA. As you know the kids need these local county fairs to qualify to go to the state fair. Your change has the potential of also hurting their market animal sales.”

Many other letters have been written to The NWWF from various 4-H leaders and parents, if you feel so inclined to also write a letter, please do so immediately as they are looking to make their decision in the very near future. Please email Chris Pickering – chris@nwwafair.com —- Nate Kleindel – nate@bedlingtonfarms.com