Barrett hired as events coordinator

Posted 1/31/17

Teecee Barrett — who’d been serving as the county’s elections deputy, the recording secretary for the commission and also as a fair board member — will leave those positions and start her new job as events coordinator on …

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Barrett hired as events coordinator

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Park County commissioners didn’t have to look far to find the next person to oversee the annual fair and other county events.

Teecee Barrett — who’d been serving as the county’s elections deputy, the recording secretary for the commission and also as a fair board member — will leave those positions and start her new job as events coordinator on Wednesday.

Barrett thinks the post will be a good fit.

“It’s definitely more my background and how I grew up — the ag thing and being from Powell,” she said, recalling a childhood where “we did everything on the fairgrounds.”

Barrett’s main job will be to carry out the fair board’s wishes and put on the annual Park County Fair.

She replaces Echo Renner, who resigned from the events coordinator position in early December after conflict with the fair board and others.

Commissioners picked Barrett among 30 applicants.

Her familiarity with Powell, the fair and the commissioners won over Commission Chairman Lee Livingston.

Beyond an agricultural background and an understanding of the fair, “I was really looking for someone from Powell, because the word I was getting back was there were some relationships that might have been damaged over there,” Livingston said.

Barrett said she hopes to get some fair superintendents who’ve stopped volunteering at the fair to come back — and she wants to work on making sure food and commercial vendors are happy, saying there’s been a lot of complaints.

“Just renters of the fairgrounds in general, I think there’s going to have to be some bridges built and some relationships mended to get it back where it was,” Barrett said.

Livingston similarly wants to see people enthusiastic about both the fair and the fairgrounds itself.

“We’ve got a great facility over there and besides all the qualities I listed earlier about us hiring Teecee, I think she has some good ideas about moving forward and utilizing the facility in some different, maybe better ways,” Livingston said.

Barrett said her main focus will be carrying out the fair board’s wishes for the 2017 fair, while also trying to make sure the grounds are being used — trying new things and bringing in new users.

When Renner resigned in December, then-commissioner Bucky Hall said she apparently didn’t like “having to kind of not be lord over the fair board.” For her part, Renner told the Tribune that a couple fair board members, including Barrett, were “completely uncooperative.”

Renner also ran into disagreements with other county employees; Park County Clerk Colleen Renner questioned why Renner had spent county money on a “Pumpkin Festival” the past two years and Park County Buildings and Grounds Supervisor Mike Garza criticized the way Renner ran things at the fairgrounds.

Figuring out exactly how to divide the fairgrounds’ oversight between the events coordinator, fair board and buildings and grounds department has proven challenging.

Commissioners created the events coordinator position in early 2015 — and eliminated the board-controlled fair director — in an effort to resolve the conflict over the management of the grounds. Renner was the first person to hold the events coordinator post and she said the job kept changing during her tenure.

Commissioners have discussed hosting a meeting with all the players to hammer out everyone’s responsibilities.

For her part, Barrett said she feels the events coordinator position has now been pretty clearly laid out.

She was among four candidates interviewed.

Commissioner Livingston said that, among some well-qualified applicants, Barrett’s existing relationship with the commission was a definite plus.

“A lot of people can interview well, but when it comes time to do the job, they might not perform quite as well as they interviewed or put themselves on paper,” Livingston said. “I’m not saying that’s with everybody, but I guess that wasn’t something we had to consider with Teecee, because we knew her.”

Barrett will be paid $47,964 a year, the same salary that Renner received. It’s a less than 4 percent increase from Barrett’s previous position as elections deputy.

She has worked for the county since July 2012.

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