Come late July, there will be a Park County Fair, with a market show and a Junior Livestock Sale. But this year’s event will probably look a little different.

“We’re going to do fair as best we can,” Park County Fair Advisory Board Chairman Tiffany Brando said at a special April 23 meeting.

The board is contending with not only the possibility of COVID-19-related restrictions and impacts continuing through the summer, but also the hard reality of a tight county budget.

“I think, best case scenario, we don’t have the fair that we planned on,” said board member Shane Smith, though he added that, “I don’t think there’s going to be any huge changes outside of maybe we don’t have a concert and we don’t have a few other things go on.”

There was a consensus among the board members that the fair’s headlining concert — featuring a signed but as-yet-unannounced musical act — should be called off. The fair’s annual show traditionally features a relatively big name, but, with the exception of a break-even concert in 2019, it’s lost between $8,500 and $19,000 in recent years. The 2020 fair could be even more challenging, as there are concerns attendance will drop.

Not only is there a chance that large gatherings could still be limited by the July 21-25 fair, but given the economic impact of COVID-19-related restrictions, Park County Events Coordinator Mike Garza wondered how much money local residents will have to spend.

Park County Events Administrator Audra Jewell encouraged the board to prepare a less expensive budget, “because there may be less people able to attend fair, even if we’re able to open it up.” As of last month’s meeting, sponsorships and vendors for this year’s fair were down from the prior year, Jewell added.

Fair organizers decided to await further guidance from state and local health officials before making any major decisions, pushing the board’s meeting back to May 19.

Gov. Mark Gordon indicated last week that the state will likely begin to ease, but not eliminate, the current prohibition on large gatherings starting Friday. He said the state will continue to be cautious, but also expressed hope for a more normal summer.

“It’d be great to have those county fairs, it’d be great to have some of our events, and if we do all of the right things and people keep working the same way, we’ll get there,” Gordon said.

In the meantime, the fair board must soon begin notifying entertainers, judges and other contractors of their plans.

But no matter what happens, both the fair board and the committee that oversees the Junior Livestock Sale say that there will be an opportunity for youth to show their market animals and sell them.

“We will put something together to make sure these kids have an avenue to exit their project, whatever that might look like,” vowed Joe Bridges, chairman of the Junior Livestock Sale committee.

Even under the most restrictive of conditions, Bridges said the committee will find a way to hold the sale, potentially moving some portion of the sale online if needed.

“We will put something together for these kids,” he said. “We will make sure that they’re successful with their project.”

The Junior Livestock Sale is an integral part of the Park County Fair and provides a substantial boost to local youth; last year’s sale raised roughly $414,500 for 240 local FFA and 4-H members.

Although fair leaders are drafting precautionary plans for a worst case scenario of a drastically curtailed Park County Fair, Bridges predicted that restrictions will be eased by late July. He sits on the state fair board, and said the Wyoming State Fair remains slated for Aug. 11-15 in Douglas.

“If there was some concern, we [the state board] would have been notified already and started working on something, and we have not been notified,” Bridges said. The message from state organizers has been “that this fair will go on and until we are told differently, be assured that this fair will happen,” Bridges said, adding that adjustments can be made as the situation changes.

“It will all work out in the end,” he said.

Garza and Jewell indicated that county staff may have to do more sanitizing and disinfecting than ever before.

Garza reported to county commissioners last week that, across the county’s facilities, “we’re going through our custodial product a lot faster than we anticipated.”

As for how things stand with the Park County Fair specifically, he reported that, “the idea of fair is still kind of limbo,” but said the worst case scenario would be a modified event.

“There will be something,” Garza said.