Despite a staffing shakeup at the Park County Fair, plans for the annual event are continuing to come together.

“Some days are a bit overwhelming, but all in all, we’re still progressing pretty steadily towards fair,” said County Buildings and Grounds Superintendent Mike Garza, who oversees the fair. “So we should be in pretty decent shape.”

Fair leaders felt comfortable enough with the progress that they canceled a special meeting scheduled for last week. The Park County Fair Advisory Board’s next regular meeting is set for July 20, and “we were good to go just to have it then,” said Board Chairman Tiffany Brando.

“We’ll get it figured out,” Brando said. “I think they’re getting it worked through.”

Preparations for the July 27-31 event hit a bump when the county’s events administrator, who handled the bulk of that work, was fired on June 16. At a special board meeting several days later, Garza asked for help in determining what still needed to be done before the fair and in getting everything lined out, while multiple board members expressed frustration about the timing of the staffing change. The board initially called another special meeting on June 28 to make sure things were on track. However, the members ultimately decided it was unnecessary.

Member Sara Skalsky arrived at the fair office at 6 p.m. that evening just in case any members of the public showed up to speak, but she, Garza, another buildings and grounds staffer and a Tribune reporter wound up being the only people there.

Garza has since gotten some additional help, as a former fair office worker agreed to fill in as she is able. Meanwhile, a new online system for reserving fair week campsites is set to go live today (Thursday); the spots typically go very quickly, and there had been some concern at the June 21 fair board meeting about whether the new online system was ready. However, after getting familiar with the new service provider, Garza said he thought the county was in good shape for the launch.

Camping on the fairgrounds has proven to be more challenging this year amid a surge in use. Outside of fair week, there are typically plenty of open sites for RVs and campers, but the grounds have been filling up this summer.

“In year’s past, we’ve always had plenty of spots,” Garza said. “This year we’re getting a lot of the overflow from Cody.”

That created some problems for people who have been planning to camp at the fairgrounds while in town for this weekend’s Powell High School All Class Reunion. Garza said roughly 70 spots are available on a first-come, first-served basis for every week except for the fair. With no way to reserve spaces, he said that makes it hard to promise sites will be available.

“We weren’t anticipating this kind of traffic,” he said.

Meanwhile, the work of preparing for the 110th Park County Fair goes on. Once the online reservation system launches for the campsites, “we’ll just tackle the next hurdle,” Garza said, “and continue doing that until we get to fair week.”