Illinois county fairs wither as state lessens financial aid
DECATUR, Ill. -- The grandstands sat empty on what should have been the Macon County Fair's opening night. Instead of a stage with pageant contestants in sparkling gowns, the central Illinois arena held only 20 truck loads of dirt spread out for a makeshift go-kart track.
The 158-year-old fair is broke.
Organizers canceled the event in favor of a scaled-down festival this year as the board struggled to pay about $300,000 of debt. The fair's demise in the county about 180 miles south of Chicago shows the vulnerability of a pastoral institution. The number of U.S. farms has dropped six straight years, and with them demand for entertainments that convened growers who spend much of the year in their fields.
With state budgets under pressure and industrial agriculture helping to drain the countryside's population, urban legislators face tough choices. Illinois cut support for county fairs by 38 percent as attendance fell by almost a third from 2000 to 2013.
“They're all a-hurtin' because the money ain't there like it used to be,” said Don Collins as he walked through the muddy Macon County fairgrounds on the festival's opening night in June. The 82-year-old retired sprinkler fitter volunteers on the grounds in the town of Decatur, doing everything from mowing the lawn to fixing pipes. “Fairs have to have something else going to make the money to keep it going. Money just ain't in the fairs.”
The land of Lincoln isn't an outlier, said Paul Lasley, an Iowa State University sociologist who has studied rural communities for 33 years. Declining rural populations have created more urbanized states, taking a toll on the tradition, he said.
Rural and small-town America face a “growing demographic challenge,” according to a November 2013 report by the U.S. Agriculture Department's Economic Research Service. Macon County hasn't been spared. Its population fell 1.3 percent from April 2010 to July 2013, while the state's grew 0.4 percent.
State fairs have traditionally had more support, said Lasley. They can afford to draw in big entertainment like Aretha Franklin at the Wisconsin State Fair and rapper Pitbull at the New York State Fair this year.
At the county level, however, Illinois's struggles are replicated across the nation, said Dominic Vivona Jr., a controller at Amusements of America, a carnival operator based in Florence, South Carolina, that serves 30 to 40 fairs a year.
“It's definitely not atypical,” said Vivona, 46, whose family started the traveling amusement park in the 1930s and bought the Ferris wheel from the 1939 World's Fair. “It's a common occurrence throughout the country.”
Illinois fairs have been dealt a double blow thanks to deteriorating state finances. Lawmakers passed a budget May 31 with a $2 billion hole. Illinois has $100 billion of unpaid benefit obligations, and its credit rating is A3 from Moody's Investors Service, four levels above junk. It is the lowest- rated state.
Funding for Illinois's 104 county fairs fell to $5.07 million last year from $8.16 million in 2000, said Jeff Squibb, spokesman for the state Agriculture Department. Even at the Macon County fairgrounds, some saw the logic.
“I don't think our state should try and support anything right now because of our financial situation,” fairgoer Jeanie Burtschi said in an interview near funnel cake stands. “It's not that I don't believe in these kind of things. It's just that Illinois is in such bad shape.”
The fair's main income source is bingo, four nights a week on the grounds. Borrowing to make repairs on the 50-acre facility and “overspending in other areas” led to its debt, said Teresa Wilson, 41, who started volunteering 18 years ago and now is board treasurer.
Now, the fair's ceiling is caving in -- literally. A massive water leak in the office the day before the June 10 start of the festival collapsed it, Wilson said.
The festival started this year in a shrunken version with $1-a-ride carnival. Rain and storms didn't help. Barns usually full of animal entries were vacant.
Because the fair still owed 2013 exhibitors about $36,680 in prize money, the state didn't provide funding, Wilson said. There were no livestock competitions or harness races, and the marquee tractor pull, which awards more than $20,000 in prizes, was replaced by go-kart racing.
Organizers asked for donated portable toilets since they still owe the sewage company for last year's rentals.
By Sept. 8, the fair was down to about $250,000 of outstanding debt, Wilson said.
The basic attraction of fairs -- the milling crowds, the bright lights, the sinful food -- remains unchanged. Taken as a whole, they are doing well, said Marla Calico, chief operating officer of the Springfield, Missouri-based International Association of Fairs and Expositions, which represents about 1,100 in the U.S. and countries including Canada and Korea. About two-thirds or more of the IAFE's member fairs reported steady or higher attendance the last couple of years, she said.
County fairs that have done well have strong community support. Beyond sharing information about crops and livestock, youth development is a major driver, Iowa State's Lasley said. Events that involve 4-H, a youth farming group overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, can bolster attendance.
Enrollment nationally in 4-H totaled about 6 million in 2012, USDA data show. That's down about 13 percent from 2000. Participation is falling faster in Illinois, where enrollment slumped by more than 50 percent over that time.
Fairs play an important role in creating the “next generation” of agriculture, said Marvin Perzee, director-at- large at the Illinois Association of Agricultural Fairs, who has been fair president in Iroquois County since 1972. Less state support means lowered prize payouts, and that means less incentive to participate, he said.
“People don't come to the fair like they used to because they don't have the money anymore,” said Jim Stalker, a 70- year-old member of the Macon County fair board. “It's just so darn expensive. It makes you wonder if fairs will ever just drift away.”