Photo by Sam Thiel Lyon County Fair Board treasurer Bob Richards presented its annual report to county officials at Tuesday’s board meeting. The fair expects a loss of close to $10,000 from not holding a fair in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

MARSHALL — The Lyon County Fair Board on Tuesday reported a $10,000 loss caused by the decision to not hold a fair in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fair Board treasurer Bob Richards presented the financial impact report during the regularly scheduled meeting of the Lyon County Board. He said the fair board will be able to eventually recover some spent funds, but not all of it.

I’m guessing that we’re probably out close to $10,000 that won’t come back,” Richards said.

The 2020 Lyon County Fair was originally scheduled for Aug. 13-16. In May, the fair board announced what it called “a postponement” of the fair to 2021.

The delay of the fair has caused some financial issues that were reported during the annual fair report to county commissioners.

Richards said there will be some aspects of the fair causing losses, such as the circus and rodeo. But he said others like the live entertainment and concerts are going to be returning next year.

“Obviously we’ve had some problems with not having the fair and having to put some things out there that we’re not going to get a return on investment for two years. For example, the circus we had to pay them $6,250 for their services this year and they are unable to come next year so we have to save that or we will not get our deposit back so we won’t see anything returned on that until 2022,” Richards said. “We had a lot of expenses with the rodeo and pay all of our application fees to put on a rodeo. We had to pay all of our bands their deposits and the things they needed in advance but on a positive note on a lot of this is we will get all of our bands back except for one of them to come to our 2021 fair.”

Richards added they’ve already received roughly $11,000 in grant money, including $5,319 from the first half of their 2020 advance, a final payment for 2019 of $6,320 and are expecting a reimbursement from 4-H between $3,000-$4,000 from the ribbons and premium money they paid out to them. He said they’ll be looking at revamping the funds they can use since the fair won’t be happening. One area that Richards said they’re exploring is the possibility of purchasing tents for use at the fair instead of renting them each year.

“The thing with the grant money is it helps pay for a lot of things that if we don’t have a fair then things don’t happen,” Richards said. “We’re going through and trying to revamp some of the funds that we can use. In the past we’ve been able to use it for electricity, utilities and bleachers, so it’s going to be a process to go through and try and find places to use it, so that’s going to be a process we’re going to be doing going forward.”

Richards said they are expecting a loss of about $10,000 that they won’t be able to recover from the postponement of the fair, but added some money should be coming back.

“Some of it should be coming back; we paid $600 to Rock County to rent their bleachers and obviously we didn’t need to use them, so that should be coming back,” Richards said. “The circus, that’s $6,250 so we will not see anything from that until 2022 but we shouldn’t have that expenditure that year because we’ve already paid for it. I’m guessing that we’re probably out close to $10,000 that won’t come back.”

Richards added that when they hold the Lyon County Fair next summer, they’re planning on doing a lot of the same things from this year at next year’s event, including the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the county but knows things will be different financially going forward.

“There’s a lot of things that are paid for already, but there’s a lot of things like our sponsorships are down tremendously, we don’t have any sponsorship night; we had about $6,000 in sponsorships that will be applied towards next year. We’ve talked with each of them but we know that they’ll be down tremendously too,” Richards said. “With all of the businesses and the things going on, there’s a lot of people hurting right now so that’s something we need to look at for next year too.”