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Previously:

• Curry County Commissioners Debate Their Level of Involvement on Fair Board, Delay Filling Vacancy

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Nearly a month after he raised concerns at a workshop over what he called failures of the Curry County Fair Board, Curry County Commissioner Brad Alcorn is now a voting member.

Alcorn’s colleagues on Wednesday unanimously approved the appointment the day after Fair Board Chairman Bob Chibante resigned. Alcorn also recommended Fair Board members receive ethics training and regularly work with a lawyer, potentially County Counsel and Director of Operations Ted Fitzgerald.

“We got to have a lawyer involved in the process when it comes to any type of contracts or permits or regulated issues,” Alcorn told his colleagues. “We have a lawyer involved in every other county thing that we do, so we need to have one involved in that.”

Commissioner John Herzog told Alcorn to let him and Trost know if he can't make a Fair Board meeting and needs to call on them as alternate county representatives.

According to Commissioner Jay Trost, Chibante tendered his resignation at the Fair Board’s meeting Tuesday. As a result, there are currently three vacant seats on the board, Trost said.

The workshop revealed that the Fair Board had spent transient lodging tax dollars on expenses rather than capital improvement, Alcorn said. The Fair Board also violated Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission regulations, he said.

“One of those violations was the purchase of alcohol in California and then the resell here in Oregon, which is a misdemeanor,” Alcorn told his colleagues. “I also want to publicly say we have since self reported all of that to OLCC and we reported to Oregon State Police and that’s being addressed.”

Alcorn said while hew as running his campaign for county commissioner last year, he had heard complaints from people about how TLT dollars were being spent. He visited the fairgrounds at the beginning of the year and toured the arena and other buildings.

Alcorn said fairgrounds representatives told him they were following the rules and protocols.

In October, during the discussion about appointing a new Fair Board member, Alcorn, Fitzgerald and Trost had brought up the possibility of having a county commissioner on the Board as well. Alcorn said the opposition to that idea surprised him.

“That was a big red flag to me. A very big red flag,” he said. “It absolutely got my full attention and it prompted me to look very closely at the spending of the people’s money by the Fair Board.”

Alcorn said he made a mistake because he trusted the information he received from Fair Board members and didn’t verify it. He said he wouldn’t that mistake again.

Stating that fairgrounds in Oregon have been historically underfunded, Fitzgerald said they either operate under Oregon state law or via an agreement with the county they’re in. Under the agreement the Curry County Fair Board has with the county, a commissioner is required to sit on that board to represent the county’s interests, Fitzgerald said.

The county’s agreement with the Fair Board is years old, Fitzgerald said, and states that the county owns the buildings at the fairgrounds.

“My recommendation is we execute a new agreement with the Fair Board that would mirror some of the ones I read (from) elsewhere,” he said. “I know I’ve read some county agreements where the employees are deemed to be county employees and that makes sense in a lot of ways because the employees are all bound by county policies. That’s part of the agreement.”

One project at the fairgrounds that appears to be suffering because of this lack of communication between the Fair Board and the Board of Commissioners is a greenhouse and demonstration garden.

The Curry County Master Gardeners Association had submitted a building permit to the county on Aug. 23, surveyed and mapped the site in early September and got the building permit approved on Sept. 21, representative David Denney told commissioners

The organization was ready to finalize a lease with the county when Fitzgerald pointed out that an 8-inch City of Gold Beach sewer line ran underneath the proposed greenhouse site, Denney said.

They found an alternative site that no longer affects underground utilities and submitted a revised plan to the county in November, Denney said, but have received no response.

The Master Gardeners Association has raised $145,000 in grants, private donations and through their own internal funding on the project, according to another representative, Cindy Myers. Association members have also volunteered more than 800 hours on the endeavor, she said.

“What do we need to move this project ahead as soon as possible?” She asked. “Our original grant application timeline was to break ground in August after the fair and be ready to open for our community plant sale in May. Grant agreements require that we notify the funders when there are major changes in the timeline. Some funders may have time constraints that could require us to return the funds or they may choose not to expand our timeline.”

Fitzgerald, who was initially reluctant to address the Master Gardeners Association’s concerns at Wednesday’s meeting, said the building permit the organization received was in the Fair Board’s name, which is a public entity. This means that work on the greenhouse is subject to public contracting requirements, he said.

But, Fitzgerald said, he wasn’t consulted on the project, the Fair Board was.

“Right now there’s something between me and the Master Gardeners as this point and it’s the Fair Board,” Fitzgerald said. “Until the Fair Board is able to coordinate with the commission and with me, I don’t see anything going forwards at the fairgrounds until that’s resolved.”

The county director of operations later called the greenhouse project an example of the weird relationship between the county and fairgrounds because. The Master Gardeners Association made a deal with the Fair Board even though the county will own the building and is ultimately responsible for maintaining it.

Fitzgerald also addressed a rumor he said was in an email he received from a Master Gardener Association member that the Board of Commissioners was “planning on stealing the money the fair made on forest fire housing.” Doing that, he pointed out, would be illegal and is not being contemplated.

Trost said that rumor is an example of the lack of oversight at the Fair Board. He said the goal is to have a working Fair Board that could consult with county counsel when they needed an opinion on an issue they wanted to address.

“Reconnecting the relationship doesn’t come without ripples and so I think we obviously are going to tread those waters and we’re going to get through that and we’re going to be better at the end,” he said.

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