Fairgrounds in need of a makeover

SUPERIOR – All three county commissioners took a field trip to the Mineral County Fairgrounds prior to their meeting last Friday to hear from Mineral County Extension Office representatives what can be done to improve the facility for the future.

Extension Agent Dave Brink was on hand to let the commissioners know what the facility needed to remain a viable location for fair activities and what can be done to improve facilities that need repair. Brink singled out the animal holding pens as something that needed to be upgraded.

“What we would like to do is eventually tear out half of this building,” Brink said. “We need something that can be easily disinfected. We want to do away with all this wood and go with metal and concrete.”

Brink said while metal infrastructure for the holding pens had been ordered, there was only enough to upgrade part of the facility. He said volunteers had already prepped the site for the new equipment.

“We will put the 12 (pens) that we did order in this space,” Brink said. “And that will give us room for about 17 animals this year. In the future we’d like to expand this into an actual loading chute so we can get steers, lambs and pigs off.”

According to Brink, the new equipment can be reconfigured to accommodate whatever size animal participants are entering in the 4-H competition. He also said the facility could be useful outside of fair time.

“The basic metal framework will be enough that we can take these modular pens and they can hold steers or whatever we have the need for,” Brink said. “If we ever have the need to use this as a livestock holding facility because of fire or if something happened on the interstate or the rail line where they needed to drop off animals, we could do that.”

Commissioner Duane Simons acknowledged work needed to be done at the facility but without knowing how much money the county would have to work with, he could not say if the county would be able to help.

“The pig holding area does need to be upgraded due to new biohazard standards,” Simons said. “It’s something we will have to look at with the budget. There’s a lot of things that need to be upgraded in the county and there’s a lot of things that need to be upgraded at the fairgrounds.”

Commissioner Laurie Johnston said the question of whether the county would be able to help the fairgrounds with the work that needs to be done brings up a consistent debate regarding the facility. Johnston said the question is whether to invest in the current facility or look at relocating the fairgrounds in the future.

“A lot of things out there needs to be replaced,” Johnston said. “It needs to be upgraded for safety reasons. I have mixed feelings about relocating the fairgrounds. We could probably have bigger events if we had a bigger venue. But that costs money. There are repairs that need to be done though.”