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Sonoma County, a diverse county of over one million acres is famed for its agriculture industry and recreation boasting a booming economy and a unique lifestyle for its citizens described by the same Luther Burbank as the chosen spot of all the earth. Sonoma County is the place

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to live, work and play as we move into the 21st century. Led by the forward looking philosophy of its governing bodies. Sonoma County's 340,000 residents are a harmonious, successful blend of ethnic and economic backgrounds. We invite you to take a closer look at Sonoma County in

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the nineties with your host Rich McGlinchey, how you doing everybody? Welcome to another edition of Sonoma County in the nineties. We're gonna be talking to two officials of our Sonoma County Fair people that are very, very important to the fair, not only during the fair itself,

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but certainly during the rest of the year, we're gonna be talking with Michelle welcome, who is the assistant manager of the Sonoma County Fair and with Gordon Hall, who is the interim events coordinator? That's a nice title like that. Nice to have you here, Michelle, nice

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to. Um, I know that you two are very much involved. In fact, you're in charge of the interim events and that's what we're going to talk about. But before we do that during the recent from a county fair, the 16 day fair itself, Michelle, what was

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your main area of concern during the fair. What were you responsible for the time I handled the commercial exhibitors and and food concessionaires primarily. Oh boy, well, that's, that's most of the fair, the food, the big building and then all the food people out there and

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you, son, what what was your I am in charge of parking and chris beck arena Fair time. Oh boy. Chris Macarena roll those shows. Yes, that must have been a thrill. Uh, well, you congratulations to you and everybody else. So admit it was another very successful

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fair. We dropped a little bit in horse racing, but nothing like the other affairs did. So we really should be proud of the fact that we should all be proud of you and the job you people did. Well, we're going to talk today about coincidentally, by

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the way, I think I should explain that if I sound something like gravel Gertie, that's because I've been fighting laryngitis for about a month. But if you listen carefully, you'll be able to hear what I asked my guests and the answer is that you inter events.

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This is what we're talking about. That happens to the fairgrounds for say, almost 11.5 months that the fair isn't going on. Michelle, you're the not only the assistant manager of the fair, but you're in charge of the interim events program, is that correct? Right. I handle

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the administration of the interim events program and Gordon? Is their liaison. So when the events are actually going on, he's their primary contact. The two of you are responsible for it, pretty much Okay. Now Michelle and then if I have asked a question of one of

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you and the other one has a thought, you'd like to add to it, jump right in what type of events are held at the fair grounds other than our fair, it's a real wide variety of events. Anything from horse shows, dog shows, mule shows to doll

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shows, family expose, boat shows and home shows, all these things going, I guess there's something going on at the fairgrounds practically every week, isn't there? Every single weekend? Actually, every day we have events going on. Is that right? Every day. Um, How many you named a

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few of them, but how many events total? If you happen to know if had ever held annually, it varies between about 170 and 200,470 and 200 events a year. But in event days it's over 3600 event days because we count each event as an event day.

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So if you have a home show in a wedding and bingo and golf and a car market, all those different things going on, Those are multiple events during the day. So over the course of the year we have over, as I say, 3600 event days when

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she rents, all these things out and gets all these people coming in, what do you do get white hair like I am now, I just make sure that they put together safely and coordinate with you say that real quickly and briefly, but boy, that takes a

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lot of work. Yes, it does take quite a bit, it's nothing that's real simple. It's just a lot of time, man hours, we get them together, make sure they're safe. Well, just the physical requirements of setting up all the different facilities that you have that you

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lease out or rent out, just setting them up is a real time consuming tough job, isn't it? Yes, it is on some of your bigger events, just like we got through with the Caledonian, it takes a week just to set them up, but it's well worth

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it. It's very interesting show. That's a great, great thing. What are the major events Michelle that you're responsible for? Let's say this year? Gordon? Just mentioned one, the Caledonian games that Scottish games used to call it, right? The 126th annual Scottish gathering games, That was a

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tremendous success. And that's one that's a major event. We also have to home and garden shows a year. North Bay family expo boat sports and RV show, you know, there's a, there's a lot of large events. Can you think of some others that I'm from the

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larger events. We have some large horse shows as well. We have the Golden gate arabians Like this coming weekend, we got Fox starters and different different various shows, they're all pretty good size. So you know, you mentioned money, you got to mention them all, but there's

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a lot, you just said 170 events to 200 events, something like that, right? It's different separate events. That right. A lot of those are smaller events, they might be a wedding reception or a variety of events and we count all of those events and you know,

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then there's the larger events like circus vargas. Okay, if you have 172 100 events and how many, how many days did you call that? What you call it? Over? 3600 event days, event days? I was like, I don't remember that 1st, 3000 event days, 172 100

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events. How much revenue does this sort of thing generate for you out of the, This year, we should exceed $1,300,000 in interim revenues. Just, just rental of the facilities that doesn't include the horse racing simulcast or fair time revenues. That's just the revenue from all of

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these types of events that we're talking about the simulcast is important use of your facilities to, I know and yet that's not considered an interim event, is it? Or is it? It is, but for the purposes of the events that I've counted for you or, or

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the revenue figures that I gave you, that's not included in those figures, but we do, you know, have that going on year round. That's been quite successful. Do you work with that very much Michelle, but it's been very successful, hasn't it? Yes. Anything that raises funds

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for us out there, because there is one of the things I tell people the fair is an enterprise, basically that basically the fair is expected to pay its own way. It's not a tax supported institutions. That may have been one, I think one time fair had

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some problems many years ago in the county owned a little bit of money, but that's once in 55 years, you know, it's been a tremendously successful self supporting entity. What was the, what was that figure again? Over 300,000 bucks. That's what you're expecting? 300,001 million, 300,001

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million. 300,000. That isn't like me, is that right? Yes, that's amazing. And the combination of those revenues and the revenue that we generate from simulcast, wagering and horse racing and fair time, those are the things, as you mentioned, we're a private enterprise fund. So those are

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the things that support all of our expenses at the fairgrounds, You know, we don't receive those tax dollars, so we have to produce, you know, not just put on an annual fair, but be productive year round Michelle. How long have you been the assistant manager? A

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little over four years, this was my 5th fair. All right. You've been working with events I know for quite a while. What kind of growth in revenues have you experienced or seen over the last five years almost now in 1987 we were at just a little

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over 700,000 in annual revenues. And now we've grown to almost double that figure. Well a while ago and she said 1,000,000,000,000, I thought she said 300,000 and I thought Gee, that's pretty exceptional. And it's $1,300,000 you will probably earn from an event this year on behalf

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of everybody in the county. Congratulations. That's correct. Yeah, that's terrific. 700087. 1.3 million in 91. Well, that's, that's something, isn't it? If you do that again in the next five years, Michelle, you'll be heroin. It becomes um, what's the main source or what are the sources

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of the fairgrounds revenue and financing? As I mentioned, the revenues that we receive at fair time, The revenues that we received from our interim program and then horse racing and simulcast wagering and then we have some ongoing leases, but those primarily are where you get all

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your right now, I don't know this. I'm not sure whether You're concerned with this or not, but what the fair's annual budget is approximately 1 10 million, 10 million. And we have to think I keep my point, I keep making to people is you folks managing

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this out there have to make that money, not the taxpayer doesn't work out money to pay all the bills and all that sort of thing and not only that, you've done a lot of upgrading, haven't you? So this makes your rentals a little easier. It makes

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our clients happier when they see what their dollars are going for. You know, when a, when a client comes in and they spend X dollars for a facility and they see that each year we keep making improvements to the facilities that makes them feel good. They

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know where their dollars are going and they can see that it's it's not going to bigger salaries or whatever, but that's very, very important. I know for instance, going on the fairgrounds this year, 1991 tremendous number of improvements from, from 90 in the past year. There

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seems to me there was a lot more grass out there, isn't, it seemed to me there were a lot more lawn area, the whole place look nice, look cleaner, look nicer what you've done out there as, as a staff and fairgrounds. That really shows. And as

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you say, that's what people see when they come out there. Right, so be proud of your backgrounds. Okay, How many people are employed by the fair? We have close to 40 permanent year round employees, but during our peak periods like fair time, that number increases up

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to about 600 Right now. We're carrying about 50, 50 or between 50 and 60 on our payroll in preparation for harvest fair. And not only that the When the fair is on like you say you go up to 600 people but you're also Hosting maybe 400,000

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people over the course of the fair. Right, so that isn't really very many people. Excuse me. How many buildings on the fairgrounds are available for rental? There's 555. Yes, well we have the pavilion at 40,000 square feet. We have Finley Hall and Garrett building at 11,200

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square feet. And then we have the sea craft at 7200 square feet and the Hall of Flyers at 30,000 square feet. So there's close to 100,000 square feet. It's rentable. The Hall of Flowers itself? I know is that it's an exquisite thing every year. Do you

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use that? Are you able to rent that out during the year for anything or is that? Pretty much? Yes, we do a few times a year. That's good time we get it cleaned out and ready for after the harvest Fair. Then we got other things to

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Yeah that's right, we ran out to the boat shows and RV show different things because then then what in the spring it starts they start concocting the next got to have an extra footage from a thing like that. How many buildings available for five now what

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about the chris pecorino. What what what do you rent that out to? Mainly horse shows? Some of the more horse show we used to be. Is that the spring or something like that. And what are some of the other horse shows arabians, we have North Bay

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and then we have the, oh Western County court horses coming up this weekend and then a lot of those shows are repeats and then we have the pasos, that's what I was going to ask you. What do they call that? Something that's a horse that runs

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real smooth. The main thing is american horse I think is that horse from south America I believe. They are fascinating to watch. They kind of heavyset horses and they kind of roll when they run, but the person sitting on it just goes along like that. Now

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one thing did we, we lost one horse show or something, didn't one horse show moved from us to sacramento or something like that. Actually over the past couple of years, there have been a couple of horse shows that have basically outgrown our facilities and moved on

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to other facilities. We used to have the region three Arabian horse show and they've moved to reno we also had the California State Horseman's Association that moved their show to rancho marietta. But the interesting thing is the minute a horse show leaves our facility, another one

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books in because the, our facility is just so popular for horse shows. It seems to me that you really never have any problem. I mean, I'm sure your job around. It seems like a lot of problems, but I know people really appreciate it. We're gonna pause

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right here, uh, for a few messages and we'll be back. We'll talk more with Gordon Hall and Michelle Welcome about the events and interim activities at the Sullivan County fairgrounds. If your family has been affected by Alzheimer's disease, you probably know that so far there is

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call us, we'll help you check it out. Welcome back to this edition of Sonoma County in the nineties were talking about the Sonoma County fairgrounds injury of events. We're talking with Michelle Wake. um, who's the assistant manager of the Sonoma County Fair and Gordon Hall, who

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is the interim events coordinator? Uh, they've been telling us about the events that they hold at the fairgrounds and they also pointed out that in 1991 They expect to bring in approximately $1.3 million dollars from these events. So you can see that this is a major,

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major activity. Um, Gordon? We asked you this and I think you threw a little something about a while ago. But what is the basic square footage of the facilities that you have available? Counting the Hall of Flyers is a little over 100,000 square feet, 100,000. And

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that's in five separate, yes, five different buildings, You know, that's, that's a big facility, that's a big facility for Sonoma County. Okay, santa rosa, I guess pinpointed to say santa rosa County has been known as a pretty much known as any questions center for a long,

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long time. Now. We talked a little bit about horse shows are going to go and a couple of, a couple more came in immediately. But how many horse shows are held in your arenas? On an annual basis? About 34 36 30 something, 30 something. I didn't

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realize that there's all kinds of horses, like different types of shows you have, you also have your shows to which we haven't mentioned yet. And you got that wine country and Sonoma wine country. So we have that there. That's a real interesting show and in the

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Golden Golden State horse show, Golden State. We have also got, like I said earlier, Fox Trotters coming in. It's a variation. It's, it's not an excuse me stepping on your line. They always mention the morrigan horse show because they used to do the Oregon play while

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the horse. Yes, that's a fascinating horse show. People haven't seen that. They're all fascinating, but that is particularly fascinating one because there would be an organist playing that horse would would perform to the music and they still do that. Quite beautiful. A beautiful horse. Anyway, let's

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see. Did you name the larger horse shows? Yes, we pretty much covered all those. Alright, what are the other facilities that are used by the ongoing events? I know you've got, you've got other things like the golf course, for instance, what are some of the other

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area? We have the car Mark Brookwood parking lot, that's ongoing. And then we have the Car sales, they draw between 200 and 300 cars every weekend in additional cars. Some weekends they get in boats and RVS, but that has been a tremendous success. That's just, that's

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just in your parking lot. Right. It used to be out in our front parking lot remember in front of the pavilion and it outgrew that lot and moved out to the Brookwood lot and Sheila do par is the promoter for carmen and she's just done a

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tremendous job with that. We also have Bingo seven nights a week and there's three different groups that put on the Bingo, canine companions and, and we have a council on aging and then we have united several policy. How about rvs? Rvs out there too. We have

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one trailer lot out of the back end of the fairgrounds where the, the horsemen have horses that they own train out of our race track that are there year round. And then every given weekend we have different RV groups or just individuals that are looking for

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a place in the county to stay in. Actually our fairgrounds is quite nice for RV usage because of the ongoing interim activities that we have. I mean they can play bingo or they can go play seven holes on the golf course so they can go out

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to car mart and go shopping. It's a great place to come if you're there for some other event. The things you can do while you're there. For instance, the golf course, it's a classic example. And then every weekend there's all these different events going on, you

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know, anything from a home show to a gun show to a doll show and they can go to those events and enjoy them. And so there's a lot of people that whenever they're traveling through santa rosa like to stay at the fairgrounds. You know, one of

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the things that I always found colorful and touching their kids, the young men and women jumping their horses that these little horse shows, they're all wearing their little helmet riding breeches and their velvet jacket and many of them are very excellent horse women and men. But

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those, those shows are really something that people should come out and see how these kids love their animal and how proud they are when they, when they do well. You know, it's really, I always found that very touching to watch this kid if it's rentals like

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this and facilities like this that you're using over and over again, this becomes an important question. What improvements have been made to the facilities over, let's say the last 4.5 years that you've been the assistant manager. One of the first things that jim moore, the fair

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manager came in and did when he came on staff was, he walked through every facility and wrote lists of things that he saw that were wrong with the facility where areas where he wanted to see improvements and he's worked over the past five years with staff

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members in the buildings and grounds superintendent to prioritize and the fair board to prioritize what ordered those projects were going to be completed. One of the first things we did was the remodel of the jockey club. You remember, you may remember how that facility used to

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look and um, he worked with the county architect and some design specialists and developed a new design and completely remodeled that facility. It's quite beautiful now and then there was a remodel of the interior with grandstand. Then we went into Finley Hall and did a remodel

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in findlay, put in new restrooms, new paint, new floor, then went into V. G. Garrett which is where the bingo was held and then on to Ec. Craft and remodeled all of those facilities. And then in 1990 we moved on to the pavilion and put in

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new restrooms at the south end which were very much needed and have been really well appreciated by both the promoters of events at the fairgrounds and and people who use the fairgrounds to have those nice new restrooms. And then as you recall last year we completely,

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Well we've almost completed the remodel of the interior of the pavilion, added a lot of acoustical materials. First coat of paint it's had in probably 40 plus years on the inside and you know those are the types of things that we've done. We also went through

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and did a paving and drainage project putting all new drainage and paving on the north end. Well we also remodeled and well built completely was a jacket quarters. Then chris beck, they we've added new fence ticket booths in a new concession area. It's really nice. It

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looks really good this year and it's really a beautiful facilities now and then. Yeah I'm gonna start doing the back half on the roads pretty soon, get that out there. That's gonna be nice. There was also a new saddling paddock that was put in a couple

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years ago. That has gained quite a bit of attention. You know, the one that we used to have was left over from little miss marker. That movie, it was built back in that era. Well, everything you've done out there shows. That's the nice thing about people.

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I've talked to people, I didn't get to see much of the fair this year. I come down with this nonsense, but I've heard nothing but the reports about the appearance of the fairgrounds and I hear this during the year to Michelle for uranium events. So it's

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not just the fair itself, but the fact that this money is being spent or turned back into doing a nice job of making the place more aesthetically pleasing more scenically beautiful. I think it's really an excellent expenditure of funds and what you just said about the

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improvements that must represent an awful lot of money. A couple of the other things you've probably noticed is is there's been some attention to the front of the fairgrounds and when I, people sometimes consider Brookwood entrance, the front or the Bennett Valley entrance, the front, but

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when I'm referring to the Bennett Valley entrance in the, you know, when the pavilion was all repainted on the outside, that made a tremendous difference. And then our new electronic message center went up and that's made a difference in promoting what's going on at the fairgrounds.

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And then the new administration fence, it's just really helped to beautify the impression that people have. Excuse me that fencing has really made a tremendous difference in the appearance. We also done it at the apron of the grandstands to put a new fencing. Beautiful. How does

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one go about renting your facilities out there? They can call us and ask for information about any number of the facilities that we have available. We give them the prices check to make sure the data is available and then proceed with the license agreement and insurance

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and collecting a deposit on the event and so they do all of that in advance and then once they're event is scheduled and booked and we have the contract and the insurance then they complete a work order form which tells us everything that they want, how

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many tables or chairs or stages or anything, anything else that they might want. And that work order goes to Gordon? And then he and his crew take over and do all the setup and then cater to the event, make it ready for them. You've seen a

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lot of changes out there in the last lots, lots all most, all for the better. Yes, every bit of it really is. We have a good crews now and they're all conscientious about to work. And that makes the difference, a whole lot of difference because I've

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been through thousands of people since I've been there and we have a really good crews. They're really good. The gardening aspect of the fairground has also been, it seems to me has been very good in the last several years. You know, it's beautiful. It's beautiful out

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there. I mean, you can take a big facility like that. It could be very, very barren and ugly looking, some of ours, but it's becoming much more beautiful just to walk through there close to it every day. But larry McClure and his staff are very conscientious

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about keeping the fairgrounds beautiful as you say, and planting flowers and keeping the grass green and keeping the trees trimmed. But again, that money helps, you know, it takes money to buy all those flowers and the grass and That's where that 1.2 million that you're expecting

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this year comes in. That's really great. Uh, we're just about out of time. We have a minute left maybe. What are some of the other things you'd like to see come to the fair. You know, we, we can cater to just about any type of event.

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We, one thing we didn't mention is we have motorsports events and we'd certainly like to encourage that type of use of the fairgrounds. We'd like to see more concerts now that we've added all of this acoustical material to the Pavilion wrestling. All those things will come

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to pass. It always comes in and it goes so quick, Michelle. Thanks for coming over. Gordon is always a pleasure to see you both of you Keep up the good work. My name is written in the program Sonoma County in the nineties. Be back with you

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next week. Until then. Good night, good luck and good healthy to every one of you.