To the editor:
On Dec. 23, 2019, in a hastily called meeting of the five Hancock County Exposition Complex Corporation board members, the organization was dissolved on a 5-0 vote.
Since its conception by county officials in November 2014, the HCECC and Ag Association have done nothing to ensure the Hancock County Tourism Commission’s investment of $50,000 on the Triad Consulting vision of a new fairground would come true. In 2003, the county spent about the same amount of funds on its first attempt to construct a new fairground.
In January 2016, Rep. Bob Cherry introduced a bill to raise the food and beverage tax by 1% in the House Ways and Means Committee. The $1.2 million revenue per year would be used to pay for a revenue bond for the fairground construction.
Twenty members of the HCECC and 4-H Ag Association testified in favor of this increase.
Six residents of Hancock County spoke out in opposition to this increase.
The HCECC and 4-H Ag Association do not have the knowledge or qualifications needed to take on such a task. They do not have a Strategic Business Plan showing the project’s construction cost, even today. This bill failed to pass out of the Ways and Means Committee and has failed every year to date!
The Hancock County Board of Commissioners, Hancock County Council, and 4-H Ag Association adopted a 50-year County Farm lease on Feb. 20, 2017. It listed provisions the HCECC and Ag Association must do for the lease agreement to remain in effect. Their failure to comply with any of them left the agreement null and void from the start!
The former HCECC and 4-H Ag Association inaction have ensured a new fairground will cost the taxpayers significantly more due to the construction cost increases over the past four years. Millions more!
Not one penny of the tourism commission’s 2015 1% innkeepers tax increase has been spent on any project connected to a new fairground. It has been spent on upgrades to the 4-H Ag Association’s current fairground the last two years: a $90,000 paving project and $95,000 in upgrades to the Exhibit Hall. This on top of the county’s $80,000 to $85,000 funding per year. If the county’s 2020 budget is approved by the state, this would increase to $90,000.
The HCECC may be dead, but plans for a new fairground are not! These same individuals are planning another very expensive fairground using your hard-earned dollars, including a property tax increase. They are waiting on the 2020 general election results.
Solution: The Board of Commissioners must appoint a “Fair Commission.”
I encourage them to follow John Priore’s recommendations from the September 2015 commissioners meeting. John told them these people were not qualified to assume such an undertaking.
If the commissioners would appoint one voting member from each of the nine township boards to the fair commission, it could bring in the qualified people necessary for the planning and construction of a new fairgrounds.
The fair commission working with the tourism commission could set up a budget to fund them with the 2015, 1% innkeepers tax revenue (approximately $80,000 per year) using the grant system. The tourism director would be the liaison with the fair commission.
George Langston
Greenfield
