My husband is not happy. Frustrated and puzzled, vendors worried the small pie of customers will take a big bite out of their late-summer profits. Privately, some wondered if long-running controversies between the fair board and county commissioners turned off people to the fair. Fair board President Harvey Underwood said that's not the case. He blamed the decrease on several factors, including a struggling farm economy torpedoed by the Asian financial woes and an oversupply of several main Mid-Columbia crops.
People are just a little bit more tight with their money.
Underwood said about half the attendance drop was caused by a new counting system that better tracks bus riders. In the past, he said, bus riders were often double counted, inflating attendance. High temperatures on Tuesday and a windy Wednesday didn't help either. Although gate attendance plummeted, participation in today's youth market stock sale also dipped. The numbers of beef, sheep and pigs dropped, in some cases by two or three dozen animals from last year.