August 22, 2024
IN ATTENDANCE:Rick Bowen Commissioner Perry Buck Amy Cooksey Pat Kindvall Cindy Nosko-Minutes Lynette Peppler and incoming Commissioner District 3 Gary Schaneman Sean Short Lori Stevens Hannah Swanbom-Director and Fair update
ABSENT:Josh Docheff Mikayla Gabel-Fair Update Erin Mathews William Nelson Carole Pitre Mike Schwan
Sean Short welcomed the group and called the meeting of the Weld County Extension Advisory Council to order at 12: 00 pm. The minutes were approved by the board members. Hannah gave an update on Extension. We hired a EFNEP Nutrition Educator and she started yesterday. Her name is Brianda Guillen Covarrubias. It’s been a few years since we’ve had an educator so glad to have her on board. The program focuses on reduced and low-income families in acquiring the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and changed-behavior necessary for nutritionally sound diets, and to contribute to their personal development and the improvement of the total family diet and nutritional well-being. We are also without a horticulture agent as Micaela has accepted a position at CSU and she left in August. We’ve started the paperwork and process to rehire that position. At this time the Horticulture area is pretty quiet as we also lost the Horticulture assistant, Katey this summer who accepted a full-time position. Tomorrow, we start interviews for that position. There were 35 applications and we are interviewing 5 candidates. Hoping to get someone in the position very soon. Doing a tour this afternoon at White Plumb Farm with the Congresswoman who was here earlier this summer. She is coming back with some other leaders as she saw how well the county and city were working together on the project. They are looking to develop the same type of partnerships with others around the state. I also will be leaving Extension as I recently got engaged and will be moving to Arizona. My last day will be October 4th. The interim Director during the transition will be the Larimer County Director, Cary Weiner. Commissioner Buck gave an update on the commissioners. We are all happy for Hannah but she will definitely be missed. She has done a phenomenal job here at the Extension office and has accomplished extraordinary things during her time here, such as COWIAG conference and special events for the Weld County Fair. Commissioner Buck introduced Lynette Peppler who has joined as County Commissioner, District 3. The Fairboard this year was great and again we beat the Colorado State Fair with our very own livestock sale at the fair. I have always felt that the State Fair should be in Weld County and am very proud at how well the Weld County Fair went with there being such a big future in Agriculture here. The county budget is still in process and going well. My thanks to you all for your hard work, it is greatly appreciated. In the absence of Mikayla, Hannah gave an update on the Weld County Fair. We have another successful fair this year with more special events. This was the biggest fair we’ve done so far and busier than ever this year. Townsquare Media took care of the media and advertising for us. There were almost 45,000 impressions through TV and commercials, about 33,000 through audio such as radio and satellite and 116,000 through social media. There were about 5,000 entries in the Fair, close to 900 exhibitors, 152 different divisions, almost 3,000 classes for fair this year. This year we added some new event. Mikayla honored Hannah’s wishes for some special events, one of which was the truck tractor pull that we had the weekend before the set up of fair. We sold about 1800 tickets and had 40 different trucks and tractors. There were at least 7 different states who were represented. During the fair there was a barrel race with roughly 200 entries and they enjoyed so much that they are already wanting to come back for next year’s fair. There was a team roping event with about 285 that attended and then the rain came, we only got through about 130 teams. We’re hoping to reschedule for this fall as the awards are still in the office. The break away roping was cancelled due to the amount of rain that cam down the night before. The Ranch Rodeo was a huge success again this year. There were 15 teams with a waiting list of about 10 teams or so. There were also 7 state represented as well at this event. The Jr. Livestock Sale brought 1.84 million dollars this year which surpassed last year of 1.78 million last year, and there was about 400,000 dollars in add-ons that came in after the sale. Weld County Fair had 7 contestants run for the royalty court this year and they’re doing a Gala event on October 4th. We had many more vendors this year. There were 21 food truck vendors, 18 retail vendors and 5 informational vendors, so there were about 44 vendors and quite a few of them want to return next year. Our sponsorships surpassed the $100,000 mark and our goal was $75,000. Mikayla did a phenomenal job of getting in-kind and monetary donations this year. Even without the rides and other things, the fair is still very expensive especially when you have to pay for all the tents and essentially build the fairgrounds from ground up, so you know as the fair continues to grow so with the cost of having it. With no further business or new business, the meeting was adjourned at 1:00 p.m. The next Council meeting will be on October 17th at noon at the Extension Office.