County officials meet to discuss fair

The Sanders County Commissioners called a special meeting between the Sanders County Board of Health and the Sanders County Fair Commission at the fairgrounds pavilion last week to discuss plans for preventing the fair from causing a coronavirus outbreak.

Members of the fair board are presently working on a draft that contains such plans, but some feel the plan is too vague and does not address enforcement practices with regard to COVID-19 guidelines. Board member Randy Woods, chairman, Jim Newman, and Kim Bergstrom met with Board of Health members Dr. Jack Lulack, Veterinarian Bob Gregg, both retired, and Commissioners Glen Magera and Carol Brooker. Commissioner Tony Cox is a member, but was not present. Thirteen people from the public attended the meeting, including Shawn Sorenson, the county sanitarian, and Karen Morey, the county's public health director. Plans are for the fair commission and the county health board to team up to address a succinct safety plan for this year's fair, which takes place Sept 3-6.

"The purpose of the meeting was to bring all concerned parties together to put together a plan to safely put on a county fair or not," said Brooker, who added that other counties' health boards have either canceled or scaled down their county fairs. "The county is very concerned with the number of cases in Montana on the rise. We want to help keep our citizens safe. It is not a good situation for the Board of Health and the governor to put restrictions on the restaurants and not follow the rules for the events we put on," she said.

The fair board plans to go on with the fair at this point and has already come up with several precautions in planning for this year's event, including distancing, hand-washing and sanitizing stations, Plexiglas shields on food and drink booths, and numerous signs posted throughout the grounds with reminders of the COVID-19 guidelines. Woods said they are going to do some distancing with the campers, including 4-H families, who camp there all week. The food and drink vendors, including the Sanders County Concessions Group, must have a plan approved by the county sanitarian. Don Burrell, the concessions group chairman, said his group decided last week to participate in this year's fair with their seven booths. Woods said they ordered 6,000 safety masks, which will be free to fairgoers.

The Sanders County Board of Health special meeting had not been long in planning, but was prompted after the commissioners received calls and emails from concerned residents that the fair was going to take place. Brooker said they needed to find out what plans the fair board were working on and wanted to get the two entities together. "We're not here to shut down the fair, we're here to collaborate on whatever that fair's going to look like," Brooker said at the meeting, adding that the boards need to come up with the best plan to make the fair safe.

She said the three commissioners have talked and wonder how the fair can go on safely. "I don't want to cancel the fair, but if we can't do it safely, it could look a lot different. The Board of Health has to look at the health of our community not economics," she said. The commissioner said that it's not just the public they have to be concerned with. "We're putting our employees at risk. The sanitarian has to be on site during the fair doing inspections, our law enforcement officers are going to be here, they're going to be mingling around with the people. We're putting our employees at risk and the county needs to think about that," she said.

Magera, who took the lead at the meeting, wants to get multiple entities and individuals involved in reviewing the fair board's Communicable Disease Plan, created by fair board member Kim Bergstrom two weeks ago. Brooker believes Clark Fork Valley Hospital should be involved in the planning. She said that any outbreak would be a huge burden for the hospital.

Brooker is concerned that the fair board's Communicable Disease Plan as it's presently written is too general. She said that any plan needs to be specific and written, including what the PRCA rodeo officials have planned for their events. She'd like to see a plan where everyone involved knows what's going on. She asked the fair board that if people in the grandstands don't abide by the social distancing rules, who would enforce it? "Things will function a lot better, you guys will feel a lot safer and your jobs will be a lot easier if everybody knows what's going to happen," she told the fair board members.

"We need a very specific plan for putting on this fair safely under the governor's guidelines for events for 50 or more people," she said. "We had a meeting Friday with our insurance carrier, sounds like after July 1st if we have an outbreak at one of the county sponsored events and someone sues us we will not be covered for the liability. This is another layer of concern for the taxpayers of Sanders County," said Brooker. Bill Naegeli, the county's emergency manager, said at the meeting that he believes that if there isn't a thorough written plan and there's an outbreak and somebody dies, there's going to be a lawsuit. He said there needs to be a plan that shows the county made their best effort for the public safety.

Others voiced their opinions and reservations about the fair. "I worry about bringing a lot of people in here. I understand they like to come and it's a fun event for everybody, but there's real potential there that worries me for the health of the county," said Gregg. "We hear the politics, we hear the economics, but I don't want this thing to be forgotten and that thing is this is an infectious disease," said Lulack.

Woods was optimistic about the fair, but realizes that the 2020 fair might not be a big moneymaker. "We're going to see a hit, but we felt it would be a huge financial hit not to do anything," said Woods. "Even if we lose a little bit of money, it's still going to be better than not going on at all." Woods said the safety precautions they are planning aren't just for the coronavirus epidemic, but will remain in place even after the pandemic subsides. "If all of a sudden there's a big spike and the governor shuts everything back down and everybody has to stay home, well then the fair is just done. We can't plan the fair in a week, but we can stop it in a week and that's why we're moving forward with public health in mind, too," said Woods.

Brooker said she isn't sure fairs can be restricted in a safe way. "It's not controllable," she said, but she added that if the fair is canceled, it would be a mutual decision by the fair board and the Board of Health. Magera said they plan to have more meetings between the two groups. John Hamilton, as the public information officer for the county, will be continuously adding information to the county website about the coronavirus that the county gets from the governor's office.