Fair Board Appeals, Vowing ‘Fight To Survive’Kosciusko County Fair Board is appealing Special Judge Stephen Bowers’ Sept. 3 permanent injunction order and plans to “fight to survive.”
Fair Board President Kevin Harris said the board unanimously agreed to file an appeal on Monday.
The Sept. 3 order upheld a 1990 settlement agreement that stopped motorized racing at the fairgrounds. That ruling came after a more-than-yearlong dispute between the Kosciusko County Fairgrounds and neighboring homeowners after the homeowners filed suit in May 2018 claiming the fair started the racing back up.
The fair’s stance on the issue is that they honored the 1990 agreement but that the original homeowners moved away from the lake, making the agreement void.
Bowers disagreed with the fair, and said in his ruling, “Every owner of real estate has the right to the peaceable enjoyment of his or her property. Each parcel of real estate is unique; perhaps particularly so when the property is on the water.”
Bowers also said the freedom of people to enter into contracts, and enforce those contracts, is of compelling public interest.
“Allowing the fair to ignore its contractual obligation would undercut the public interest. Granting a permanent injunction, and thus allowing the fair to renege on its settlement agreement, would, in the court’s judgment, seriously undermine the public interest,” Bowers wrote.
The fair is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that is funded through the events it puts on. At the Sept. 9 Fair Board meeting,?Harris said those monies raised through those events are how the legal bills will be paid.
On Wednesday, Harris was unable to pin down the exact total of legal bills the fair has in regard to fighting this case. According to the fair’s Form 990 Tax form for October 2017 to Sept. 30, 2018, $58,536 were spent on legal expenses; and for the fiscal year of October 2018 through Sept. 9, 2019, $39,697.37 were spent on legal fees, totaling $98,233 on legal bills within the past two years. Those numbers do not include anything past Sept. 9 of this year.
Fair Board Treasurer Sheal Dirck confirmed about $96,000 has been spent on the lawsuit and that it’s only going to cost about $10,000 to appeal the ruling. While he’s always worried about spending money, he said he doesn’t see the cost to fair patrons increasing just because the fair has legal bills to pay.
The current Halloween events happening at the fairgrounds are the fair’s biggest fundraiser besides the fair itself, Harris said.
When asked on Wednesday if the fair board took out a loan to pay for legal bills, Harris said they “never took out a loan. We have a line of credit with the bank that we use annually to help support the day-to-day operations of the fair.”
Harris said the board’s decision to appeal the judgment – which was through an appeals process before – was after taking the advice of their lawyers into consideration and deciding they need to fight for the right to operate.
“I think, personally, and this is personally from Kevin Harris, that if we let people start controlling the events that we have at the fairgrounds that it won’t be long before they start to try to control the fairgrounds and then once that happens, we’ll have lost the fairgrounds,” Harris said. “So we’re fighting to survive.”
“It’s gonna be three judges’ opinions versus one,” Dirck said of going into the appeal process.
“We’ve always found a way to keep the fairgrounds open,” Harris said. “And I’m sure that we’ll weather this storm also. To the people who have supported the fair:?Thank you.”
Calls to attorneys for both sides were not returned as of press time.
