SANDPOINT — County officials, spearheaded by the Human Resources department, will begin work to properly define the role of the county’s fair board and clarify who oversees fairground personnel.  

In a special meeting held on Thursday, Dec. 4, commissioners Brian Domke and Ron Korn met with HR director Jonathan Holmgren and legal counsel Nate Adams and Robert Abel to discuss the roles and responsibilities of fairground employees and their relationship with the fair board. 

The meeting stems from Holmgren’s analysis that the county could face risk related to county fairground personnel. The director acknowledged a lack of clarity regarding the fair’s organizational structure, noting that the fair board has been operating beyond its intended scope of work.  

As a result, according to Holmgren, fairground personnel have expressed a lack of guidance in their roles, unsure whether they report to county commissioners or the fair board.  

“It is my professional opinion as the Human Resources director that the county fair board has been operating beyond the scope of its responsibility for some time and has veered into the lane of responsibility that belongs to the BOCC,” Holmgren said. “This has resulted in the fair board thinking that they employ the county fairgrounds personnel and can direct their work.” 

Both commissioners agreed with Holmgren’s examination after analyzing several sections of code, noting that the fair board had been doing what was delegated to them by commissioning boards prior, including work outside of managing and planning the fair event.  

Domke and Korn further acknowledged a lengthy history of misunderstandings about how the fairgrounds should be managed in coordination with the fair event itself. The fair board, as interpreted by county code during the meeting, can be responsible for planning and coordinating the county fair as delegated by county commissioners. However, the board's scope of work has expanded over the years to include tasks outside the fair itself, causing confusion. 

“I don’t think the fair board has acted inappropriately, because it sounds like there’s been a history of the county commissioners saying, ‘this is the expectation,’ because we haven’t defined it otherwise. I don’t think anyone’s done anything wrong,” Domke said. 

Korn related the fair board’s structural concerns to when the county determined that the Ambulance Service District had been treated like a county department as opposed to a district, noting that when the board is made aware of something incorrect, it’s their responsibility to correct the situation appropriately. 

“For many of the past boards, they’ve treated EMS as a department, even though it wasn’t. So now, this is kind of a similar issue — We’re being alerted that maybe this (fair board) hasn’t been done correctly, and maybe we should clean it up and fix it.”  

Coming out of the meeting, commissioners unanimously approved a motion clarifying that fairground employees report to county commissioners. The motion presented at the meeting also calls for the county to discuss and better define the fair board's role.  

Commissioner Asia Williams is expected to make comments related to the decision of the meeting at Tuesday’s business meeting, according to a Facebook post. Her absence from the meeting stems from a pre-scheduled review of medical clinics in Kootenai County with the HR department, the insurance broker, the insurer and the PMR team.