Planning For 185th County Fair Opens With Smoke Contingency Motion, Which Fails 5-4 After Committee Cannot Agree Which Way Fans Blow

WAUKESHA — Planning for the 185th Waukesha County Fair, which opens in 357 days, began Tuesday night in the Expo Center's north meeting room with a moment of reflection on the 184th fair, a reading of the final concession figures, and the planning cycle's first failed vote, a 5-4 rejection of a proposal to add a written smoke contingency to the 2027 operating plan.

The motion, introduced by committee member and cream puff contest judge Arlene Dorn, would have required the fair to maintain a formal procedure for wildfire smoke of the kind that settled over the fairgrounds on the 184th fair's third day, when an air quality advisory covered the county and the grandstand's Thursday evening concert was canceled.

Debate lasted 40 minutes and turned entirely on fans.

The Fan Question

Dorn's proposal called for a line of 12 box fans along the grandstand's east rail, to be activated whenever the state's air monitor crossed the advisory threshold. "Box fans move air," Dorn told the committee. "That is the entire claim I am making, and I would ask that the discussion stay at that altitude."

It did not. Members opposed to the plan noted that air, once moved, goes somewhere, and that the proposed fan line pointed across the midway at the cream puff stand. A member of the committee's funnel cake faction called this "a coincidence of geometry." A member of the cream puff faction produced a hand-drawn diagram showing the airflow arriving at the stand's service window at what she estimated was "chest height."

"Cream is dairy. Dairy absorbs ambient conditions. You cannot say the same about funnel cake, which is fried and cannot be smoked further."

— Committee member, cream puff faction, speaking against the fan line

Supporters countered that the fans could be angled. Opponents asked who would control the angle. The question of who would control the angle consumed the final 14 minutes of debate, at which point Vandehey called the vote. The motion failed 5-4, with the committee agreeing to revisit the matter "if the atmosphere does anything."

The Numbers

The evening's other business was the release of the 184th fair's final concession figures, which the committee's rules require to be read aloud. Fairgoers purchased 3,214 funnel cakes and 2,890 cream puffs over the fair's five days. The figures do not include the 11 puffs consumed in Thursday's eating contest, which were provided at no charge and remain entered in the fair's log as "11*."

The funnel cake faction moved to have the figures read into the record a second time, "for clarity." That motion passed 5-4.

Vandehey then ruled the figures "informational, not agenda-bearing," a reminder that the committee's eleven-year funnel cake versus cream puff question, un-tabled at the July 19 debrief, is docketed for the September meeting and may not be argued before then. "The numbers will still be the numbers in September," she said. "Nobody's numbers are going anywhere."

The Cord

The first item on the 2027 planning agenda was the disposition of the extension cord that connected the funnel cake fryers to the misting tent for 41 minutes on July 16, an incident the committee has formally absorbed into the fair's designation of "basically flawless." The cord has spent the days since the fair in a labeled bin in the Expo Center office.

The committee's longtime holdout, a dairy producer from the Town of Genesee, declined to approve the meeting agenda until the cord is evaluated, consistent with his position at the debrief. The committee instead voted 8-1 to evaluate the cord "at a future meeting." He was the one.

"I have been the one before. I can be the one again."

— Committee member, Town of Genesee

The committee's next session is in September, when the pastry question enters its twelfth consecutive year of consideration. The 185th Waukesha County Fair opens July 14, 2027. Asked whether 357 days was enough time to plan it, Vandehey said the committee has never needed more than 350.