County Fair Concludes; Committee Already Mobilizing For 2027 Funnel Cake Wars

WAUKESHA — The 184th Waukesha County Fair closed for the season on the evening of July 19, and by my count it took the fair planning committee nine days to begin arguing, in earnest, about the 185th. I want to be clear that I say this with admiration. I have served on committees. I have watched committees take nine months to agree on a room to meet in. This one had the dairy barn swept out, the extension cords coiled, and a preliminary funnel cake position paper in circulation before the port-a-johns were hauled off the grounds.

Fair Planning Committee Chair Diane Vandehey, 61, confirmed Thursday that funnel cake vendors are "already circulating talking points" ahead of next year's booth placement vote, a fight that has now run, depending on which member you ask, either eleven or twelve consecutive years without resolution. I am not going to adjudicate that discrepancy here. I have read both numbers in this newspaper and I have decided it is not my business which one is correct.

Eleven Months Is Not As Long As It Sounds

The 185th fair opens July 14, 2027, which by my arithmetic puts us at roughly eleven months out as of this writing. Vandehey said the committee will vote on next year's entertainment lineup in October, a comparatively simple item. This year's grandstand featured Sebastian Bach, Hoobastank, and Eve 6, and Vandehey said the 2027 slate will be "in a similar spirit," which I take to mean the committee already knows who it wants and is waiting a decent interval before announcing it.

The snack allocation question is a different animal entirely. "The snack allocation discussion always takes longer than the music selection," Vandehey said, "and last year the funnel cake faction didn't stop calling until August." She did not specify which August. I did not ask her to clarify, on the theory that some facts are better left as weather.

"The snack allocation discussion always takes longer than the music selection, and last year the funnel cake faction didn't stop calling until August."

— Diane Vandehey, fair planning committee chair

The Emails Start In September

Committee member Robert Schulz, reached separately, offered a more granular timeline. "By September, you start getting emails," Schulz said. He would not say from whom, though he allowed that some of them arrive before the committee's September meeting has even been formally noticed, which he described as "a courtesy nobody asked for."

Readers of this section will recall that the pastry rivalry, the cream puff stand's 1987 footprint against a funnel cake faction that has spent multiple summers arguing for more square footage, was tabled at the July 19 closing debrief and is docketed for the committee's own September session. That meeting has not happened yet. By Schulz's account, the emails do not require it to have happened.

I asked Vandehey whether the committee had considered simply resolving the pastry question once, permanently, and retiring it the way a jersey number gets retired. She said the committee had discussed exactly that in 2019, and that the discussion itself took four meetings and produced no resolution, "which some members feel is itself the resolution." I wrote that down and did not ask a follow-up, because I did not see one that would improve on it.

What I Am Watching For

The committee's next regular session is scheduled for August, ahead of the September meeting where the pastry question will, per current docket, enter either its twelfth or thirteenth year, depending again on whose count you trust. I plan to attend both. I attended the July 19 debrief in the dairy barn, which Vandehey called "basically flawless" with the fair still five and a half hours from closing, and I came away with the sense that this committee does not so much resolve disputes as maintain them at a stable operating temperature, the way you'd maintain a pilot light.

Schulz, for his part, said he intends to enjoy the next several weeks before the calls start. "There's a window," he said. "August is the window." He did not say what he planned to do with it, and I did not press him, because a man who has correctly identified his own window is entitled to spend it however he likes.