Fair Committee Assures Next Year's Event Will Avoid Summer Entirely, If Possible

WAUKESHA — Waukesha County Fair Planning Committee Chair Diane Vandehey, 61, told the committee's Tuesday session that staff have been directed to research whether next year's fair can be scheduled outside of summer entirely, a possibility she described as "not yet a plan, but no longer not a plan," five days after the 184th fair closed under a heat advisory that held at 96 degrees for its final stretch.

The 184th fair ran July 15 through July 19 under conditions the Expo Center's facilities staff addressed with three rented misting tents, three additional box fans beyond the grandstand's usual allotment, and a revised water bottle policy that let fairgoers carry sealed bottles past the gate for the first time in the fair's recorded history.

Vandehey called it the fourth consecutive year the fair has coincided with what she termed "weather," a streak the committee's minutes now track on its own line item.

The Search For A Season

Fair board member Bob Jenkins, 54, told the committee he had begun compiling a list of "alternative seasonal windows" that would keep the fair's traditional five-day run but move it off the calendar's hottest stretch. The list, presented on a single printed page, named late fall and early spring as the leading candidates, with a third line reading "theoretically, December" that Jenkins said he included "for completeness, not advocacy."

Jenkins said the committee's charge for the next several meetings is narrower than choosing a date. "We are not picking a new month tonight," he said. "We are studying whether summer, as a season, still meets the fair's operational needs. That is the whole motion. Nobody should read anything further into it yet."

"I would just like it on the record that I raised December. What the committee does with December is the committee's business."

— Bob Jenkins, fair board member

What Doesn't Move

Vandehey was careful to note that any seasonal shift would not affect the 185th fair, whose dates of July 14 through 18, 2027, were locked in at the committee's July 22 planning session and are, per that meeting's minutes, not open for reconsideration. A change, if the committee ultimately votes for one, would earliest apply to the 186th fair.

Asked whether the committee had considered simply adding more misting tents in the meantime, Vandehey said misting tents were "a mitigation, not a solution," and that the distinction was one she wanted the record to reflect clearly before September.

Jenkins's one-page list will be formally distributed to the full committee ahead of the September meeting, where it will be taken up alongside the fair's twelfth consecutive year of funnel cake versus cream puff deliberations. Vandehey said the two items would not be discussed in the same agenda block, "for everyone's sake."

The committee's website continues to list July 14, 2027, as the 185th fair's opening date, unchanged, as of Tuesday night.