Fair Planning Committee Declares 184th Fair "Basically Flawless" Except For The 41 Minutes The Funnel Cake Fryers And The Misting Tent Shared One Generator
"That was a sequencing issue, not a planning issue," said committee chair Diane Vandehey, 61, at Sunday morning's closing debrief, held in the dairy barn while the fair was still open.
WAUKESHA — With six hours still remaining in the 184th Waukesha County Fair, the fair planning committee voted 8-1 Sunday morning to declare the event "basically flawless," a formal designation members said could not wait for the fair to actually end.
"You don't need to see the last six hours to know what kind of fair this was," committee chair Diane Vandehey, 61, told members assembled in the dairy barn, which remains the coolest building on the fairgrounds. "We have five days of data. The data says flawless. Basically."
The word "basically" was added by amendment, 7-2, after a 9-minute discussion of the generator.
The 41 Minutes
The incident in question occurred Thursday between 1:34 and 2:15 p.m., when a portable generator serving fryer row was also connected, through a chain of extension cords whose origin no committee member could account for, to the misting tent on the south end of the fairgrounds. For 41 minutes, according to a vendor log reviewed by this newspaper, the fryers and the mist operated in alternation but never at the same time, with the tent dropping to what one fairgoer described as "a light personal humidity" each time a batch of funnel cakes went in.
Nobody was harmed. Fairgoers seeking relief were redirected 200 feet to the air-conditioned Expo Center, and the mist was restored at full pressure by 2:15, when a second generator was located behind the grandstand, where it had been the whole time.
"That was a sequencing issue, not a planning issue. The plan was two generators. The sequence was one."
— Diane Vandehey, fair planning committee chair
The debrief's only sustained disagreement concerned which side of the committee's long-running pastry divide bore responsibility for the cord. The funnel cake faction noted the misting tent had been sited by a member of the cream puff faction. The cream puff faction noted the fryers were the item drawing the load, and that whipped cream "requires no electricity at the point of service, which is the kind of thing this committee used to value."
Vandehey ended the discussion by ruling the cord "an artifact of the fair itself" and belonging to no faction, a compromise both sides accepted while visibly not accepting it.
The Asterisk
The committee also voted Sunday to certify the results of Thursday's cream puff eating contest, with one asterisk. Kevin Griesbach, 34, of Mukwonago, was confirmed as champion at 11 puffs in 6 minutes, but the record will be entered in the fair's log as "11*" after a protest alleging that puff No. 9 was, in the words of the protest, "structurally two puffs."
"The cream had fused them," said contest judge and committee member Arlene Dorn, who reviewed photographs of the tray. "In the judging community we call that a conjoined puff. It counts as one. It has always counted as one. The asterisk is to acknowledge the conversation happened."
Griesbach, reached by phone, said he was "at peace with the asterisk" and that puffs 9 through 11 "were all kind of one experience anyway."
Conditions Have Improved
The declaration of basic flawlessness carried one procedural consequence the committee did not appear to anticipate. Members will recall that on the fair's 96-degree opening day, the committee voted 8-1 to table its eleven-year funnel cake versus cream puff dispute "until conditions improve." Sunday's vote, by formally finding the fair flawless, established that conditions have improved, and under the committee's own rules the question returned automatically to the floor at 9:52 a.m.
The meeting adjourned at 9:53.
"The motion is un-tabled. And on that note, I see we have no time left."
— Diane Vandehey, adjourning
Vandehey confirmed the pastry question will appear on the agenda of the committee's September meeting, its 12th consecutive year under consideration. Asked whether last week's state finding that a portion of the grandstand haze was airborne funnel cake had strengthened either side, she declined to speculate, calling the haze "certified pre-existing."
The lone vote against the flawless designation came from the committee's longtime holdout, a dairy producer from the Town of Genesee, who said he had no complaint about the fair but votes no on all self-evaluations "as a matter of principle, until the committee agrees to evaluate the cord."
The 184th Waukesha County Fair closes tonight. The 185th is in 361 days, and planning, Vandehey confirmed, begins Tuesday.