The Rockdale Fair has been filling up Fair Park for 44 years the third week in October and it’s going to be doing the same for the next 44 years.
Last week the city took some steps which might end with Rockdale giving the park to the Rockdale Fair Association (RFA), that hard-working and generous organization which has made our Fair into one of the finest put on by any small town in Texas.
(The city bean-counters actually said “convey” instead of “give” but that’s just the way they talk.)
What’s going on?
It’s actually pretty simple. The previous nine-year Memorandum of Understanding—it’s actually an agreement but see above—spelling out the relationship between the city and RFA has expired. A new one has not yet been worked out.
The city has expressed a desire to have the RFA bear more of the expenses for maintenance and utilities at the fairgrounds. The RFA needs to know exactly what would be involved so it can budget.
At last week’s meeting one of the possible solutions mentioned would be to simply give Fair Park to the RFA. It’s the RFA, anyway, who has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars upgrading the old park’s facilities over the past 44 years and then simply giving them to the city.
(Has anyone ever said “thank you” to the RFA for that? Probably, but let us say it again. Thank you!)
That’s it. But, apparently some of the folks who showed up at the standing room only council meeting arrived under the impression the city was considering imposing enough of an expense burden on the RFA to end the Fair forever.
How did that impression get left? Anyone ever heard of the Internet?
Just about the first thing Mayor John King said when the agenda item came up was “Nobody wants to do away with the Fair.”
In fact, King told the audience that in a worst-case scenario—the parties can’t forge an agreement over the next few months—the 2019 Fair goes on just as the 2018 one did.
But that’s not going to happen. The city and the RFA will work out some kind of agreement, spelling out who does what, whether it’s an actual land transfer or a lease of some kind.
Ironically, it has been exactly 100 years since a previous generation of like-minded volunteers, the Rockdale Farmers Fair Association, gave the park to the city in the first place.
The Fair is going to be here for a long time. The good people of Rockdale will see to that.—M.B.
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