A months-long feud between State Fair board members came to a head Friday during the group s monthly meeting.
Board members voted to approve what was described as a conservative budget for 2021, but not before board Chairwoman Beth Smith of Lincoln and board member Jeremy Jensen argued about whether the budget process had been transparent enough.
Jensen, a former Grand Island mayor who was appointed in 2019 as the city s representative on the board, said he felt the proposed budget should have been discussed more extensively in a public session before being voted on.
Jensen contended that having the budget presented to board members in November and then discussed in private by the board s finance committee before Friday s vote was a process that was not transparent enough.
The board met on a Zoom conference call.
In 2019, the State Fair suffered from heavy August rains that made the grass parking lots at Fonner Park unusable for visitor parking. That caused the fair to make unbudgeted expenditures for transportation to get people to the fairgrounds from parking areas throughout town.
It was also the fairâs 150th celebration and extra money was budgeted for entertainment and other expenses. Because of the rain, fair attendance was down and there was a major loss of revenue.
Then this year, the coronavirus pandemic affected fair attendance, though the fair board budgeted appropriately to reflect the lost revenue.
A months-long feud between State Fair board members came to a head Friday during the group s monthly meeting.
Board members voted to approve what was described as a conservative budget for 2021, but not before board Chairwoman Beth Smith of Lincoln and board member Jeremy Jensen argued about whether the budget process had been transparent enough.
Jensen, a former Grand Island mayor who was appointed in 2019 as the city s representative on the board, said he felt the proposed budget should have been discussed more extensively in a public session before being voted on.
Jensen contended that having the budget presented to board members in November and then discussed in private by the board s finance committee before Friday s vote was a process that was not transparent enough.