September 1, 2016
Announcements and Reminders
This week’s Rotarian of the Week is Michele Bassi nominated for woman of the year by the Aptos Chamber of Commerce.
We are looking for a 2019-2020 District Governor.
A fund development training will be held in Los Gatos September 24th 8:30-12:00.
Michelle announced that a luncheon is coming up for the scholarship program for emergency grants to benefit  the Cabrillo College Foundation WES Women Education Success program. It is $100 a ticket for the luncheon which will be held Friday September 30th at the Cabrillo College Horticultural Center.
Story
         Kendra Cleary introduced our speaker Lynne Grossi who spoke about the upcoming attractions at the Santa Cruz County Fair. This year the fair is September 14-18th.
    
 
 
 
     ‘Cows plows and oh wows’ is the theme for this year’s fair. Two purposes for the fairgrounds are to have an annual fair and to have a disaster relief center.  It is on 104 acres and has 100,000 square feet of building space.  It is governed by a nine person board of directors. 
More than 350 events were held last year with more than 400,000 people on the fairgrounds. There is 1 FT employee and several PT employees plus lots of volunteers.  They receive $30,000 annual budget from the state.
The Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds Foundation handles all the alcohol sales on the fairgrounds which raises money for the fair as well as other events which together raise almost $400,000 year. There are 18 exhibit departments at the Fair. Among these are hobbies, collections, horses, photography, model railroads, yesterday’s farm agricultural history project and small animal barn, bug barn, plus entertainment and commercial exhibits.  This year’s garden exhibitors will focus on pollinators.  The Farm Bureau also holds its annual apple pie contest.
About 70,000 people go the fair and almost $903,000  total income is raised which is 60% of total annual income of the fairgrounds.  Other income comes from building rentals. If you volunteer a 4 hour shift, it gets you free admission! You still have time to enter baked goods and confections as well as fruits, vegetables, flowers and potted plants!
For more information see Santacruzcountyfair.com