Weeks after the decision not to renew former Fair Manager Jay Scott’s contract, a member of the Flathead County Fair Board is responding with what she says is an effort to dispel rumors by laying her reasoning behind the decision bare.
Joy Struble, the board’s most-recently appointed member, said she approached the situation with a business-like mindset because of the fair manager’s high level of employment. After looking through records, Struble said she concluded that the fairgrounds suffered from a lack of financial recordkeeping and deficiencies in operations management.
The Fair Board voted on Feb. 11 not to renew Scott’s contract and have taken heat from some valley residents ever since. After Scott’s contract was not renewed, board member Ted Dykstra Jr. was appointed as the interim fair manager. Then-board member Paul Atkinson resigned his seat in protest of the move.
After the decision, at least one board member received what was described as “hate mail,” in which the anonymous letter writer called the board “evil doers” and hoped that they and their families would have “less income, and a stained reputation.”
And a month after the board’s decision, a group of frustrated residents gathered to discuss its strategy to get Scott reinstated as fair manager.
The group’s main objective was asking every member of the Fair Board – Struble, Butch Woolard, Susan Munsinger and Dykstra – to voluntarily resign. If they didn’t, the group said they would put pressure on the Flathead County Commission to replace the board.
Munsinger resigned her position on March 17. She wrote in her resignation that the public outcry had been difficult to handle because the board cannot legally speak directly about personnel issues because they must protect Scott’s privacy.
“It has been a difficult decision for me, but I have determined that I cannot continue working in this environment,” Munsinger wrote.
But Struble said she would not resign, nor does she feel she should have to.
“I don’t feel I’ve done anything wrong worth resigning,” Struble said. “I won’t tolerate bashing and attacks.”
Although board members have legal personnel restrictions, Struble pointed to pieces of the public record that illuminate her decision-making process.
The information largely stems from an internal audit performed on the fairgrounds and its staff to check operational and cash-handling procedures during the 2009 Northwest Montana Fair.
In it, the auditor wrote, “[t]he current management staff lacks sufficient accounting expertise for the financial affairs of the fairgrounds.” The audit also found that cash was not being deposited on a regular basis in the off-season.
Since the fair manager handles hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, Struble said his or her staff should be able to complete basic accounting and financial record-keeping tasks. And when looking into past financial records and contracts, Struble said she often couldn’t find any.
As one example of accounting discrepancy, Struble pointed to Scott’s response to the audit, which said the fairgrounds sells more than 60,000 tickets each fair season. The revenue report, however, listed gate receipts at just $777.75 last year.
Fairgrounds office assistant Nuggett Carmalt said she was not in charge of bookkeeping during the 2009 fair, and added that it was something that she is still trying to clean up today.
When she became a full-time employee three years ago, Carmalt said financial records were largely out of place and disorganized and that she agrees with the auditor’s assessment on financial recordkeeping.
And while assistants may be charged with office organization, Scott is directly responsible for his staff as the manager, Struble said. In Scott’s response to the audit, he wrote that additional staff with knowledge of accounting and the computer program QuickBooks would be helpful for office operations.
Struble also pointed to a lack of written record keeping in the grounds’ operational management. She said the board found double bookings for buildings on the grounds and that some contracts were made verbally.
While verbal contracts are not necessarily a bad thing, Struble said it makes it difficult to keep track of who has paid their bill and who has booked what building.
The audit also said “storage rental at the fairgrounds by the county fair manager was not billed and was not paid on a timely basis,” to which Scott responded that not all customers pay monthly because some pay when they pick up their units instead.
This makes monthly accounting almost impossible to track, Struble said, and also makes it difficult to know what is being stored on the grounds. Carmalt said standard procedure is to write up a storage contract in the fairgrounds office, but if that is not done, they have no way to bill the owner.
“There is very much a lack of record keeping in that area,” Carmalt said.
Struble also noted that there were not just two or three examples of poor record keeping, but an accumulating issue over the years. She added that the lack of record keeping put Scott in a vulnerable position when it came to financials because it would be difficult to explain if something was awry.
Several attempts to reach Scott for comment were unsuccessful.
The decision not to renew Scott’s contract is the result of the vision of the fairgrounds as an events center and the possibility of giving the grounds a facelift, Struble said.
“No one was saying that everything he did was wrong,” Struble said. “We just looked at what was being done and decided it needed to change.”
Part of the criticism leveled at the Fair Board was backed by the claim that by not renewing Scott’s contract, the board was heading toward possibly selling the fairgrounds. Struble said there has been no such movement or conversation, and the board is working to improve the grounds.
Dysktra said that if the board had not voted on Scott’s contract that day it would have been renewed automatically. Since the board had recently redefined the manager’s job description – a process Scott helped with, Struble and Dykstra said – they decided not to renew and let him reapply for the new description, Dykstra said.
And while some in the valley have insinuated Dykstra had a conflict of interest by taking the interim manager position because he voted against renewing Scott’s contract, he said he hasn’t applied for the open position and doesn’t know if he will. He also said there was still confusion over some records.
“The auditors are still digging because there’s a lot of information still missing,” Dykstra said.
There are also allegations that the rodeo and food vendors are pulling their contracts in protest of Scott’s treatment. Rodeo announcer Bob Tallman will not return in 2010 for this reason, saying the board’s decision was “the most disgusting, outlandish, overbearing, illegal wrong that I have ever seen happen in my 43 years” of working with fairs.
Struble said any vendors who did pull contracts were immediately replaced, but there was not a mass vendor exodus. Dykstra said the fair’s shows and rodeo are already lined up, with a Tuesday night performance from the Oak Ridge Boys and a Wednesday night show by Mercy Me.
“The truth is that we’ve got our concerts put together, we’ve got our rodeos put together. If I keeled over dead, the show would go on,” Dysktra said.
Struble noted that the board is comprised of people with specific talents and duties, and expecting one volunteer member to know everything about the fairgrounds is unrealistic. She also said that she hoped rumors of boycotting the fair in the Scott’s name were not true because it would be disrespectful to what he had helped build.
“I don’t want to see the community take it out on the fair,” Struble said.