Don’t step on the communities’ activities

The countdown to the end of the summer keeps ticking away as one event after another concludes its run for 2014.

The Churchill Country Fair and Ranch Hand Rodeo finished its three-day show at the fairgrounds in a weekend busy with other events from Lovelock to Carson City. Although Lovelock’s annual weekend celebration has honored that town’s heritage for a long time, the newly minted “NV150 Sesquicentennial Fair” in Carson City, along with its own ranch rodeo, dampened Churchill County’s weekend by hurting attendance when local organizers wanted to attract people from outside the area to see what Churchill County had to offer. Look at it this way. It happens in Fallon regularly when groups do not check with the Fallon Convention and Tourism Authority or the LVN and schedule their events on the same weekend.

For the past seven years, the Country Fair has been held on the first weekend of August, while the Fallon Ranch Hand Rodeo became part of the fair five years ago. Last year, attendance was great with the parking lot brimming with vehicles.

Although local officials were gracious in their comments, the fact is that either those planners at the state level devising events for Nevada’s sesquicentennial were either oblivious to see what other events were occurring in Northern Nevada or they had a “heck with you attitude.” There is no reason why a “state fair” planned in less than a year should step on a county event’s toes whether it would be in Churchill or Pershing counties. County fairs, by tradition, lead up to the state fair … or that’s the way it used to be before Nevada dropped the state fair like a hot potato five years ago for lack of attendance and money.

The Fallon Ranch Hand Rodeo, nevertheless, managed to put on a good show, but with only half the contestants it had originally envisioned. Organizers from both the Fallon and Carson City rodeos worked through the problem of having contestants stretched from one event to the other and agreed to have half the contestants compete in Fallon on one day, in Carson City the other.

Bottom line is this: This type of overlapping should not have occurred. This was not a last-minute decision to have another ranch hand rodeo on the same weekend because the decision originated in December.

For the rest of the month, however, our area will host the annual Fallon Fights on Friday, and one week later as part of the Mayors NV150 Commission, an all-school reunion will encompass the weekend of Aug. 15-17.

Let’s just hope the state NV150 Commission doesn’t step on our toes again with any last-minute activities for the next two weekends or rest of the year.

Editorials written by the LVN Editorial Board appear on Wednesdays.