Board of Supervisors Committee - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Alameda County Fairgrounds and the Alameda County Fair Ad Hoc Committee Meeting. I'd like to start this morning with a Pledge of Allegiance, so if everybody could rise. Rose, would you lead us? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. So we will be taking public comments, I guess, at the first of the meeting, if there are any that are not specific. Would you like to do roll call? Yeah, I'll do the roll call. Tesla, you want to do roll call?

Supervisor Miley? Here. Supervisor Halbert?

Present.

Susan Ranishi, excused. Jerome Hoban?

Here.

Rose Johnson? Here. Chuck Moore, excused. John Smith?

Here.

Gordon Galvin? Excused, Bill Harrison.

Yeah. We have a quorum in the room. Thank you very much. So if there is anyone that would like to make comments before we get started into the agenda, please let us know. Three minutes for anyone. Anyone online with comments?

I have no online speakers. Okay. Yes, I do. I'm sorry. Amy?

Oh, hello. Can you hear me? Yes. Hello. We can hear you.

Yes.

Hi. Yes, I am with the Cranes or Alameda County 4-H. And I am going to ask, I'm here to speak for the exhibitors this year. We received a letter or an email from the staff of the fair. So animals and animals in the fair. They put Bonnie, the chief of the fire department, as the person that said we were not allowed to be cooking for our children while they're exhibiting at the fair. We have a lot of families who are They don't have a lot of money and all their money goes into their project animals up until the day that we auction them off. So we try to facilitate feeding the children at the fair. We are a little concerned that the fair used the people in the livestock auction as the ones to say we couldn't have fair. They used Bonnie's name, the chief of the fire department's name. to try to prevent us from picking you there. We have a lot of families who can't really afford to eat every meal at the fair. We can't afford to spend our money at the fair every day for every meal. We would appreciate that we We had a couple of people who are on the board help us be able to facilitate feeding our children. Brian Nielsen and Vanessa Hoffman were instrumental in coming up with another plan so that we could still keep feeding the kids. We've noticed that on occasion, the activity of staff is a little bit rude with people. when we went to try to ask them what was going on with the email and what we could do to facilitate feeding the children. Maybe we would really appreciate if there was some kind of investigation or you guys could look into the matter. That's all I have to say.

Does that include your comments?

Yes, ma'am. Thank you.

Can I ask if Mr. Harrison is participating as a member of the committee in this meeting?

So we had some conversation about that before we got started. And what is the understanding that he has to be the...

It's on the agenda. It's item one on the agenda.

He's the one that's... My question is his remote participation. Is that acceptable or not? He can... Well, he can listen in if he's not participating. Alternatively, he could, he qualifies for just cause in the Brown Act. He could say what his just cause is and then he could participate.

Well, let me get to that if I can and we'll deal with it in number one if that's all right with everybody. I do want to acknowledge who's in the room. We have Jerome as the CEO of the county fair. We have Rose Johnson, the vice chair of the association, myself as president. We do have board members in the room. Alan Aldridge is chair of horse racing. We have Janessa Hoffman and Ryan Nielsen also here. We have Steve Sinner, our counsel. And then Angel Moore, the COO, I believe is going to be participating as well, as well as Vivian Liu, our chief financial officer. So I think that's everybody that's here from the Alameda County Agriculture Fair Association. Okay?

From our side, you have Supervisor Miley, myself, members of the board. You have, while Susan Maraneshi isn't here, we have Lori Cox, I know, not participating, and we have our clerk. And we have our legal counsel, Andrew Manson. Great.

Thank you. All right, so with that, let's move to the first item on the agenda, the change in the committee members. We had Frank Emhoff, who was no longer on the board, and so we replaced him with Bill Harrison, who is the chair of the finance committee. So what do we need Bill to do to participate in the meeting?

So two issues. I had asked to put this item on the agenda just so we had a record of when the changes in the composition of the committee, because we hadn't been doing that. And I noticed that this printed agenda doesn't have the online agenda. It lists the members, and it's been changing over time. And we hadn't been making any record of those changes. That's been the recommendation I made. Separately, to participate remotely, requires him to qualify for just cause under the Brown Act. If he doesn't, he can listen in to the meeting. That's fine. He just couldn't participate.

Could you explain just cause? And would you explain, Andrew, the typical solution for a member to participate remotely, anticipated in advance and understood to be done so, would you explain that? Separately, would you explain the exception to that which you call just cause that's kind of inside ball code for things that we understand, but maybe not everybody does. What that is, which is an alternative to the established procedures for participating remotely.

Yes. Members of the committee can participate remotely if that is listed on the agenda. And the location from which they are participating is identified on the agenda. And that location is open to the public as well, so that the public can participate from that remote location as well. Alternatively, if they If the member qualifies for just cause under the Brown Act, they can appear telephonically or on Zoom. Without having that location identified or open to the public, there are a limited number of times that can be done. And you also have to meet substantive requirements. Either it's a child care or caregiving for child, parent, grandparent, grandchild, or sibling. They have a contagious illness. It's a need related to physical or mental condition that isn't qualifying for the ADA accommodation. They're traveling on official business of the legislative body or another state or local agency. They have an immunocompromised child, parent, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, spouse, or domestic partner. There's a physical or family medical emergency. or military service. So I don't know if Mr. Harrison has any of those issues that prevent him from appearing here today. If so, he could state them generally. He does not need to disclose any metal circumstances for himself or anyone else, just to say generally that if that is the issue, that that is the issue. And if he doesn't qualify in any of those, he's welcome to listen in, but not participate.

Thank you. So Bill, can you hear us?

Yeah, I can. I don't have a doctor's note. I'm recently home from over a week stay in the hospital, and I'm on IV antibiotics for the next month. I don't know if that qualifies or not, but that's my case.

If that prevents your participation physically today, then it would. Okay.

Then, yes. Thank you. Welcome to the meeting.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. Good. I've got that one taken care of. Let's move on to item two, the fair recap, which is informational. Angel, I believe you're going to take us through this? Yes, I do.

We have... Do you want the PowerPoint?

Yes.

Yes, please.

Thank you.

So we put together every year post-fair a video of the highlights of fair and then we will run through some of the fair numbers and some of the community events that we put together. So the link, you go to the next slide. And then the link, yep.

Of course covered right by there.

And that should take us to our fair video.

See that?

Thank you.

Thank you.

the historical councilman valencia anything to ask today no questions at this time

that our team would love that because just a quick highlight of the fair right things all the things that happen at the fair in the community that we're able to reach at the fair and now we'll just go through some of the programs and the numbers from the fair this year so since about 2014 we've done the Alameda County school ticket program And the program consists of every elementary age student in the county has the opportunity to get a free ticket to the fair. So our team reaches out to school districts across the county. So this year we increased our number of registered schools within the county from 193 to 208. The number of students this year who claimed tickets We're over 33, almost 34,000. And then at the gate, those schools that redeemed tickets was up significantly over last year at 16,500. We're always trying to inch those numbers up. Um, we really go as far as we call schools individually. We call districts. Um, we post on social media, we send videos out to community members that say, please share these videos. because we want as many kids as possible to be able to take advantage of the free ticket. It's good any day of the fair. You can utilize that ticket. We were able to grow a little bit in Fremont this year. We also grew in Oakland and Alameda, so that's what helped us increase those numbers as well. Next, oh, I have the clicker.

I do have the clicker. That's because you clicked it, isn't it?

We also work on getting senior tickets out to the community. So working with senior centers throughout the county and delivering a free ticket to the fair. So this year we distributed 7,200 tickets. Of those 7,200 tickets, we had 3,800 of those redeemed. So the redemption was up. which is huge. So we're continually trying to get that redemption up with our 62 and better community. All right. So we also have been working to grow pint for a pass. We partner with the American red cross, and this is where you donate blood and then you get a pass to come to the fair. So we saw a decrease in the number of pints donated. But where we saw the increase is at the gate. And so this year, although we had less donations, we did increase the number of redemptions. So a program that we continually try to promote and increase the donations. We do some community drive programs. So one that I'm really proud of is the Food Drive and Dollar Ride Day. We partnered for many years. the alameda county community food bank and we partner with the alameda county community food bank because we know that that food is distributed throughout the county to other food banks so and we're really proud that we're the largest summer food drive in county and so we know that those 59 221 donations that they received We do that on the first week of fair, and by the end of fair, that food has been distributed county-wide. And so that was up this year, the pounds of food, 26%. We also partner with the Valley Humane Society, and we do a pet food drive. And as far as we know, we're the only pet food drive in the fair industry. And this year, we were able to get in 2,100 guests But the amount of donations of pet food went up this year again. And the Valley Humane Society, they also distribute to animal shelters across the county as well. So they partnered with us and that was really our ask of them was that they distribute countywide. This year, for the very first year, we did a sensory morning. On July 9th, we opened the fair an hour early. We opened an hour early and we worked with groups that work with guests that have intellectual and developmental disabilities this year we were able to get about 717 guests in our goal is to increase that number so our first year we felt good carnival opened early as well and they actually had rides going it was a very quiet morning but we got correspondence from families that said their children really struggled with coming to the fair And this year they had, they were able to stay like more than 20 minutes. They were able to stay and because of that hour of calm, they were able to spend the day at the fair because it started off calm for them. So we're really proud of that and just hope to grow that program. Marketing for our groups. So we really, we always, try to stay ahead of the curve on audience development strategy. So we worked on a program this year, um, specifically for the flow writer concert, um, uh, Pitbull and little John were playing at the shoreline, um, in mountain view. And so for that event, we were able to do marketing ads. They call it a geo fence. It's a, it's an invisible fence around the shoreline, um, amphitheater. We were able to get from that event 205,000 impressions. So people were served that ad multiple times. Sales were up for the two days around this event, 141%. And our click-through rate, which is how many people see the ad and they click on it, was 0.36%. And we had 1,866 conversions, which is huge. It really helps with ticket sales. Even if they click it, that means that they're purchasing. So that makes us happy. We also work on voice recognition. So if you are talking about buying a boat on your phone, and then all of a sudden you start getting, or if you're talking to someone, if we're just having a conversation, and we're saying, hey, I want to buy a boat. And then all of a sudden you start getting ads for all kinds of votes. That's what this campaign was about. And so if you were served the fair after talking about the fair, um, impressions were about 341,000. Um, and our click-through rate was 0.61 on this campaign. Um, that's above the industry average. So the industry average is 33% and we were 0.61. or we were 33% above the industry average. So when we did that, you can see the spots that really, really engaged. Now, where do our guests live? I mean, that's the question, right? Where do our guests live? So you can see that. Pleasanton, Livermore stayed about the same. Oakland went down a little bit, but most of our locations stayed the same. In-county, San Leandro increased a little. And then four Contra Costa cities are about 20%. Not everything is up on the board, but what we know is that Contra Costa really, many of the community in Contra Costa consider us their fair, especially those that border us. And so what I've done just for fun is I've run the numbers on the percentage within the county of residents. And so we're going to be using that to measure how we can move the needle on some of those. So top reasons, guests attend the fair. So fair food, number one animals, number two, carnival shopping concerts moved up a little bit. Um, the 250th anniversary of America. and then the Safeway Barn. So those made it on the list, but fair food, animals, carnival, shopping.

I love a good corn dog.

Guest satisfaction, how are we doing? So we scored high this year at an 8.6%. The only year that was higher was 8.62. That was our first fair back in the summer post-pandemic. So people were just really hungry to get out. So measuring against that, we had a great fair. The Garden Party fundraiser to raise money to help us build the farm this year raised $215,000. And we just have some highlights from that. Very popular. The prime rib. The aged prime rib. The farm, so we had additional programming this year at the farm. The bleachers, whenever we had demonstrations, were full of fair guests, which was amazing to see. We had a mama. I think this is the cow that loved the brush. It was always under that brush. Our agriculture and competitive exhibits program. So this year we had over 19,000 entries. Our educational entries was up. So that's the entries that you see in building R right across from the grandstand. If you have the chance to walk in there, you'll see how talented all the kids in the county are. And it's also really amazing to see how much teachers get behind having their students showcase at the fair our junior livestock auction had a record year at 1.4 million dollars this year so whoever you know anyone who participated purchased thank you so much it was an incredible year for the kids so growing community participation we had a 14% increase in community participation this year Just a fun little, some great pictures from the fair. These pianos were so popular this year. And we got them all off Facebook Marketplace. It cost us nothing. And then we decorated them. Additional community participation this year, how you can be a part of the fair. Somebody I knew this year entered, and they were so excited I ran into them about two weeks ago and they're like did you know that i won the banking contest i won second place for conchas and i was like i saw them i hunted them down to find them for you um creating memorable guest experiences so it's really our goal to create opportunities for guests to take pictures with family and friends we try to keep them agricultural focused so this year we added the goat We also added our pig and barn this year, but just a great opportunity for families to have lasting memories here at the fair. We have our fields of gratitude, which is us celebrating farmers within Alameda County. So this is our third year of the program. And so we'll be adding additional farmers next year to highlight them. the Adventure Park area cultural and heritage and community celebrations cultural heritage and community celebrations so we have our fiesta at the fair this year we included the lowrider cars we also have our red white and blues festival at the fair just another way that we embrace community Our action sports were in the grandstands, so we opened up with Demolition Derby. Then we had Monster Trucks, we had Arena Cross, and we had the Tractor Pulls. Now, the Demolition Derby was a partnership with the Hayward Fire Department, and they were able to bring firehouses from across California to showcase, and it's a fundraiser for them. then we did our 4th of July fireworks show and it was amazing this year so as many of you know we don't do fireworks on 4th of July but this year we worked with Supervisor Halbert's office on some programming on for the 4th of July and then we brought in fireworks and the Oakland East Bay Symphony played live during the fireworks show which is just such an incredible sight to see. And it's really an opportunity for those who maybe never see the symphony or have the chance to see the symphony to witness that here at the fair. So it's a beautiful event. Connecting the past, the present, and the future. So it was our time capsule that you saw in the sizzle reel. And the time capsule was a lot fit in that box. It was our way to capture moments and memories of the community and put them in the box to be opened in 2076. We did a Blue Ribbon Summer Camp this year. So Blue Ribbon Summer Camp was basically a summer camp for employees and vendors' kids. So it was a camp because we worked really odd hours during fair and on weekends and for those with kids it can sometimes be challenging to find care and so this year the fair put together a summer camp where the kids got to go and make that looks like corn dogs they got to visit different events Throughout the fair, they got to go on rides. They got to participate in stage acts. They got to make their own little fair shirts. But they, and we made it where it was like, what was it, 8 a.m., 9 a.m. to like 7 p.m. So it worked with parents' schedules. And so it was a great opportunity for parents to just be more stress-free during fair. We had community soccer watch parties. So we worked very closely with Visit Tri-Valley and FIFA to be approved to promote and play the FIFA games this year. It was wildly popular and something that we look forward to doing for women's soccer next year as well. We really embraced celebrating the 250th anniversary America so we had this was actually lit up on the grandstand but we just made sure that everything that we could say that was the 250th anniversary anniversary when you walked in you really knew that we were celebrating this year here are more of our interactive arts music experience with the pianos so we will continue this because the guests really loved it. And we have some really talented players in our community. We had new fountains this year, so we were able to create more opportunities. This is actually where the time capsule is. And then we have more opportunities for guest experience and photo ops. So this has been on our wish list for many years. It is a Rubik's Cube competition. And so we were able to have 144 competitors come in with their families to the fair and do a Rubik's cube competition. Um, it was, it started in the morning and went throughout the evening. I think it ended at 5. And they definitely want to come back next year. And it's just one more opportunity to bring guests in. Um, we also did the America's strongest teen weight competition. So this year we had 44 competitors from 24 states. So competitors came in with their families, but this also didn't just expose people from out of state to our fair. It also drives room nights in the community, which is something that we are also really proud of, is bringing guests and creating economic impact to Alameda County. They also would like to come back. We also had our display of Rising Together, a remembrance of 9-11. It was very popular, a beautiful display. It was all built in-house, museum quality. We have an amazing staff who designed and actually built the entire display. These are notes that guests left all across the front, We had a beautiful pear tree. We also had guest everyday leaf flowers. Some of the notes, we saved them. We had almost 1,000 notes left. It was just a beautiful display. And then finally, our economic impact and fiscal impact to the community. They are a part of everyone's package, but it's also up on display. So year round, so fair and year round, Sales tax revenue is generated by the venue, $14.3 million. Hotel tax revenue, $186 million. Our fiscal impact is 14.5. Ongoing jobs in the community is nearly 2,000. Hotel room nights generated is nearly 17,000. And total visits to the property is about 1.44 million. This does not include off-track betting, or the golf course. So, just wanted to share the economic impact that the Alameda County Fair and the Event Center annually has to the region. Any questions?

Yeah, Nate.

Yeah, very comprehensive and excellent overview presentation, very thorough. As it relates to seniors, I can help you get those numbers up with the seniors. Great. So folks who talk to me, you know, later this month, we'll be holding our 23rd annual Healthy Living Festival. And we have about over 3,000 seniors that come in from all over the county to the Oakland Zoo. You know, all over the county. It costs us $50,000 to bus seniors in. So I think that would be a good opportunity for the fair to promote. Because I didn't even know about your free tickets for seniors. And I think that would be great. you know, oversight on my part, but we should talk about that. And if you are interested in getting a booth this year, we're up to about 90 exhibitors, but I would try to squeeze a theory. Thank you. Then the rating, is the rating on a scale of 1 to 10?

Yeah, I think it's 1 to 9. I think it's 1 to 9.

Oh, 1 to 9? Yes. So you're about 8 point what?

It was 8.6. I'll confirm that, Nate, but I believe it's a 1 to 9 scale in the event industry.

Wow, 8 points.

I mean, there's not much room to go in terms of getting that 9. In our minds, there's room to go.

Well, what would that be? Because that's what I'm interested in knowing. To get to the 9, what do you need to do to get to that? Because you guys are doing an excellent job. phenomenal job and I take my hat off to you but what would it take to get to a nine so so we there's there's several categories and so I'd have let me take a look at those categories and I'll get back to you when I get back to you about the seniors I'll get back to you about the categories as well and the only other two things and these are just sensitive things for me I'd like the association to consider something for Scott, a commemoration for Scott out here at the Fairgrounds. You know, the Fairmen a lot, you know.

So I think there's something in the works on that. Oh, good. Out here at the Fairgrounds? Supervisor?

Yeah, the Auction Pavilion will be renamed to the Scott Hagerty Amador Pavilion.

Great, okay. And then the only other thing is, I just noticed you got two flags. Up here, get a calendar. I've been in this room so many times, I never noticed that until now. If you could do that for us, I'd appreciate it.

Thank you. I'm curious. Prior to the fair, March, April, marketing sends out to all of the supervisors in a lot of different organizations kind of what's coming up with the fair, where hopefully you can incorporate that. I know Supervisor Halbert has in the newsletter I don't know if you do that or not. Yeah, so I think that's an excellent opportunity to mine some of those other groups, whether they be seniors or youth or some of the other things. Okay. Thank you for that. Sure. Angel, what's that?

Hi. Hi.

Okay.

That's everything for me. Vivian's up next.

So I usually would ask questions after. Is there public comment on each item?

I'd like to finish the presentation with Vivian.

Oh, this is still the fair recap? Right, yeah. Okay. Then I may have questions after it's finished, yeah. Go ahead.

Good morning, everybody. This morning, we will look at fair financials. We'll look at fair revenue by category, fair net income. But before that, let's look at the fair seasonal hires and volunteer hours. I think I do. Oh, hold on a second. Sorry, close your eyes.

Vivian, let her, she's working on it.

Oh, okay.

You guys are fighting each other.

Oh, okay, okay. Thank you.

Too many people pushing buttons.

Fortunately, I only had four slides, so she took a few minutes.

No, that's good. We're almost there.

No, you need to go backwards.

Yeah.

There's five. Perfect.

Thank you so much. Okay, so these are the seasonal recruiting and volunteer hours. Fair applicants this year, 2026, will receive $1,359. This is 326 applicants more than last year. And out of that 1,359, fair time seasonal hires is 321. That's about 26, 27%. And rehires, people like it so much, rehires is 43% of the total seasonal hires, which is 138 rehires. Volunteer hours, volunteer, we have 735 volunteers this year. Last year, 872, so we actually had 137 less volunteers this year than last year. Total hours, 6,612 volunteer hours. That's 794 less volunteer hours than last year. Charitable donations, about 39,000 versus 42,000 last year. So you can see, because of the economic trend and pressure, it pushes the workforce from unpaid volunteer to paid. Any questions on this side?

When you say charitable donations, is that charitable donation to the fair?

To the nonprofit who send their volunteers. Yeah, there's about 45 nonprofit that we pay total about $39,000.

So the fair pays the nonprofit?

We pay to the nonprofit organizations who send their volunteers.

They provide people in the booths, and we compensate them based on that. It's almost $40,000.

39,000. Yeah, the last year was 42,000.

So they're not, they're volunteers, but we paid them. Paid volunteers?

We paid the organizations that they work for. Some of the volunteers are Open Heart Kitchen, Rise and Shine Youth Leadership, and Boys Team Charity. There's about 45 of them.

So we'll make a donation to them.

Okay, next slide. So these are fair revenue by category. We're looking at three year time frame, 2026, 25 and 24. May I remind you that 24 was the year that we had fair horse race meet. And we start with the 500 and then every bar it goes up by $500,000 all the way to 4.5 million. This year is in blue, last year red, 2024 white. This is admission. revenue, parking revenue, concert, food and beverage, carnival, sponsorship and commercial vendors, and other. As you can see, most of these bars, we generate a higher revenue in each category. Parking's about the same. This year and last year were a little bit higher, but every other bars, we generate higher revenue than prior years. With the exception of sponsorship and commercial vendors, I think combined we missed it by about 200,000. And that's because of the direction of the retail trend from going to mall, shopping mall, fairgrounds, versus online, digital shopping. And we'll go over the numbers that support these fair revenue in the next slide. Any questions? Next slide. Now, how much profit did we make? Again, this is only fair, just fair. This is total revenue. This year, last year, the year before, 2024.

Is that right?

Yep. This is expense, and that's profit. So revenue, 14.3 million this year. Expenses, $9.6 million. That gave us a net profit, fair profit of $4.7 million this year. Last year we generated $5.03 million. The year before, when we had the fair horse race meet, $2.2 million. We included the horse race meet revenue in here. That's why you see an increase, but also expenses increased to $12.4 million. Again, profit, 4.7 million this fair. Last year, 5.03. And then 2024, 2.2 million. Any questions? Next slide, please. All right, these are all the numbers supporting the graphs that we just looked at. Admission, this fair, 4.2 million. Last year, 4.1 million. The year before, 3.8 million. And before that, the fair race meet stabling revenue, 2024, almost 2 million. 2024, right? So we didn't have any for this year and last year. And then moving down to parking, it's about the same. 1.5 million this year, 1.5 million last year. year prior 3.8 million concert 900 000 this year 800 000 last year 477 000 2024 food and beverage 2.6 million this year 2.5 million last year and then 2024 2.3 million carnival 2.6 million this year 2.4 million last year 2.2 million so May I remind you that our parking and admission prices are the same. We have not increased since, I don't know, was it October 2021? Total revenue, $14.3 million. Last year, $13.8 million. The year before, $14.6 million, with the $2 million in for fair race meet. Expenses, all in for fair. This year, 9.6 million. Last year, 8.8 million. And then the year before would be stabling and raise me expenses, 12.4 million. Net income, 4.7 million this year, 5.03 last year. 2024 was 2.2 million. attendance 399 000 this year it's three percent down to last year last year 410 000 and then the uh 2024 we have heat wave when we have horse race meet it was 363 000. any questions yes if you go from 2.2 million net income

in 2024 to 5.03 million, how is it only a 2.4?

Thank you for touching that. That was my bad. I caught that right before. Right before this meeting. It's actually a hundred and twenty-eight percent.

Two hundred and twenty percent. A hundred and twenty-eight percent higher.

Thank you. Thank you for that.

Okay.

The numbers are correct, though. So, One more thing that I want to call to your attention is, although the attendance is down by 3%, you can see that the pay per attendance, we call it per capita, is actually higher than last year.

What is the pay per capita?

It's all revenue generated by the fairgrounds divided by just total attendance. What is the dollar?

Oh, $55 per person. Thank you.

So every fair attendee from the minute that they walked in until they left, they spent $55 on average per person. So a family of four, $220. You had a question?

Yeah, I don't know if you can answer this, but with the attendance of about 400,000, how does that compare with other fairs in the state?

We're one of the larger fairs. It would be Del Mar, Orange County, Pleasanton, or Alameda, and the State Fair. Those are all your largest fairs. The State Fair this year, I think, reported about 580,000 in attendance. Orange County, 1.3 million.

Wow, how do they get so... Big county.

It's a big... If you start to run the demographic numbers within a 40-minute or a 40-mile radius, they have... 18 million to draw from because there's no border between Orange County and LA County and San Diego County. So there's a lot of people. So attendance per size of county, we are percentage-wise, we rank right there.

So I'm surprised he doesn't mention that Orange County, it was probably because of previous management.

It was probably the previous management.

A couple of things on this that I would just want to highlight. The admissions number there, it's pretty consistent, and we haven't taken a price increase in admissions since 2019. And when you think about the inflation that has occurred since 2019, that's pretty amazing that we've been able to hold it at that level.

So if attendance is down but admissions revenue is up, and pricing didn't change, how is that? How did that happen? Yeah.

So you can see 3% less people on the fairground, but the pay per headcount is a little bit higher than that.

I thought admissions price stayed the same. It did. Okay.

But paid people coming. So we put out a lot of free tickets to seniors, to school kids,

in 2024 for horse racing it was 10,000 tickets yeah but so I get again and I saw the free tickets given out to schools and seniors all that looks like they went up which is good so that means if the freebies are up the paid attendance is lower if total is down by 2.6 that means paid attendance is lower by even more than 2.6. Paid attendance might be down by 3%, I don't know. But if you have paid attendance or total attendance down and price is the same, then by definition, revenue from admissions must be lower. I don't understand the difference.

We said total attendance is down. Your pay attendance is actually up by 1%. The pay attendance as a percentage to total attendance all in, which is 399,000, this year is 69%. Last year was 66%. So the pay attendance as a percentage actually increased by 3%.

So if you gave away more free tickets this year than last year and total attendance is down.

We didn't.

We did not. No, no, no. In all the slides of school kids, senior kids, whatever kids, freebies, freebies went up. From 25 to 26. If freebies go up, then as a percentage of attendees paid can't also go up and total go down. I'm not understanding that.

We pre-sell how many tickets now? I mean... That continues to rise when we do season passes, when we do pre-sale of tickets. I can't remember the percentage.

Okay, a season ticket holder may come in more than enough times. At a full price.

It's just an enormous blended average. Okay. What we're saying is the quality of the sale is better this year than it was in the past, even though we have given away a lot more tickets and people redeemed them.

And it could also be the general admission ticket versus the senior and child ticket is a little bit less money.

Or season ticket holders coming more times. How many season ticket holders?

I think it's getting close to that. I'm going to say about 4,000. Okay.

And they could come more times. Fine. It helps me understand the numbers better, but we've got to move on. We've got a lot to cover.

That's a good question. This is the last slide. I have any questions?

So before Vivian sits down, I just want to point out the employment situation that's affected by the fair. We're approximately going to be around $28 million to $30 million this year That's a pretty consistent number over the last four or five years. We have about 120 full-time employees. During a four-week period of time, that has increased by 321. So we have 450 employees during that period with 750 volunteers. And we generate 14, a little less than half of our revenue during that period. four-week period of time. It's pretty amazing when you think of the number of people that are here during that period and the number of people that it takes to make that happen. So it's a testament to our staff and to their ability to continue to generate the kind of revenues that we've had.

Thank you, John.

When did we start selling online? Was it 25 or this year 26?

November, right?

No, but which year? Was it this year, the first year? No. No, no, no.

We only start, I would say, before 2012. It's been a long time.

I guess electronic tickets, people will come in and use their phone and... you would have electronic tickets, that.

I don't think we used our phone at that time, but you could buy online, print, and come to the game, scan. That's when we were with eTix, and the first year I was with the fair in 2013, that was a capability.

Did we make some change then, maybe? Was it with the phone? It seems to me that we had tickets that we would text back and forth or whatever. We can do that now. Yeah, but how long have we been able to do that?

Oh, that's been anytime we were with Sapphire.

Sapphire, 2022.

2022, okay. That's when we... Four years, yeah. We changed ticketing. And parking you to buy ahead of time. Yeah, touchless. When you went to cashless, it went to that. Okay, yeah. All right.

Thank you. Thank you for your question. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Vivian. Thank you, Vivian. Next, we have Jerome for the division plan update.

Do we have any questions on this item? Public comment. I...

public comment if I might on the ticketing. I know John had discussed it in one of our previous meetings about ticketing. I just want to tell the supervisors that a little bit of research that I've done, we are the most expensive fair in the state of California to attend ticket-wise and ticket price. I like to go to other fairs and attend them and see what they're doing. So that just makes me a little apprehensive to raise our pricing with the economy being so down and people looking for jobs and not being able to, you know, I don't want to put us into another fair season. If our revenue is still up, we might want to still hold where our prices are at just because the economy is being down for everybody.

parking i think is relative to most fairgrounds but ticket pricing we are the most expensive fair in the state would you send that to me offline thank you so i'd be interested uh what the cost of living is in those locations that you're comparing it to but i mean because we do have high cost of living in the in the tri-city area in the penalty county but we haven't taken the price Paso, Del Mar.

They're right. There are a lot under us. But those, I'm sure their cost of living is relatively about the same. You have to take cost of living and property taxes and all that into consideration, how much gas is.

Any online comments? Oh, I'm sorry. One other quick thing.

I just want to point out, I just want to commend the theory, too, with FIFA.

Yeah.

Watch parties, because I know Dave and I are on the Joint Powers Authority for the Coliseum, and our staff couldn't achieve that. And you achieved that, so I didn't even know that was taking place out here. So, yeah.

Very popular. Yeah. People took a break, watched the game, go back to the fair.

Didn't even know that. So that's why I think the slide, I don't know what you're going to do with the slide presentation or whatever, but I mean, just let everybody see that as a marketing tool is really great because there's a lot of information there. I just didn't know myself.

Thank you. We can move on then to the item three, vision, plan, progress, and update. Ron?

I'll speak to some of our projects real fast. I think last time we met was right around the time we did the ribbon cutting for The futsal complex that's out by the off-track vetting facility, it's getting good use now. Best time to see it is in the evenings around anywhere from 4 to 9 o'clock is when it gets pretty active with children. So I think they're doing well.

Is that a rendering or a live photo?

One on the left is a rendering. These are live photos. Got it. This year in I think it was April we did a ribbon-cutting on our new West Plaza. We just called the Plaza now This is what it looks like. This is the concrete Patterning in the plaza area. It was very well received by at fair time by the fair guests This is underneath the canopy This is not that exciting but for staff it is This is our new Power terminal from PG&E. This took about two and a half years to accomplish, replacing the one on the left. This had to get done because we were underpowered at the farmhouse, and so now this project is done. And we're excited about it because it'll allow further growth in other areas. We're embarking right now on the OTB facility remodel, trying to utilize this building more effectively. It's still a very good moneymaker for us, the off-track betting business. And but this building was built in the 80s. It's fondly called the big pink building. So we're embarking on a remodel, trying to make it get more utility out of it. So we can still maintain our off track betting business in it. Currently, we still have bingo two or three nights a week. Corporate events, we do do some corporate events in there, but really not enough to justify. So we believe once we've got it cleaned up and a better modernization of the look that we'll do more. It'll be capable of doing more musical performances, maybe comedians and other community meetings. So we're excited about this. We're also embarking on more of a rebrand, Iron Horse 1858. This is kind of meaningful to us because 1858 is the first year the track was built by Bernal himself. And then Iron Horse is a nod to our Iron Horse Trail and the railroad that came through this area, the spur line that came down through Pleasanton. So we're going to kind of rebrand the building so that it's more attractive for more activity out there. This is kind of the inside renderings that we're working through. So you can see it's very loungy. And it's a nod to railroad and horse racing. This is the grandstand plaza, the roadway, and the wine garden project that we're working on right now. This giant white area is the grandstand. This is where our existing plaza with the fountain is. And so we have a project that's with the county now through permitting. It's in three phases. two and three so this is the wine courtyard each year or as fast as we can afford to do it we will be uh tackling one of these phases it's going to take care of ada compliance it's going to give a more pedestrian feel rather than feeling like you're out on an asphalt parking lot this is the phase one right here this is um the fountain plaza down here and this is out in front of the grandstand where sometimes during fair, we put a stage right here. So we're tackling this shortly this year in the 2026 budget. Again, this is a rendering. This is the area we're gonna be working on as well as this very large shade canopy that's gonna run the length of the road so that there's a lot more shade out there for the customer.

So when Nate enters through gate 12 and wants to drive through there, I mean, there'll still be the 20 foot road.

Okay. Um, and they'll be shooting over you, but this still has to maintain all the fire access. Same photo, just different angle. So there's your roadway for name. All right. We're also in discussions with a few different partners that are potential for pickleball complex. This has not gone anywhere with the board, but it is a discussion of utilizing this zone more effectively for the community. This little bit of a proposal is talking about 34 courts with the addition of a competitive court also for something like tournament play and professional. So we think this has got some excitement around it because there is a commercial kitchen in this building that can also help be utilized for this kind of activity. So I'm hoping in the next year or so you'll be hearing more about this as we figure out how to move this through a process, whatever GSA says is appropriate for the development and whether it makes sense economically. And then this is our farm project that we've been working on diligently. Phase one is already complete. It is this Safeway barn right here. And now we are working on all of this garden space. The architecture and engineering is currently being done right now and is being funded by the fundraising of the foundation. The big part of this is locating all the utilities for future phases. So for example, these three buildings, right here in five buildings. We've gotta make sure before we build all this garden space and everything we do that all the pipes are underground for the future phases. And that's taken us a bit of time. It's also doing all the analysis for C3 storm water treatment in one phase so we know what's gonna happen in the future. And making sure everything that we do out there is ADA compliant. And then lastly, I said C3 stormwater compliance, the property. As we do these projects, you have to now, the new rules for the water board are that you have to treat the water from each zone of your projects. Well, because some of our areas are for pedestrians and we can't have bioswells in the middle of it, we're working with the county right now to actually create, to the south end of our RV campground, a bioretention planter down here That's going to accommodate 88,000 square feet of treatment for us. And by doing so, it's actually going to give us about 40,000 square foot credit for future projects. So we think this is a really economical way to build in the property's C3 requirements for the future. And that'll probably be on the budget. This project will be on the budget for 2027 as we move forward. Those are all the vision plan projects. I can answer any questions if you have some.

Or I can run back to. Yeah, if you could go back to the OTB facility remodel.

You want me to do it, or I don't want to mess you up?

Which one?

Back. Oh, it's back. I think it's like the... Here we go. Yep.

okay so that's a rendering this is a rendering yeah it's still pink it's not beige correct okay the next slide it's gonna be beige yeah yeah are these renderings are these live these are renderings nothing has been started yet okay so no work has been done we've done some stucco patch on the exteriors but that no real work it's in permitting right now it's in permitting what's the total cost

We think it's going to be about $1.2 million. $1.2. Okay.

Okay.

And we're doing this in partnership with two different organizations.

Fair First and? Primetime Entertainment. Primetime.

Primetime Entertainment.

And then the grandstand, the next one? The total, what's the total project for that project? Right now in most most recently all three phases about 1.8 million 1.8 and that so none of it's been done just drawings and plannings and The like how much has been expended for each I think for engineering Probably about a hundred thousand. Mm-hmm, and then it's it's in permitting It's right in permitting. You're in the permitting process. Correct the tail end of it and you're working with our GSA team

Uh, this is past GSA. It's with, um, county building. Building team. Okay. Building department. Okay. Nate, do you have any other questions?

Sure, a couple real quickly. So, you think that's a big market for pickleball, huh? Yeah.

I mean, that's... So, that rendering was done by someone that is very, uh, much encouraged by pickleball. Okay. Yeah. It's not ours.

It's coming to us. And that could be... Yeah. Would that be a revenue enhancement? Aspect for the fair.

Oh, yeah, absolutely Look at puts all it's all is about 450,000 I think it's about 380 at the size that we landed on and that's pure rent this this project really has we haven't gone very deep with these proposals because we don't want to get ahead of the potential answer plus act or whether this needs a more formal RFP. That's why we're working right now with GSA to say, you help us, tell us, what do you want done? And we don't want to misstep before we even get started.

Yeah, yeah. And so my only other question is, with all the projects, does the fair have any solar out here? Have you contemplated solar?

Yeah, the fair has over two megawatts of solar. All of these are covered in solar. The Safeway Barn is brand new solar that actually just got finally activated in June with PG&E. We have the new solar canopies that are out in the VIP and horseman's lots. The Amador Pavilion, or now the Scott Haggerty Amador Pavilion, is covered in solar. And then in our Building A was part of that project as well. And in fact, a portion of this, the county with Supervisor Haggerty, we put the loan together with him. So we have about, I don't know, maybe four or five years left on the loan. The Safeway Barn also has. The Safeway Barn is actually an educational piece because it's bifacial solar and it's tiled so it's water shedding. Water doesn't drip through it because of the new technology that we used on that.

Part of that water saving is eventually show the kids that come there how we recapture water.

I believe I'm correct, Jerome. The three phases of the awnings and the plaza rework, we're undertaking the First phase of that this year in 26.

Correct. The first phase I'm hoping to start in the next month if permitting runs through properly.

The other portion is part of the 2027 and beyond budgets. Correct. Okay.

What's the cost of pickleball estimated?

Cost?

No idea. We have not. You mean to play the game? No, to install 32 pickleball courts. For us?

Yeah.

We would pick for it. Oh, so you would enter into a long-term lease with the Pickleball Association? I don't know.

I don't think the business deal has been determined. It could be a land lease if we go through land surplus. It could be a partnership with the fairgrounds. It could be a licensing agreement that the fair, you know, we may participate in an own portion of it. But none of that has even been talked about. So it's still a vision. Vision. It's part of the vision, yeah.

And then on the off-track bedding facility, our off-track bedding volume, dollar-wise, is up because of Golden Gate Fields closing. We've been able to capture that. People drive here from there? Yeah. Yeah, sure. Any other questions? Any questions online?

Yes. How many trees will be removed when you do the grandstand area?

I think that I counted 11 and 6 will go in its place. Those are the big elm trees that are tearing up the asphalt.

They're sycamore trees. Sycamore? So, and the ratio to replace those is 6 to what, wouldn't you say get cut out, 12? 12.

And you replace it with 6? Well, we replace more than that in other areas. But in that zone, yes.

Chair, I do have an online speaker. Public comment? Okay.

Online. Go ahead.

Katie, you're on the line.

Good morning. Hi. Hi, guys. I'm not aware of the agenda, so unfortunately, I've been through the whole meeting, and I unfortunately have to go. So I just want to interject at this point. When you are planning these facilities, I didn't see anything that had to do with the Amador Pavilion besides naming it after Scott. And I'm hoping that when you're planning these kinds of things, I understand we got these panels a couple years back, and we got... the wash racks which were nice but unfortunately our pigs were injured on those on those wash racks because nobody put any brush strokes in it so the pig clip and a few of our pigs were injured and were not able to show so um i just also just want to remind you that when this property was donated to the gallamita county fair um it was with the intention of the 4-h and the ffa kids actually being able to show there and becoming responsible adults And while the Safeway barn is beautiful, I really believe that it is the responsibility of the 4-H and the FFA kids to be teaching the public about their projects. So it would be nice to have something for them, showing for them, on these plans. Pickleball kind of threw me. We have recently, during fair, we had received a letter, all of the parents received a letter saying that we could no longer cook for our kids that close to the barn. Unfortunately, the letter came from Rene, but as I talked to Jim, the supervisor afterwards, he's the one that said he told Rene to write the letter. However, he said it was the chief that told him and it was not. It was the fact that he's worked for other fairs and he knows what the state rules are and laws are regarding that. And so he interjected and had Renee send the letter. Unfortunately, he did not put his name on the letter and said that it was from our fair chief. So I think just coming from the parental part, I've cooked breakfast for all the SFA kids a couple times during the week. We just don't know what's happening. And so that letter was kind of like a spark to the wildfire. So there's a little bit of a fear of us being of the fair, the whole process of how a county fair was started is being pushed to the side. So I'm just hoping that you guys all take consideration in that and just are a little bit more aware of the reason why we actually have a fair. That's it, thank you.

Thank you. Anything else online? Yes, I have other speakers.

um oh no that's it okay did you have something yeah i just want to well thank the speaker for the comments um and make sure everybody is aware that the staff the board of the fair are very aware of any cons all different items and concerns in the livestock area for example the the new wash rack that was implemented is too slick And so we've got to rough up the concrete. We dealt with a barbecue issue this year that is going to be discussed at the next 3 o'clock meeting related to agriculture. So it's going through the proper committee process now. And all of those comments have been heard and will be addressed through a committee process. So thank you.

I'll also weigh in and say that I appreciate the commenter. Indeed, I recognize that Alameda County Fair is an urban fair in the middle of a it's not really urban it's more suburban but we've transitioned to more of an urban fair and we're continuing that progression whereas indeed we still have an obligation to honor our heritage and our culture And so while we treat it as an urban fair or a suburban fair or more of a commercial economic development fair, it wasn't that when it originated. And I think we can talk about how we got there, but I'm going to talk about maybe towards the end of the meeting how our board's vision I think needs to be taken into account with regard to maintaining the agricultural aspects of this fair. And to recognize that we express that in forms of our contract, which we'll talk about later, and our views of what this fair is and will become and will be will be our views expressed in our contract to be implemented by our agent. And I think that this one commenter is one commenter, but it's comments that I've heard time and time and time again from a not so small part of our community. We will work on this together, I have no doubt. We will continue to be, what I said this summer, the best county fair in the state, maybe the country. But we're gonna do it together. We're going to set direction and follow direction. So that's enough of that for now. I don't need to go into more details at this point. Thank you for the presentation. Not only the vision, which I understand is vision, Visionary, not set in stone. Although, I mean, if it's in progress of being implemented in the permit stage, it's not really vision. And I guess our next informational item will be also very visionary. Let's go to the next item.

Okay. Anything else on item three? Good. Going on to item four, the hotel development project update. We looked at accounting for this.

Yeah, I was going to say, actually, it was put on by you all.

This is a standing item. The hotel is a piece of the vision plan. Right now, there is not a developer to be worked with, but we stated at our last meeting that what's important is that we work through the Lancer Plus Act or not, whatever the county's process would be, so that when financing finally becomes available for a project like this, that we're ready to go and we're not behind the eight ball. So it should remain a standing item since there is an action to be taken. I believe the committee and the county is already committed to working through that process. I'm not privy to exactly what the process is, but we're two years in the making on it. So I don't know if there's any other comments. I know Kimberly couldn't make it today.

Andrew, this is more of a legal question. Have we had any recent discussions in either at the staff level or I can't remember, forgive me if I'm missing something, have we had any discussions as a board, say in closed session, around surplusing land? Staff or board?

I wouldn't talk about what the board discussed in the closed session, but... Just whether we have had discussions. There was a discussion at this committee, I want to say a couple of years ago. We talked through what the Surplus Land Act process is. And that was following revisions to the guidelines, which function like regulations put out by the state Housing and Community Development Agency. And since that time, there's really been no change in the law. whenever folks want to go through that process, which could happen now, or it could happen closer in time to when there is a project in the works. Declaring the property surplus and then going through the notice and getting opportunity to primarily for the housing developers, but also school districts and open space providers to negotiate in good faith regarding disposition of the property in the alternative to one of them for the kinds of projects that they develop. They're either doing that or if those good faith negotiations don't produce one of those projects, proceeding forward with their own identified project. So it's really a timing question of when the county and the association want to move forward?

And as I say, it could happen now or it could happen when closer in time to you. What's the process steps? It's sort of chicken and egg. Which comes first? Do they... Does the fair board request the county to surplus the land, in which case balls in our court. We decide whether we want to do that or not. And we can then say we would consider surplusing it after you have a project. Because what I heard was they want to get ahead of that so that they can move forward with the project when financing becomes available. So it feels like, just trying to clarify, the request has been made, yes or no, to surplus the land where the hotel is contemplated. Is that correct? You made that request.

Multiple of these needs.

Okay. And, well, was anything communicated? Well, did we respond to that to say we need a more formal request or we need more information or would that then, would that be up to this board to put it on an agendized item board level maybe at a planning meeting to discuss and give an answer back as to yes we agree to go through that surplusing procedure or we would require you or request you to give us a formal submission before we would consider that that seems like where we're at is that right Andrew

Yeah, the agreement under which the parties are operating has the association work with County GSA and the Real Property Division on any of these projects. And so I think that would be the place to go down the details. There are multiple parcels on the fairgrounds, but my understanding is that none of the existing parcels correspond to the area of land that is identified for the hotel development. And so I know one of the outstanding questions is, would there be parcelization, and how would you describe that parcel? And if there's not parcelization, then how otherwise would you describe that area of land? Because that's a prerequisite to going through the Circus Land Act process, is there has to be an identified land. Yeah, parcel of land. So I think that's working through GSN, a lot of those technical questions, and then also perhaps other aspects of the development process. And once that's ready to move forward, then that would go to the Board of Supervisors to consider how the Board of Supervisors would want to do that. Would we want an informational item, maybe hear more about the project before having the action item the formal surplus declaration, I don't know that that would be up to the board and how it was to proceed.

So I would say that for this body's discussion and for this remaining as or not a perpetual agenda item, feedback I'm getting is take it up with GSA. Yeah? So share with them your thoughts so that they can then... they can bring it to our board at a planning meeting to... have us discuss that. Going through, I can say from other projects, the idea of going through the process of surplus lands is generally considered something that is done I think We don't do it very often, but, and Nate, help me, is it generally when a project is pretty well defined? Because we don't typically go through it just to say it's surplus, and therefore we're ready to go whenever something happens, although we might consider that. But it's something that would have to go through the process of GSA, our board, back to GSA with approval, back to the fair board at the staff level.

At the staff level, it would go from the association to GSA. And when it's ready to move forward and go on your agenda, there'd be an action item to adopt a resolution to declare the property surplus. Then the staff at GSA would be involved in sending out the formal notices. There are a lot of parties that are entitled to notice, and so there's a process of ascertaining who gets that notice, making sure all those letters go out. and responding if there are any offers made in the negotiation process.

Andrew, how much time and effort and cost is contemplated in that between the fair board and GSA before it comes to us? Because if they're spinning their wheels and spending a lot of time and effort and money, and then we just say thanks, but no thanks. We don't want to surplus the land. I really, I don't know.

I'm not involved in that aspect.

It's very much at risk. And indeed, not only for the surplusing, but a hotel is a pretty large expenditure. It's going to significantly alter the fairgrounds. It's maybe going to have a partner like a hotelier. All of that, all of that, just to be really clear, it's already governed in our document that that requires board approval. So, okay.

Thank you. I think the concern that had been expressed in the past was that the notice went out. There may be a lot of parties who are interested in having those good faith negotiations. That's what I recall from the meeting where we discussed this in detail before. And I don't know if that dynamic is still a concern for this committee.

When I called people in Sacramento, they said, wow, it's really close to the A's train. It would be a perfect site for affordable housing. because it's close to public transit, not realizing that you kind of cut through the fare to get there, but it's a... I mean, there's access. So, yeah, you could have a lot of...

So, and we're required to go through the surplus properties?

Yes. We've looked at various exemptions, and it doesn't appear that this project would qualify. But based on the kind of development that has been discussed in the past of a... long-term ground lease to the developer.

Okay. So we go back to GSA, correct? Yeah, that's who I'm speaking with.

All right, good.

Any comments on this?

Public comment.

I have no online speakers. Anyone?

No?

Great. Let's move on to item five, the 2027 horse racing update. So this was a little bit of a surprise because we haven't had a lot of conversations around horse racing because not much has gone on over the last year. I'll just take you back. In October of 2025, our board passed a resolution to present an MOU to Bernal. In December of 12-24, we presented the memorandum of understanding. pan out. In February of 26, we reaffirmed our commitment to having horse racing, if at all possible, if we could find an agency that would fully finance and cash flow the race meet, independently demonstrate legal authority and operational capabilities. Then, during that period of time, in March 20th, there was a letter sent to the National HBPA, and help me on this. Horshmans Prevalent Association. They've been in business for many years. Asking if there was any interest there. January 30th, there was correspondence and communication with the Stronic Group to see if they would be interested, and we got crickets. Then in May of this year, We approved support in the county looking at a JPA. And we had understood that there may be some movement with the county creating the joint GPA that would oversee the purses, correct? Was the primary goal of that. And so that's where we are kind of at. And has there been any movement on a JPA?

I don't know if we should have talked about maybe talk-talk, but no formal movement. I thought in discussions with board members that there may be interest in doing May Kentucky Derby. It's not Kentucky Derby. Or whatever it is. Preakness?

Preakness and the Belmont. They run in the third week in May, and then Belmont probably is out three weeks later. And that was preakness.

That was one of the resolutions that we did pass, reaffirming our interest in having horse racing at the fair during the month of May.

And when was that?

The last time we did it was in May of this year, 2026. And then prior to that, I believe we talked about this last year. when we were having conversations with the Long Park Racing? We reached out to several organizations to see if they would be interested in...

So there's interest on behalf of the board, fair board, to pursue horse racing in the future? Correct. And more specifically, is it in May or during the fair or both?

So I'm going to ask that the chair of racing address this simply because of the complexity of it. But yes, go ahead.

I appreciate the conversation here. What happens is it's a moving circuit. And we used to have many, many horses in the area. And they'd move from Golden Gate to Pleasanton, we'd have enough horses to race. So the past two years, there hasn't been that number of horses. It's dwindling, dwindling. I look at races maybe like people look at the stock market every day. I have friends that are racing all over the country. I know where they're going. I know where they're at. So what happens is a lot of these trainers that were here moved to Southern California and Arizona. Arizona starts, ends their meet on Kentucky Derby Day, May the 3rd, May the 1st. So the reasoning for having racing in May, it would get that flow from Phoenix, Arizona, that go up to Seattle, Washington to race their five-month meet. So it makes more sense that we could capture some of those horses to stop here at Pleasanton, run for maybe five or six weeks. I think a six-week meet would do here, starting the weekend after Kentucky Derby, running until the middle of June before our fair starts. The other part of that is it's kind of dangerous for the horses and the riders and everything we have a fair coming in setting up a lot of moving parts around the fairgrounds so safety-wise horse-wise i think are the biggest concerns for me i just think may dates would work have you pulled the horse owners oh yeah i i went to i all summer i went to oregon i went to del mar twice this year i talked to the people that have the bigger barns here they all want to come back but it just has to work financially and in their stream, because they'd go to here and then they would go to Seattle. They definitely want to come back and racing, I think, can survive. It might not be three days a week, it could be two days a week, but definitely I think the May dates work and our board has supported that. I've been in this business for almost 50 years in horse racing. I've owned horses, trained horses, ran horses all over the country. and I know how the flow works. And I've been on recruiting missions to Phoenix, which I would do again if somehow this board could pass that. We could have racing to get those horses from Phoenix, Arizona to race at our fair in May.

And those discussions were documented in, I think, again, I have a January agenda, a February agenda, a March agenda, an April agenda. And so are minutes to these meetings public and available on your website? They're available on the county clerk. So you send, the process today currently is that if you have a fair board meeting, then you send, which is not agendized on our website or anything, that's something that you do as an agency, as our agent, as a board. You'll post a meeting agenda, you'll hold a meeting, and you'll send our clerk a copy of your minutes. And you would expect that members of the public who are interested in your happenings would go to our county clerk for the minutes of that meeting, which do our county clerk publish those anywhere? So I think there's a big disconnect because if there's an agency holding a meeting, the agency should, in my opinion, and we'll talk about this when we get to a future item, I would think logically that you would then post your minutes that the public would see them there as opposed to send them to our rely on sending them to our County Clerk knowing that they don't even get published anywhere so because we don't is that I guess I continue to get members of the public that are just not clear on where the fair board stands. I can tell you where our board stands as evidenced in the contract that we expect and hope and want to preserve our culture and provide horse racing. Whether that's in May, I think in the contract it specifies the fair, but we could work with that because if it's May instead, fine, but perhaps that's something we should discuss. But I think posting minutes so that the community can understand, and we'll get to another topic, posting the video of your meetings so that members of the public are more aware would be helpful. This was helpful for me to know. Alan, what you just mentioned, super helpful. It seems to me that if there is a future in that, that could be positive for, everybody I'm still not against pursuing horse racing during the fair because we've done it for so many years notwithstanding your comments about safety we've done it for so many years but that's just me but I get continually from members of the public they just don't know where we're where we're at either don't attend the meetings or can't view the meetings later and can't find the minutes of the meeting, even if you were there, you might not remember. And so you'd want to go back and look at the minutes.

Can you also comment a little about reason for May being popular for the off track betting and so on with the other races? Because that was a big driver in some of our decisions. Because that's where the money comes from. You sell a lot of hot dogs and beer.

Yeah, for the satellite? Yeah. Well, it's happened in Phoenix, Arizona. They're doing some wonderful things down there. They race four days a week, all winter long. So we budgeted so much money that our income was going to bring in for the satellite. We're weighing above that every month this year. And that has to do, wagering up around the country is up around the country. And Phoenix runs on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And from that betting, everybody betting at home in a 15-mile radius, we're getting a piece of that money. So it's not about the money that's made during our races here. When we're on top of maybe a Del Mar or a Saratoga, the number one tracks in the country, there's big money coming in, people betting at home. So I was on the horseman's board in Southern California. It's supposed to be all of California. I was outvoted 14 to 1 on a lot of votes, supporting the North, of course. And what they did is they put the Los Alamitos races on top of our races at the same time, same time of year. And knowing that that was the worst meet in Southern California. And there wouldn't be that much online betting. So they've kind of strategized over the years to try to hurt this fair mainly because it was the biggest one.

And so we moved to May. So we moved to May. We're up against a Preakness and some other opportunities.

There's some big races during those times, and we're on top of Santa Anita, which a lot of the horsemen don't believe Santa Anita is going to be there in the next three years.

The way the money's made is if you have a live meet, during these other races that are going on, you get a bigger portion of the betting pool. Correct?

Correct.

And so that's the reason for May as opposed to June or July. And when we ran races in 2024, we had problems getting enough horses here to field eight races a day, seven races a day. And you have to have, what, five or six horses per race to make it work.

But I've always heard a lot of discussion, especially here, that horse racing just doesn't make money. It's a loser. It loses money.

We lost money the last three years.

So what's going to change in May that will allow it to make money? The off-track betting.

The off-track betting would be on top of Santa Anita, Belmont Park. and all of all of that changes during the fair sure different dynamics because you're on top of those that's the worst time to run is those on top of our fair and then the other time would be just coming up weeks and football starts so that's why southern california is pushing those race dates over to los alamitos which they know is they're going to get hurt too okay it would almost work if we could probably if we could be assured that we would get enough horses to race

But we can't. We haven't been successful. We're doing it.

The only way to do it is if we could capture the ones from Phoenix, Arizona that are going to Seattle. As they're moving through.

And the timing happens to be right. We get some quickness in some other big races that we could pick up the off-track money.

I know this is an informational item. Nate, do you have any questions before we go to public comment?

I appreciate the discussion because it's helpful for me. I sort of want to follow horse racing, but I do know intuitively what I do do in horse racing is doing the Kentucky Derby, the Freakness, the Belmont. Otherwise, it's like out of sight, out of mind. I don't know.

You're with the majority of people, I guess. Any other comments?

Is there any public comment on it?

I have no online comments.

Public comment. George? Public comment. First of all, the board still doesn't understand how horse racing pays. It is not off-track betting. It is betting all over the world that changes. That is not off-track betting. Off-track betting is down the pink palette. It is a significant amount of money. It's about 20, somewhere between 20 and $22 million a year that flows by state law from Northern California Southern California to support horse racing in the south if there is no horse racing in the north. So Santa Anita and Del Mar fight us in the background all the time from getting dates. They know we'll get the horses. Last year we had 532 horses from 40 trainers committed to come to Pleasanton to do it. The board did not support what we were doing at the horse racing board. You didn't. You said no. So that, we had no chance of getting dates for Northern California anywhere. Because without Alameda County, there will be no horse racing in Northern California. You're right about the horse population. You may not be right about it today or tomorrow, but you're certainly right about it in a few years. Because of no horse racing in Northern California, a full crop this year will be under 1,000 horses, down from 3,500 six years ago. That's going to be a huge problem for horse racing everywhere in this state. I'm not going to come back if there's no... I've got... I own 85 horses. My 85 horses are Emerald Downs, Del Mar, Santa Anita, Los Alamitos, Turf Paradise, some in Kentucky. I gotta give up two days to go to see a horse race. So I'm about ready to get out of the business and so are a whole bunch of other people. This is the oldest track in America. The oldest one-mile track in America. And what we've done the last few years is we don't want it anymore. It's up to the board, both boards, to figure out what you're going to do. I was willing to put up the money. I still am during the fair. Jerome and I had worked out a cost accounting arrangement that was acceptable to me and to him. I'm still willing to do that. But I'm not going to do it in May. You won't need me in May. Why not me? Because the amount of money that... If you get dates in May, Alan is exactly right. The amount of money bet on the Kentucky Derby, which is always the first Saturday in May, will cover all the costs that the fair will have for horse racing. It is the biggest betting day of the year. Now, something else happened this year that I didn't hear anybody talk about. The Triple Crown is dead. So the Preakness is no longer the second leg of the Triple Crown and because of what's going on in California, the big racetracks in the East have just cut out everything in California. There's no, they now have a six race series that's between Florida and New York essentially. that's going to replace the Triple Crown. We have no chance if we don't do something else. And the other problem we have, in 2028, Belinda Stronach, who won Santa Anita, has committed Santa Anita for the Olympics, for the equestrian gift. I am told that's going to take six to 18 months. I don't know what the right number is to get it ready. They're not going to have horse racing in the beginning of 2028 in the South. We all know Becky. She now runs the San Diego County Fair. She ain't going to give up the San Diego County Fair to let horses run at Delmar in June. That's a pipe dream, in my opinion, anyway. So where are the horses going to go in 2028? It's a mess when you're sitting around in a sport that is as difficult as horse racing is to begin with, to figure out What's going to happen in the next two, three years? Northern California breeders, the little guys, people with five, six, seven mares, they're gone. And if we don't get horse racing back, they'll be gone forever pretty quick.

Horse racing back when? Or not in May, but in... Well... I'm still trying to figure out this thing because we can't run profitably during when we've got Santa Anita on top of us.

There is truth to that, but there is also... Ed Allred is 89 years old. Ed Allred is trying to make peace. His wife is much younger than him. The minute Ed dies, Los Alamitos will close. It's worth it. Billions of dollars that land down in Cyprus, California.

You're not going to make it a park? No.

George, you said something that I didn't quite understand because you said that you weren't supported in getting dates. I thought that the fair board voted to pursue those with you as a board?

I don't think they did because at the CHRB meeting, they were not there.

Did the board vote to pursue horse dates at any of these meetings?

We voted to have someone run the meet and get the dates. And that has been the issue because...

In May, but not during June.

Well, if you go back.

In 2023. I guess that's why we need minutes, guys, I think. So we'll go pull the minutes.

We'll go pull the minutes. We can provide all the minutes.

Okay. And you have the minutes. No, we can't.

We can talk about it later.

Okay. So notwithstanding having the minutes at my hand, you supported and voted to have somebody apply for dates. Did they go and apply for dates?

Yes. They did. And they did on supporters?

You went to apply for dates, but were not supported by the Fair Board. Right. That's your... They weren't there. Yeah, they weren't there. Did you go and support them when you applied for the dates? No.

There were two board members that went to the CHRB meeting.

Ah, okay.

And they spoke outside of direction from the Fair Board. in support of Rice. Allen and Frank, correct?

That's right. So not directed by the board. The next meeting, nobody was there. They didn't come at all. Nobody. It was down in Arcadia.

Oh, the emergency meeting that they called from that meeting. Right.

And that was at the direction of the board, as I understand it, if you told those two guys not to represent the board. We did. And so there was, you cannot say, John, that you supported an application for horse racing last year at the Alameda County Fair. You did not. You weren't there. That's correct. Do you consider it a bit disingenuous to say... And you sent a letter to Scott Chaney saying you didn't support it.

Alan, go ahead.

What happened at the meeting in Sacramento was George's group went and asked for the dates. The day before that, the California Horse Racing Board said that an individual couldn't apply for the dates, that the fair had to apply for the dates. This was a last minute decision by them to change the rules. And again, that's what happened.

But to be clear, the board and we issued a letter requesting the dates on behalf of Bernal Park Racing. And then, yes, they switched the rules. or what have you. And so, the letter definitely supported it.

But there were two letters, one supported it and one did not. The second one you said you were not supporting the base.

I'm not sure what you're referencing.

I'm referencing the one before the meeting in Arcadia.

I've only written one.

So, you wrote a letter, Chaney called you up and asked you and you'd sell him the help.

I told him the arrangement, which was our MOU, and he reviewed the MOU. I did not support all of what we were trying to get done.

That's very helpful. Thank you.

I'm hearing you now. I get it. Anything else? Anybody else?

Yeah. I thought there was a strict direction to support racing, and we never got it. We didn't get it up there.

Nate.

Yeah, just one question for somebody. Just a casual observer. It was mentioned Preakness, there's no longer a Triple Crown? Say that? There's no longer a Triple Crown?

No, because, well, the Preakness people will try to say there's a Triple Crown, but Preakness is not part of the Six-Ray Series. Okay. So things changed. There was nothing we could do about that in Alameda County. I'm damn sure. I don't want anybody to think that anybody here had anything to do with that.

But I'm just trying to understand, as a casual observer of horse racing, when you said that there's no longer a Triple Crown, I'm just kind of shocked to hear that.

It's gone because of the... The problem with California, just so it's clear to everybody, back east they have... casinos that support the purse structure at horse racing. So they've got gambling everywhere. In our state, that's limited to the tribes. And so horse racing doesn't have the support. Even Delmar can't match purses at Saratoga or Aqueduct in New York or Gulfstream. They've all got casinos there where people are betting millions of dollars a day. And even if it takes only 7%, it's a lot of damn money when you add it up. And we don't have that in California, so they, the big guys back east just cut us out.

And they got the power to do it. And the south kind of runs the CHRD.

And that is, John, that is absolutely true. I have, you're right. It is very possible that if all of us got together and we all said we got, we're all going to do this as hard as we can, we'd get outvoted. Three commissioners lied to the state assembly under oath. And I heard it during their confirmation hearings about why they didn't grant any dates in Northern California last year. They lied. All three of them had told me in my face, it's the money boy, and all three of them told the Senate when their nominations were up there, well, we were just short of horses. There are enough horses at Emerald Downs in California to run the county fairs up here forever. And Emerald Downs, if we put the fairs back in, Seattle would close.

They'd be done. I'm just trying to piece some of this stuff together. We just heard that if we had racing in May, that the off-track betting and the surplus, it's already going up, correct? And that it was going to make horse racing more viable. From what I understand, the off-track bedding hasn't been included in the prop P&L from the racing before. So it would be very interesting to look at what that P&L looks like adding the off-track into what racing does for this fairground.

Yeah. I want to clarify. We're using, and George is right, we're using some terms intermingling. The off-track bedding is an actual facility with a certain amount of Betting in it, that money is in any given handle for the summer fair when we were racing. The accounting purposes, it knows no different whether you're betting in that building or betting at the racetrack. So it's all in there. What we're talking about is out-of-states and online gambling is being mixed up with this term off-track. because they're off track. So the big money, the big volume of money at a very low percentage is being bet on the phone, the computer, and out of state. That's the separation of what you're referencing. Out of the country. Anywhere in the world. You know, Australia.

And Australia goes crazy in horse race betting.

So those are the two separations of the revenue streams. And when you are the live race track running live race horses... then you are entitled to a percentage of dollars of every bet on anything in the north, the northern zone, which is like Fresno North, we'll call it. And that's the $22 million of potential revenue that sits out there that was talked about. And that is the incentive for the Stronach Group and the southern racetracks to not have horse racing in the north. because the 22 million flows south if there is no live traffic in the north. So that goes back to your point about, one, getting licensed. Very difficult thing to do and gets even more and more difficult now that we've been out of the mix. And there's a second component. In order to get all of this betting on your phone going on your race meet, you have to have a contract with every one of those different providers. And unfortunately, Stronach Group, Churchill Downs, and these others, way bigger than us, control those platforms and are not always willing to give us a contract to allow our bettors on those platforms. I'm sorry, to allow our races to even be shown or bettable on the platform. And that is why it's a recipe for potential disaster. And we would need a financial partner to take those risks.

which takes us back to Golden State Racing in 2024. We did everything that we could to make racing work here on the fairgrounds, and we lost a lot of money.

But you're talking about doing it again in May, bringing it back so that we can get a portion of all that, right? That's what I mean.

We're not talking about that. We have already talked through the parameters in which we would talk about it, and those are voted resolutions.

and when we did so that's the update today then that wasn't on our agenda horse racing update you provided the information that you voted as a board to approve conditions for which you would move forward yes and those conditions have been met not been met we have not found a partner to to that that meets that criteria you don't want to partner with them in may I don't know. Okay. So there's an update that at least there's something there to be talked about.

The fact of the matter is supervisors in May don't need any help.

Realize it's a long ways away until the fair time next year. But the CHRB gives out their dates for next year in the next couple months. So that's why we've always had to go October November sometimes December to get those dates and now they're instead of meeting monthly They're meeting every other month.

Well, I heard that they can't take the risk without a financial partner So they got to find a financial partner no matter how many millions of dollars of that in that They can't do it by themselves what I'm hearing So George you do agree that we have a memorandum of understanding of how we could proceed, correct?

Yeah, but you tore it up.

We had one.

Jerome and I met on Christmas Eve, and we put one together, and the board did not say, go forward. You did not support that.

No, we did support that. We had an emergency meeting to support that.

Christmas Eve.

Pardon me?

Christmas Eve. Yeah. Yeah.

Awesome.

We're starting to mix up race meets in history, so it doesn't matter if the board stands that May is a viable date.

We do have an agreement on how it would work. If you do it in May, it's different.

It's different.

I would assume that you would put 100% of parking and 100% of concessions up against horse racing if you did it in May, right? Yep. Jerome?

Your board chairman just said yes. The board needs a vote of the board. Yeah.

The board needs a vote of the board. That's true.

Let's say this. I am happy to get moving. If you want to work through something for May, as we have always worked through, we can start with our normal documents.

I think we've beat this. let the record reflect that we've been joined by uh member chuck moore and galvin galvin yes thank you for enjoying late thanks for having me late yeah but here can we start i heard a couple of horses no no no oh our next item is fair so before we move on do we have any other comments online

I have no online script. Right, and no comments in the room. Okay, thank you very much. So now we can move on to item six, the Fair County proposed contract amendments.

So I will kick us off, Lori Cox, staff for the County Administrator's Office. We have been in discussions, when I say we, just a couple of us with Jerome, regarding the 2017 contract that we have between the county and the association. The county put together some recommended changes based on a number of areas, permitting, code compliance, meeting transparency, communication protocols. We had a number of edits that we wanted to make to the current contract. We presented that to Jerome and council, had I think a fairly productive meeting. We walked through all of the proposed changes almost line by line. Jerome went through and provided some comments back. And right now we are kind of far apart in where we are landing. And so today we know that the contract needs to be renewed by the end of September. It's an automatic renewal because we would like to make these amendments. We're making a proposal that we extend our term. I'll let Council kind of talk through that. But at this point, we need more time to negotiate and discuss the changes that both the Fair Association is requesting and that the county is requesting in order for us. So I'll turn it over to you, Andrew.

So the current structure of the contract, it was entered into in September of 17 for a five-year term, and that's automatically renewing five-year terms, there's a one-year non-renewal notice that starts the non-renewal period for that last year. And the current term ends in September of 27, and so the non-renewal notice has to be put in this month, maybe September 30th. That's not a lot of time for us to work through the many proposed changes and some of them are quite complicated. We had a productive discussion. The proposal that the county's put forward is to get us out from under this September 30th non-renewal notice and give the county a right to terminate between now and the end of the 2020, September 2027. If that termination was, that notice went out, we would start a one-year wind-out period. And the idea is that it would give us another year to negotiate without having to pull the trigger on I understand that as Laurie was explaining there's a lot of interest on the county side in having more robust negotiation than we've already had to be so why are we so far apart what please describe the conversations that staff to staff have had

And one concern I have is if we just continue to have discussions and can't get to anywhere. But by the way, I don't characterize them as so much negotiations. We are up against a time frame for giving the termination notice. So why are we here and how far are we apart and what are we apart on terms and why are we apart on that? based on the discussions that we've had. I'm guessing this is with Jerome. Any board members?

No.

Just staff to staff?

Yes.

Three people in the room. We've had our GSA or something.

So county staff provided input on some of the proposed changes. But they have not been involved in the conversations directly with Jerome and Steve. So it's been counsel on both sides and then Jerome and I having the conversation.

Four people.

Four people. Okay. Purposefully four people.

Mm-hmm.

I would say that the discussions have centered around, really, I would say more clarity around roles, responsibilities, who's doing what, both on the county side but also on the fair side, being very transparent about meetings. I'm loathe to go into all of the specific details because it's pretty exhaustive, but we wanted to make sure that we were very clear in writing what our communication protocols were going to be, if there are plans on the fair side to make any changes on the property, who they are supposed to contact, when they are supposed to contact the county, and how they should be contacting the county. We want that in writing very clear. We talked a little bit in our proposal around the budgeting process and trying to be more transparent. You know, we're always kind of at this, I would say, last minute. I've only been doing this a little less than a year, but in that time, It's kind of a rush to get the budget approved by our board after it's been approved by the fair board, so we wanted to set up some very specific timelines by which we would do that. We looked at the structure of the committee. We looked at how the committee is, I mean, we call it an ad hoc committee, but is it really an ad hoc committee? pretty, by definition it's not ad hoc because we meet on a fairly regular basis. So the idea was to create a bit more clarity from the county's perspective. I can let Jerome speak to some of the issues that the fair, and I would say Jerome representing the fair, what they included in their proposal of recommended changes.

Before you do that, I just want to clarify. Staff and Andrew, without getting into who said what in our closed sessions, you received direction from our board. When you make requests to be changes to the contract, that didn't come from you making it up. It didn't come from any board member making it up. It came from our board.

Well, first of all, I thought the board wanted to know what specifically they wanted to have changed. I don't know that. I mean, I heard Lori articulate some stuff, but I'm not sure I'm clear on the provisions, what we're actually looking at. That has never been disclosed to me.

I think there are two kind of broad themes here. One is this contract has been in place for nine years, and so at a staff level, there's a lot of experience with, The agreement, a lot of, we improved a lot of things in 2017 and just anything can be made better and there are things that haven't worked as intended and so making some changes to make the agreement work better so the parties function better together. The other things we received direction from your board, the board of supervisors, specifically to seek changes regarding code compliance and permitting. I'm concerned with that. And so that has been a big part of the proposed changes that were made, and we started that discussion. You know, I'd say...

But code compliance and communication, those two, right?

I think those are pretty broad umbrellas. There are a lot of changes, and... transparency governance yeah reporting all the things that yeah lori mentioned came to us in a meeting yeah and so i i'd say that um you know in any negotiation there's an information gathering process and so we have thrown a lot of things at uh jerome and steve to to take in and consider and i mean our meeting lasted over two hours and all we did was walk through a lot of questions were asked a lot of information gathering um i think we're at a pretty early stage in talking these through i i certainly learned a lot speaking with jerome and steve and just got feedback on on some of the things that we had come up with i mean even if they're uh initiatives the board of supervisors wants in the contract how that is done how that is structured, how it is written. We need feedback from the association. They operate in the facility. They have their own internal operation of their organization. And we need information from them to make sure that we've written the contract language in a way that makes sense and we're not dictating that they run their organization. And why are we so far apart, Anjan? Because we've had one meeting. I think that's why we're so far apart, because we're meeting, and I anticipate that with further meetings, we'll get closer, and that is the genesis for this proposal to get out from under this September 30th dawn renewal date so we can have space for further conversations.

I view this in lieu of issuing a termination notice. The proposal is... to agree to, in good faith, continue our discussions, I would put a time-bound deadline of a month or two, not another year of discussions, my thoughts, and keep meeting, get it done, that we can feel good, I can feel good about not outright terminating it. accepting a proposal to negotiate in good faith ex post quickly and get to the end and if we're still off on terms and i would say that i'm guessing you're going to be briefing our board on at some point on where we land with those discussions a question i have for the fair board because i i know some of the things that have been said back and forth and I have my thoughts on them but that will your board weigh in have you does the fair board have consensus on the terms that are being negotiated because it's important to me that you would how would we possibly know well our team updates our board your team doesn't

make them, no? I know some stuff. I'd like to know comprehensively what it is we're looking to change, what the hesitancy is around what we're looking to change, what it is we aspire to change, and where there's, and then if what we're looking to change, what we aspire to change, and then where are we if there's no agreement whatsoever.

I would expect your board would be a part of that because if we're going to contemplate suspending our right to terminate and we're going to be negotiating in good faith to make changes I would want to see that that come from the board members who like our board provides direction to staff to get something done that your board would be providing direction to to your staff to get stuff done, but I'm guessing you haven't even been talked about the things that we want to have happen.

Let me just a second. Maybe you have, maybe you haven't. Give me just a second here. What is your expectation of action that we're going to take on this, and how are we going to get to that action?

I think right now the proposal is we would like to discuss not terminating you. I hope you don't want that. What surprises me is that you do. No, short of this being done, the contract changes that we've been talking about. David, how long have you been working with us?

We have a contract that's for 30 years that's renewed.

We have a deadline by the end of the month that if we don't.

And you're asking us 22 days before the deadline that we're going to extend that?

Seriously? I would hope that you would want to extend it. That's the action that we're going to take.

Don't you want to extend that? Our expectation is that it would be extended. We don't have a problem with the contract. Our direction to our CEO is that we think things are going pretty damn good. And so do the customers.

So do you, according to your own words. The contract that we have, as our attorney has very clearly explained, has a lot of issues with it. And those need to be resolved no matter how good our fare is. We are always opening. Until we do that, we have a deadline to meet. So if we don't, I've been told by our counsel, I think he told everybody, if we don't take action, then we can't take action. So we're trying to forestall that. I'm sorry, that's not accurate. If we don't provide.

What I heard you say is we can, if we agree, we can always amend the contract any time we ever want. Is that accurate? Yes. Okay, thank you. I just want to be very clear. Amendments can be done any time if they are agreeable.

Okay.

You just feel like it's a threat here, you know, and it doesn't need to be a threat.

Well, what we just saw was that there are things that we want to have happen that you are diametrically opposed to. We're so far off. So what's the chances of us getting your mutual agreement to contract changes when the first time we start, we're so far off? The bottom line is, do you want to extend and forestall the ability, need for us to give you a termination notice and enter into good faith negotiations, discussions I would call them, to amend the contract. Yes or no?

What I would say to you is that we have had the last five years to negotiate and to change anything that you wanted to change. And you're giving us notice 20 some odd days prior to a deadline that we expected to just come and go. I have my own opinion, my own view of it. We have a board that will have to approve any extension to time of the contract and the way that we're going to deal with it. So I think it makes good sense to extend that deadline.

You do. I'm not sure I do. Okay. You have a choice of extending the deadline or...

Terminating the contract. Yeah. Exactly.

let's just go down the line Rose well my question is so we renewed five years ago and nothing came up were there issues like help me understand like years ago things came up five years ago I was actually I wasn't I don't even think years ago so we sort of glossed right over it Rose it sort of just passed us by this deadline nobody talked about it happening nobody we had discussions and issues and but nobody really talked about it and I was brand new and so yeah we really didn't talk about it so we're not going to let it just pass us by this time and John we've talked about these changes for a long time yes it's now 22 days before and yes we haven't had very I mean we meet once a quarter maybe once anyway the bottom line is we have talked about these changes you agreed a lot of the changes around transparency and good governance and all that but we just haven't got it into a contract so shame on both of us shame on one of us i don't know but we haven't made changes we're far apart and i'm going to take my county council's recommendation in lieu of providing termination which we could terminate and still negotiate and discuss and come back into compliance and re-agree, even during termination.

That's exactly right, because by contract, we have until 2027 that we're operating as an association.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. Chuck? My concern is that this has gone on for five years. We're out here looking at spending a lot of money on the fairgrounds. We have a foundation that's trying to raise money for a farm, and yet we have this cloud of maybe this isn't going to... Maybe the contracts we're going to...

It sounds like you want to have the extension of the termination discussion.

No. What I'd like to say is that we've had plenty of time to talk about it. This contract's been in for a long time. It was set up to go 30 years. It was set up, and the only reason why we look at it every five years is because we're a 501 from what I understand, and our organization says it has to be a five-year look-out. It's a statute. It's a statute, yes.

It's a statute under which we... The county's ability to contract is constrained to five-year terms. Correct, yeah. So we came up with the auto renew as a way to give a longer term overall to the agreement.

It's pretty common to have five years. So we can go out and get partners and people that want to donate money and do all the things that we're going to do because a lot of the people donate money because of us, us knocking on doors and asking for the money. You know, it's really hard to go out and do stuff like that when you create uncertainty. And I would not be in favor of extending it. I would be, okay, let's extend the date of it. I would just say, if we get us some addendums, okay, give us the addendums. Work it out.

They're so far apart, Chuck. That's what I keep hearing.

Okay, then.

Do we want to go through each one of them? She said she's loath to do that in public. But I have them right here. We can go through each one of them. I'm glad you saw them, because I haven't.

Supervisor, what do you have?

I have a summary that my county council has provided me.

OK. Is that the summary that I was not to show anybody, or that is privileged information?

Well, I can provide confidential advice to you.

OK. That's how things should work, in my opinion. My county council keeps us apprised of things, and I think you should be apprised of things.

Especially when you're up against a deadline. We were told that this was between the group here.

Staff. It's not for public consumption, but you guys are board members.

No, we were clearly told that this was between staff and Jerome. Am I right on that?

It was between, initially, our initial conversation was between staff and council, and that was it. And we did hold to that, but we're at a point where we need to have additional conversations.

And you only got 22 dates to get it done. I'd like all of the committee.

Would you like to call us in?

I just want to know what's driving all this. I mean, there seems to be a lot of awkwardness. Good question. coming from the county side. I, you know, I may be biased because I'm on this board and I've been on it for a long time, but I think we do an excellent job at maintaining this property, putting capital money into the property and running events on the property. We may have a disagreement on horse racing. I don't know that we are that far apart really on horse racing, but is that the driver? Is that why we're here? You know, we don't get a penny from the county. We don't ask for a penny from the county. We maintain and improve this property on our own dime. And the association has existed for decades, doing a great job. So I'm just so Gordon, how founded, why we're here.

We're not doing a whole lot different than we did a few years ago when Scott Haggerty was on the board that has been recounted to me that over the course of time, there have been discussions that with disagreements, disgruntlements, changes to the contract that have happened. So it hasn't been rosy for 85 years. We're talking about things in our proposal around the fair board composition, which has been changing and evolving over time. Okay, so it's just a continuation of discussions that we've always had. Nobody has said that the fair itself is not... good but there are things that our staff needs to know about permits about unpermitted work being done or not about the governance of the board and open meetings and we would like to have things posted to your website we would like to have information available all things that john when you and i talked about this months ago we agreed to so why we're so far off on agreeing to it is beyond me. I think we really need to dig into whether it's here in public or in a separate meeting, why we're so far off, what we're so far off on, and when we're going to get it done by.

Because if we don't get it done by the end of the year, end of the month, then... Well, I have a question because I just heard Jerome say something that... There is a document. You have a document in front of you.

It's privilege from my attorney, and it's just a summary of discussions.

But, I mean, Jerome is aware of the document, but his understanding is...

He's aware of the discussions that have happened. He's not aware of my counsel's summary of it.

Well, how would you expect us to know what's on that, what we're talking about? You say we're far apart.

I didn't say it. What are we far apart of? That's what I have asked.

I didn't say it, Mike. Team said it. But I don't know that to be true. I mean, I don't know.

Well, we could go through it. Maybe we can let your side say why we're so far apart or what we're so far apart on.

I can help with that. Yeah. Why are we so far apart? We're so far apart because I think in our meetings it was expressed to us that the county had a desire to rearrange the structure and makeup of the fair board. from 21 to 15 with the vast majority, 10 appointed by the county. That was probably the number one thing that I heard that day in our discussions. I don't know where this direction came from, Concerning to me was I've never heard of a public meeting where the Alameda County Fair was agendized or talked about, but evidently it has been and I don't have any of that information. The second was the idea that this committee, which is part county, part association, is made up currently both groups because we're an independent association. But the proposal was that it be made strictly a county committee with authority by the county only. That was two. The third was Brown Act, that we would be contractually obligated to the Brown Act versus spelling out what we would like the association to do, which I do believe there's some synergy on what we can rearrange on those things. And then lastly, there are some administrative things that the county requested.

I'm sorry, what was the third one you said, Jerome? The third one is...

The Composite Fair Board, the Composite Committee. And then the Brown Act? Concepts. And then the last one that we had a bucket of was all of the different administrative things that, quite frankly, I think we could work through things like that. That's not where most of the angst probably left. But it was interesting to have a conversation on topics that seemed to there seemed to be a county position already developed of which I was not aware of and I've never seen in any agenda in public and to our knowledge with our communications with our own board members to their rep of communications with people they represent we couldn't find that information in either so that was the divide the four items and In good faith, I did not provide any information to any board members because I was asked to. It was a working document between attorneys. And so that's where we are today. And the Fair Board did not request that the contract be amended. I believe the Fair Board is happy moving forward for the next five years. It doesn't preclude us, though, from modernizing the language, cleaning some things up, having side memos or documents that talk about how staff work together. And I think that's important because we're a small organization, the county is big, and knowing who to go to when is half of the battle. But there's some language that I saw or discussed that the CAO's office would be the single point of contact for us. I absolutely applaud that. It would be great. So there are things that we can work through. But those were the four categories, I would say, I heard in our meeting related to that.

So one of them being our discussion and our agendized items. What was the date that we had this item of discussions agendized for our closed session discussion that we had, Andrew? We talked about it for about an hour in closed session. Now, I'm not going to say what was said in that closed session. That would be a breach. But it was publicly agendized. Everybody knew, or should have known, or could have known, because we do agendize. When was that?

Do you remember? We do have closed session agendas agendized. But the only ones that would reveal the content are whether it's a threat of litigation that is written, or if they're real property. negotiations, other kinds of closed sessions. We don't spell out what the content of that closed session would be.

Because I'm hearing concern that they have no idea we've been talking about this, and yet we have. Oh, yeah, we have. I'm not going to reveal what is said in closed session to anybody, but I can tell you that we have. So, one, composition of the fair board. That's been discussed almost every couple of years for 40 years. It used to have 45 members, and then it went down to 25, and then it went down to whatever. The progression and composition or size of the Fair Board, I think, has evolved in one direction pretty consistently, and this is no different than an evolution of that. The composition shift from majority appointed by the board versus majority elected or selected by the appointees is one where I had been told by probably everyone that it had to be that way we can't do it any other way those look non those are no no no nonprofit organization state rules that you're a nonprofit you have to have a majority of what my County Council tells me that's not really true so I would say that the switch to having the number go down is consistent with history doesn't mean we have to do that but the switch from majority appointed by our board is very consistent with the notion that we have an agent that performs on our behalf, and so, therefore, having a majority appointed by the board seems reasonable. Now, we can agree to disagree on that, and we can have more public comment on that, but that's what we've talked about. Nate? Yeah, I'm sorry.

I'm just a little concerned. First of all, I have to get to another meeting in the health systems, in the tall safety net down in Oakland. That starts at 1 o'clock. Another non-profit. Well, but they're not a non-profit, yeah, out in the health systems. But if this contract can't be negotiated by closed doors because it's not litigation and it's not real estate, why don't we have a subcommittee from the adult committee get together and hash out where we are, look at what we can agree on, what we can't agree on, bring it back to this committee, so then we can discuss it. Because I'm having a difficult time, you know, discussing something that, you know, David's got stuff there, and I haven't asked county council for it, because I've been on recess, and I've been trying to adhere to that, but I'm still supposed to be on recess, but I've got meetings all this week. So I'm just offering up a suggestion, because I'm getting, you know, just antsy,

I appreciate that and the only thing that I would say supervisor Miley is I'm all for it but we're still up against a deadline and we on this board is this ad hoc committee members from the board can't decide what it is that we want to present to our board next Tuesday but it's the board that has to agree to it we are at their pleasure so I Whatever it is, we need to get it done before next Tuesday, in my opinion. Steve, did you have anything you wanted to add?

Yeah, I'd like to put this in a little bit of a context. I hope this will be helpful. First of all, Andrew and I, I think, have a very good relationship. We've been able to communicate quite well. He and I primarily hashed out the 2017 contract. So I don't think a lack of communication or a disconnect is an issue here. I will say that when the amended and restated proposed contract came out, it was somewhat out of the blue. We didn't, at least I didn't know that you had already had this discussion and when it was presented a little bit of background. We then had the meeting that Andrew and Lori have referenced that was, I think, extremely productive, where we took each of these items and, you know, I think when we say we're far apart, you know, that's a matter of perspective. By not sharing, and I told Andrew this, I don't think we're quite as far apart as what I'm hearing. Yes, there's some fundamental issues and disagreements, but again, keeping in mind the context clear communication, good faith discussions. You know, I am optimistic, and I'm not an optimist by nature, but I am optimistic that we will be able to come to terms because, you know, they say reasonable minds may differ. The key word is reasonable, and I really feel that we want to be reasonable.

Why don't we table this item then to... Can I just finish?

Sure. One is, in light of the origin of this and the direction in which it is heading, I think that there are going to be ongoing discussions. Whether you terminate us or not, we are willing to have good faith discussions, but holding a hammer over our head and saying, if you don't come to terms, we're going to send you a termination notice. And I acknowledge, readily acknowledge, that even after you send a termination notice, we can still negotiate. But the unlevel playing field is just a little bit difficult for us to navigate at this point in time. My final point is that this relationship with the county and the association has existed umpteen years, decades. And I don't see that the issues that were raised in the amended and restated proposed agreement are going to change that. We will come to resolution, but having this dangling over our heads and saying, well, we'll just move it out, you know, up to months or a year, you know, it's just kicking the can down the road because you can still pull the trigger at any time.

So, you know... How can we terminate after September 30th we can't terminate for another five years for another five years and so what i don't see it and look i didn't make the contract we just live by the contract and i'm sorry that this took a long time to get to this point i'm not going to say whose fault that is but the bottom line is we have a deadline and i don't see how it would even be advisable my county council isn't advising that we would go past that deadline and hope that you guys will continue to discuss in good faith without an agreement that we can preserve that. All we're saying is, yeah, I wish we had had this discussion in January or February or March, because maybe we could get it done by then. But we haven't. And no matter whose fault that is, it just seems reasonable to me that we haven't, so therefore, extend. Simple. I didn't put the date of the contract. I don't know why we even... have to have a hard date. I wish we could just not have to have a date like that. But it's in the contract. And Andrew has pointed out many other things that are in the contract that need to be changed, administrative, these things that need to have happen. So again, it's six of one, half dozen of the other sort of if we don't extend, then we can't terminate. If we extend, then you call it a hammer over your head. You've always had the hammer over your head of this contract. It's spelled out in the contract. So the hammer's there. We're just pushing it out. And that's how I see it.

Is it possible to suspend the September 30th date and make it October 31st or November 30th? Yes.

We have to agree to that.

To suspend it, right? So then you're just pushing it so that we have time to negotiate. We have to have time to negotiate.

That's exactly what we're proposing, Rose. We've had time.

We're going to get to public comment. I've been around here for a long time. It started with Ed Campbell. And Ed Campbell was in the same negotiation we're sitting in right now. Then it started with Scott. Same negotiation again. Now, 30 years later, we're talking about the same stuff. When it was told to somebody not to touch the track, not to remove anything, it was done. It was told to apply for raise dates. It wasn't done. I think this is what we're talking about. Am I right?

Well, governance is certainly a topic. Well, we do have to get the public comment, and we have people with their hands raised, Bill.

Ruben Duran- Sorry, can I can I chime in here real quick sorry about that. Ruben Duran- I would just like to first off attach my comments to what Jerome said as a board member, we have not formally you know seen or heard about some of these things, but the items that he talked about size. Ruben Duran- I think there are some things on governance, we could all agree upon and the other things you mentioned, I would attach my comments that and I believe the majority of the. of our board would agree to that. And the last thing I would just say is I don't think we've done anything in my time on the board or your time on the board of Supervisor Halbert that would show you that we would not continue to negotiate in good faith after the deadline. I don't think we've ever done anything to sway that either way. So I would, again, argue that we could continue to look at improving the contract Going forward, I don't think we should terminate. I don't think we should continue as is and continue the negotiations.

Well, Nate had a fine proposal, I think, which is a subcommittee of this committee. Right? Is that what you're thinking, Nate?

Yeah. I mean, I know you're at the center of all this, John, and a couple of... So what would be your deadline? You know, staff, get together and try to see if we can... Get some consensus on what it is we support and what it is we don't support, or at least, you know, and then bring that back to this full body so we can decide one way or the other. Because I think, as I understand it, if we don't do anything, the contract's automatically renewed for another five years. In order to terminate, the court's going to have to take a vote on that. So if Supervisor Halbert wants to have staff put on the board agenda the termination of this contract with the Fair Association, I know I wouldn't feel comfortable voting to terminate. I'm just being, you know, love David. He's my guy. But I'm just being honest. I wouldn't feel comfortable voting that I'm going to terminate the contract. Maybe there's two other supervisors that will do that along with David. I'm just saying I wouldn't. So I would say if we can... get together and figure this out between now and before the end of September. Do that. Otherwise, I just think the contract's going to be renewed. We've got to work with the Fair Association and figure out how we're going to address these complications. I know David alluded to some stuff to me that I think needs to be addressed. I think you agree some things need to be addressed.

So that's all I have to say at the moment. Yeah, and it could be on an agenda. We could have 500 people show up, and that might change your mind. I don't know. But the bottom line is I agree with you that we should have a subcommittee and pass this up. Lori?

I was just going to say, I want to just put out there, we do have our second meeting scheduled. We were waiting for Steve to get back from his vacation, but we're supposed to meet hopefully on Monday the 14th. to have the next round of conversations. So just so that folks know that we have not stopped discussing. We're just moving at the pace that we can move at based on availability.

Well, I'd also add that now I understand that these documents can be made available to our board, which will be helpful to further the discussion.

I don't know that you need documents to have a discussion with your board. You can just have a discussion with your board. You don't need to have these documents, but the, well, and I think if it's under threat of litigation or if it has to do with real property, we were able to get into closed session. You should be able to get into closed session and have that discussion.

We certainly can go into closed session. That is not the question. The question was the respective process that I was asked to honor. When's your next board meeting?

Next Tuesday. 15th, a week from today. So if we can meet on the 14th and we can get something out of that meeting that we can present to our board the next night, I'm all for that.

Well, I would recommend that we have a subcommittee, Nate's idea, to discuss that before the 14th. How about that? Sure. Okay. Well, before your next meeting. Before next Tuesday.

Probably.

Next Tuesday is the 14th. No. No, next Monday. 15th, yeah.

It's the day after the 14th. So, yeah. So that would be sometime this week.

Yeah, or Monday, because your meeting's on Tuesday. Well, their meeting is on Wednesday.

Okay, this week. Yeah.

Well, you want to name your board subcommittee? People. Yeah, moves fast, isn't it? Rose, you want to be on it?

Sure. Chuck?

You can have everybody.

This is the subcommittee.

A subcommittee of this subcommittee.

Of this body.

Yeah, of this body. I would say to Jerome, me,

And our lawyers, they've got to be there. So the county side of the subcommittee requires a single, otherwise a front act? Is that the concern?

Well, if we have a majority of this body, then we have a front act problem. So we have to have less than a majority of this body. And in terms of members of the board of supervisors, they can't be more than two.

So Supervisor Miley can be there.

He could, but if we have too many, if we have a majority of this body, then it's a committee meeting.

Well, it's Nate's idea, so do it. I don't know how many members from his association.

Nate just said he didn't want to do it. He wants me to do it. You want to do it, Nate?

No. Yeah. Go ahead. No.

I think they're saying they want both of us there. Yeah. Oh, then it has to be an agendized meeting. No, no.

Because this committee is made up of all of us. Oh, I see. I'm happy to have you there. I was just trying to avoid me having to be at that. Yes, okay. Okay, great.

I love that.

Public comment?

What can we, who's meeting? I think we're gonna have to get back to you.

So it's gonna be Chuck and myself.

Okay.

And Jerome. And Jerome. Your lawyer, Steve. And the three of us. Do you want to be there? You can't be there because you're just a bystander.

I'm just staff.

But she can be there. There are nine members of this committee.

Well, wait. No, no, no, no.

No, it's five. You can only have four. You can only have four. So...

Yeah, because Jerome, you're a member of the committee, right? That's correct.

I'm not a member, and Maury's not a member, so we don't add to that problem. We have to cut it down. It's going to be between... Do you want to do it, or do you want me to cut it down?

Okay, because I don't have to be there. I understand, but I'm just saying, if it's the three of you and David...

This is a problem on the county side, not on the association side. I want to be clear. This is being made a Brown Act because of the structure of the county, not because of the association. So to use... It's overall numbers. I don't know if I agree that this was ever a Brown Act committee in the first place. That is why in the contract it's called an ad hoc committee. It meets ad hoc when needed. Right now we're going to create a needed meeting. And therefore, it should not be Brown Act and not subject to that. But this is where you guys need to talk more. Because our association completely disagrees with the Brown Act. No, not with the Brown Act. We agree with the administrating of the Brown Act on this. And we specifically have language in the contract that spells out how the per contract the county walk the association will operate yeah so this idea that we can't have a subcommittee negotiation i'm it's not how it was done before i don't see it in any document and it's never been opined to us that we're not accurate in our in our statements so until we figure that one out i would just suspend the discussion at the moment

You're going to come up against the 30th pretty quick. I understand that.

We need a date for this week.

Friday.

I'll make myself a bummer. What time Friday?

Am I a part of this?

Yes, you are.

I'd love you to be a part. Yes, you are. But your council might say that you can't come. As long as you get it to four.

Who are the four?

As long as you get it to four.

Who are the four?

Okay. Are you okay excusing the supervisor?

Either you excuse Nate or excuse one of you two. That's the only way we can do it. And with all due respect, you're our agent. And so I understand we have an agreement that talks between us. But with the rules that we have to follow, you kind of got to follow. You're our agent. This discussion was very elucidatory as to how we don't exactly follow this concept of agency.

Well, when we work on the contract, we might put some definitions in. Yeah. Just tell us who the four are.

Yeah.

I think we're going one, two, three, four. Okay.

So John.

John, Josh, Jerome.

John, Jerome, David.

Okay. Yeah, and I got another meeting. I got two, too, because I'm sharing.

So, may I just... We had one last item on the agenda, but I'd actually like to ask that you table it pending the discussion you have. It was around schedule, meeting schedule.

So, we didn't add hot committee meetings. Yeah.

Yeah, I may not need anything.

Yeah, right.

You know. Okay, so I'll just ask one more time if we have any public comment. Public comment. Yeah.

I have no online speakers.

Any comment in the room?

Oh, shoot.

All right, so we're adjourned.

Then I think after we do the sub-meeting, you guys should get together.