Breitrick recaps busy year for agriculture society

It was a busy and productive year for the Shawano County Agriculture Society.

Chairman Scott Breitrick made an appearance at the Jan. 25 Shawano County Board of Supervisors meeting, where he gave a year-end report and highlighted certain events, like the Shawano County Fair and the Shawano County Speedway season.

When talking about the speedway, Breitrick said there were six rain-outs during the season. Even though this was the case, he was pleased with the overall attendance during 2022.

“Attendance at the races this year was right around 70,000 people,” said Breitrick. “That is a good thing.”

In regard to the fair, Breitrick explained that the agriculture society received a $200,000 grant from the Badger Bounceback Program, which gave away funds in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Using that money, the agriculture society was able to construct a new bingo building to be used during the fair, and it plans to replace lights at the speedway.

“I know that we are looking at a different water truck, so we will have to stick some money into that,” added Breitrick.

Similar to the speedway season, Breitrick noted the strong attendance once again at the Shawano County Fair in 2022. He estimated that close to 50,000 people were in attendance.

“You don’t know exactly how many are with a season ticket; you don’t know how many times they come,” said Breitrick. “There is not really a good way to count every day, but I mean if anybody was there on Sunday, you know how busy it was.”

Those high attendance numbers played a major effect on the fair, with $756,000 being spent during the livestock auction. That is $250,000 more than 2021, which saw the livestock auction garner $506,000.

“It was in three hours. There are a lot of people in the community that are buying and spending money on animals,” said Breitrick. “We were just at the fair convention, and I talked to Rock County — which has more than twice the animals that we have — and I think that their auction only brought in $600,000. So, we had 138 animals, and we did $756,000.”

In terms of miscellaneous projects that were also completed, Breitrick reported that new radios and headsets were purchased for speedway employees, a new door was installed in the office building, power poles and chain link fences were repaired and bathrooms were repainted. Also, some ash trees were removed to allow space for the new bingo building, he said.

lreimer@newmedia-wi.com