Grant County fairgoers will pay to park

Fee returns

EPHRATA - People going to the Grant County Fair will have to open up their wallets to find a place to park this year.

The fair will charge a $2 fee for each time a person parks or the fairgoer can purchase a season pass for $5.

Attendants from the Moses Lake Drill Team Booster Club will take the payments at time people park, or they can go into the fairgrounds office to purchase a season pass prior to the fair.

The students will receive money in one lump sum, which would help to keep costs down, said Gary Ribail, the chairman of the Grant County Fair Board.

"We charged for parking in the past and then we got away from doing that," he said at the Grant County Commissioners meeting on Monday. "We were making good money from it … Ninety percent of the places you go you pay to park."

Bill West, manager of the Grant County Fairgrounds, said he wanted to stress buying the season pass, which would alleviate the need for people to pay each time they park.

"It's a hard ticket that they hang in their window and when they drive up they'll just wave them in," he said.

West said they had done away with the attendants, but needed to reintroduce them because people had parked two or three deep during the fair in recent years.

"It created some real dire situations last year where people needed to get out, because of medical emergencies," he said. "There was a real problem there that we needed to address."