After more than half a century, the partnership between the Crawford County Fair and the Miss Crawford County Scholarship Pageant may be coming to an end.

According to Debbie Luchansky, co-director of the 2008 pageant, a member of the pageant board was informed by Fair Board Treasurer Frederic A. Wagner that sound and lights for the Sunday night extravaganza will cost $4,000.

The pageant board, which learned of the conversation with Wagner on Friday, acted quickly. By Monday afternoon, final details on a deal that would move the pageant to an as-yet-undisclosed off-fairgrounds location were being worked out, and confirmation that the new venue will be available was expected this morning, Luchansky said. “We’re looking at an alternate location due to the cost.”

“I never told them it would cost $4,000,” Wagner said Monday. “I told them that’s probably been about what the sound and the lights would cost.”

According to Wagner, his original question to the pageant board was this: “I asked them if their rental had been approved by the fair board, because it wasn’t on the minutes.”

Asked if he was aware the pageant board was seeking an alternate location because of the $4,000 expense, “that would have been their option if that’s what they want to do,” he said.

“Fred said if we have a problem with (paying the $4,000), we could go to the next fair board meeting to discuss it,” Luchansky said. However, she continued, with the next fair board meeting set for Aug. 14 and the pageant scheduled for Aug. 17, that wouldn’t leave enough time to make other plans if a compromise couldn’t be reached. “We only get about $3,000 from ticket sales,” she said. “It’s putting us in a very difficult position.”

Traditionally, the pageant board receives proceeds from admission to the pageant itself — $15 per person for racetrack seating and $10 for seats in the grandstands for the 2008 pageant — while the fair board receives the $4 admission collected at the gate from everyone attending the pageant.

The fair board provides a variety of services at no charge to the pageant board. “We supply stage hands and things like that,” Wagner said Monday. “We take care of ticket takers and sellers and they get proceeds from the grandstands.”

Lights and sound have also been provided, to the best of Luchansky’s knowledge, at no charge to the pageant board. “(The fair board) has always been more than generous before,” she said Friday, acknowledging that the possibility of charging for lights and sound had come up in previous discussions.

It all started

on a rainy day

This wouldn’t be the first time the pageant didn’t take place at the fairgrounds; in fact, almost a year ago, on a rainy Monday night in August 2007, inclement weather forced the board to move the pageant to Shafer Auditorium at Allegheny College. It would, however, mark the first time the pageant would be planned to take place in another venue.

According to Walter (Boots) Dunn, first vice president of the fair board, the possibility of charging the pageant board for sound and lights came up after the 2007 fair, when the board moved the pageant to Shafer Auditorium without notifying anyone on the fair board in advance.