Abbie Zoldan, 18, of Boardman, with her horse Keegan, a Solid Paint horse, competes in the pole bending competition at the 2019 Canfield Fair. Vindicator file photo

CANFIELD — “We are going forward as if we are having the fair.”

Those were the words spoken last week by Canfield Fair Board President Ward Campbell.

“We should know more after June 1,” he said.

Campbell said Gov. Mike DeWine has assembled a Fair Advisory Group to look at all aspects of fairs in Ohio and come up with ideas to have or not have segments of fairs.

“The governor’s team has worked with trade groups and interested parties as well as our public health experts to gather members,” said DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney. “Our goal was to get people intimately familiar with these industries to help us gather best practices with our public health team.”

The team assembled earlier this month was made up of 23 individuals. Among that number were representatives from small, medium and large county fairs. For large fairs, Canfield was the biggest. Therefore, Canfield Fair Manager Bev Fisher was asked, and agreed, to be on the panel.

“I am pretty proud of her serving on it,” Campbell said.

Fisher is the only local representative on the panel.

Another item Campbell was happy to see was the results of a survey the fair put on its website. Results showed 74 percent of the nearly 4,900 people who responded reported they are planning to attend this year’s fair.

Of the 26 percent who said they were not planning to attend, 80 percent said they were concerned about safety. The other reason involved 9.3 percent who said it was because of economic and unemployment related to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Campbell said everyone is pretty much in a holding pattern right now as the Fair Advisory Group meets and hashes out details of what fairs could look like later this summer.

jtwhitehouse@tribtoday.com