The King County Fair has lived to see another day.

The 145-year-old event was placed on the chopping block by County Executive Ron Sims but was salvaged thanks to an outpouring of support from the region’s agricultural community and, eventually, a vote of the full King County Council.

The council gave preliminary support to a 2009 budget Friday and was expected to formally adopt the spending plan earlier this week.

No one doubts that the fair has slipped in recent years. Attendance has plummeted as the county has tinkered with the mix of attractions. Things reached an all-time low during the 2008 fair, which had no carnival rides, limited vendors and only 16,000 attendees.

It wasn’t too many years ago that fair visitors were jammed shoulder-to-shoulder in the midway and that came only after they parked blocks away from the grounds.

While some have whispered for years that King County was looking to get out of the fair business, the event’s future was placed in grave danger when Sims suggested that the county’s budget could no longer subsidize an event slipping rapidly from the public radar.

With a projected $93 million gap in the general fund, Sims had proposed a laundry list of budget cuts.

The fact that the fair – the oldest such event west of the Mississippi River – was on Sims’ hit list didn’t sit well with members of the agricultural community or its boosters.

More than 200 citizens turned out for an October open house in the Enumclaw Expo Center fieldhouse, with none speaking in support of the executive’s proposal.

Rather, they spoke to the benefits of the fair, particularly upon young people. Representatives from FFA and 4-H groups were vocal in their belief that agricultural activities help shape good citizens.

During that session, citizens learned they had three allies on the County Council. Reagan Dunn and Pete von Reichbauer had called the meeting and expressed their support; also on hand, and also speaking to the need to save the fair, was Larry Phillips, the influential chairman of the council’s budget committee.

During a Friday afternoon interview, Dunn noted that the fair has been given a reprieve, but it’s now up to a core group of supporters to make sure its future is a prosperous one.

“We have to use this as motivation to dramatically improve the fair,” he said, complaining that the event has been mismanaged in recent years. Dunn was careful to note that he was not blaming any one individual for the fair’s turn for the worse; rather, he criticized county government for setting a direction that was bound to fail.

Dunn said the county’s 2009 budget will include $318,000 for fair operations, the same figure that was in the 2008 budget.

But just because the dollars are the same, no one should assume the fair will be identical, Dunn said.

Early in the budget process, members of the county council approved a motion directing the county executive – if, in fact, the fair was saved – to form a task force charged with breathing new life into the stagnant attraction.

“As soon as the budget passes, we’ll start meeting,” Dunn said, noting that changes could be instituted in time to be noticeable for the 2009 fair.

Dunn said he will be on the task force, along with Enumclaw Mayor John Wise, representatives from the Enumclaw Chamber of Commerce, the county’s executive branch, 4-H and FFA groups, Washington State University Cooperative Extension and the region’s equestrian community. The group, Dunn said, will solicit advice from those working with successful fairs and turn to the private sector for input.

The goal is to make the fair self-sustaining from a financial viewpoint.

Both Dunn and von Reichbauer said the public’s heartfelt testimony went a long way toward saving the King County Fair.

“The hundreds of 4-H members and other fair advocates that made their voices heard at our town hall meeting in Enumclaw are the real saviors of this treasured cultural event,” von Reichbauer said.

He termed the continued funding of the fair “one of the greatest accomplishments” of the 2009 budget.

“The overwhelming turnout made a huge amount of difference,” Dunn concurred.

The budget poised for adoption early this week saves 19 sheriff’s deputy positions, a public health clinic and special courts that send drug addicts and people with mental illness to treatment instead of jail.

But, to make ends meet, the budget will eliminate as many as 60 sheriff’s deputies and 20 positions from the prosecutor’s office, see the closure of most county offices for 10 days and fund some social services for less than a full year.

Reach Kevin Hanson at khanson@courierherald.com or 360-802-8205.