For the fifth straight year, there will be no Hawaii County Fair in Hilo or Kona in 2025.
Kelton Chang, president of the Hawaii County Fair Foundation, said he’s hoping the family-friendly event will return in 2026, but it won’t happen without help.
The fair, a September staple for seven decades, last occurred in 2019.
“COVID killed us,” Chang told the Tribune-Herald last week.
Another impediment is the cost of shipping E.K. Fernandez Shows’ carnival rides and midway of games from Oahu to Hawaii Island via Young Brothers, the state’s only interisland ocean cargo company.
During the pandemic’s lockdown phase in 2020, the state Public Utilities Commission granted Young Brothers an emergency 46% rate increase aimed at generating an extra $27 million in annual revenue the company said it needed to avoid shutting down.
Young Brothers applied for additional rate increases in October 2024, including 35% for containers shipped to and from Hilo. That case remains open with the PUC.
“Young Brothers and the cost of shipping has made it ridiculously expensive for us to even think of having a fair come to the outer islands … ,” Chang said. “When you’re looking at $500,000 to $600,000 to ship Fernandez’s carnivals, his rides and equipment to another island, it’s ridiculous, in my opinion.”
Scott Fernandez, E.K. Fernandez’s president, told the Tribune-Herald in 2022 that he used to travel to Hilo for about $250,000, but last week confirmed those days are gone.
“It’s so exorbitantly expensive, given the shipping rates and hotel rates. It’s not feasible,” Fernandez said last week. “During the lockdown in 2020 and 2021, we suspected that we had been losing money. Our suspicions were confirmed when I had the time to really dig down into the numbers. The cost of traveling there is just overwhelming.”
Fernandez will make one neighbor island stop this year, because the Maui County Council on Feb. 21 unanimously approved a $1.5 million grant to the nonprofit Festivals of Aloha to hold the Maui County Fair. The Valley Isle’s fair, like the Big Island’s, was last held in 2019.
“It’s 200 miles or 180 nautical miles to Maui, Fernandez said. “I can ship the 35 trailers I need without the … insurance I need at about $350,000. That’s without wharfage and taxes and fuel surcharge and all that crap.
“Basically, it’s over 400 grand.”
According to Fernandez, that’s more than 10 times the cost to drive the equipment that distance in trucks. He called the ocean cargo rate increases “exponential.”
A Big Island barge would dock in Kawaihae, the equipment would be trucked to Kona for West Hawaii’s fair, then hauled over the Daniel K. Inouye Highway for the Hilo fair.
Fernandez described that ocean voyage as “the most expensive route traveled by a fair on the globe.”
“It’s become unaffordable,” he said. “When I bring entertainment in, I have to pay for all their flights, all their shipping, their hotels — and I have to pay them a performance fee. … I’ll meet you halfway, because I won’t ask you for a performance fee. I’ll risk the rain, the hurricane possibilities — which always seems to show up in September and October for some reason. But we’ve got to have that some kind of support.”
The pandemic also has left Fernandez with other challenges, in addition to increased shipping fees.
“Because of the lockdown, a lot of our staff left,” he said. “They went to Florida and Arizona and all the places that opened late in 2020 and all the way through ’21, because they wanted to do carnivals. That’s what they do. So, they went to those other locations and they built lives there.
“By the time the government was going to allow us to open, you couldn’t get those people back.”
And like most public events, insurance is an issue. Chang said the foundation has continued to pay the premium yearly, despite the fair’s absence the past four years. He said the insurer — the same one that covers Fernandez’s operation — threatened to cancel the policy if the fair is again a no-go.
“Scott, he called that company and he said, ‘Look, you need to help them, because they’re one of the last we have in Hawaii besides mine. You guys shut them off, we’re screwed,’” Chang said. “They gave us leeway of a year, and I told Scott, ‘If we can’t pull it off this year, I don’t know how they’re going to be receptive, because my policy ends right before the fair normally happens in September.’ And if they don’t renew it, I can’t do the fair.
“I had to cut that policy to bare bones just to survive. We don’t have any income, and we’re having to dish out money. Sooner or later, the tank is going to run dry.”
According to Chang, he sought funds unsuccessfully from the previous county administration of then-Mayor Mitch Roth.
“For this administration, I have not approached the County Council, and I have not approached Mayor (Kimo) Alameda, not yet,” he said. “I did go to his first community talk meeting at Aunty Sally’s … just to get the feeling of how his administration is going.”
“The state has given a considerable amount of help in the past,” Chang added. “The mayors of each county would write a letter, and the (wharfage) fees would be waived. That was about $130,000, and that helped out Fernandez.”
Noting the fair’s long history, Fernandez said he hopes it continues, but added, “We’ll see what transpires.”
“The public has to want it enough to go to the mayor and say, ‘Hey, you guys have got to step up. … There’s got to be some money here somewhere,” he said. “You look at the rail in Honolulu. They blow $200,000 a day just because of change orders. If you can blow the money on absolutely nothing, why don’t you add the money to something that adds to the community?
“A sense of joy and happiness is what we bring, and something the people of Hilo haven’t had for half a decade.”
The fair’s foundation is a nonprofit organization. Donations, which are tax deductible, can be mailed to P.O. Box 7083, Hilo, HI 96720, attention: Hawaii County Fair Foundation.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
