The carnival will be bypassing New Auburn’s Jamboree Days next month.

“This year we are not having one because the carnival we had backed out,” said Dan North, president of the New Auburn Parks Commission.

Jamboree Days is part of the village’s Park Commission duties. Profits go to pay for the upkeep to Memorial Park and to pay for a building that the village had constructed on the site in recent years.

“We try to make it a family type thing,” he said of the celebration.

New Auburn’s deal with the carnival is typical for small town celebrations. North said the village gets 10 percent of what the carnival generates during the event, and the carnival keeps the rest. There is no expense to the village, he said.

New Auburn switched carnival companies last year because the previous company was sometimes booked during the last weekend of July, when Jamboree Days is held at Lion’s Memorial Park in New Auburn.

After last year’s celebration, North said the village asked if the carnival would return in 2008. The carnival official said that would be no problem and he would get in touch with the village in January.

North said when that didn’t happen the village contacted the carnival official in February.

“He went to a different venue,” North said, leaving Jamboree Days with no carnival.

So the celebration scheduled for July 25-27 had to switch to an alternate plan.

The village hired an outfit from Prairie Farm that is providing games such as “water wars” and miniature golf.

“We do have somebody lined up for next year,” North said, but that company could not come to New Auburn for the 2008 event.

North said it’s impossible to find a carnival in February or March of the year of a event.

Lining up a carnival can be a headache, he said.

“Especially when you think you have one lined up,” he added.

Boyd has better luck

Another village in Chippewa County has had better luck with a carnival it has booked for several years for Ringelspiel Days in May.

Steve Hassemer, president of the Boyd Chamber of Commerce, said Indianhead Amusements of Spooner has provided entertainment at the Boyd celebration for at least 15 years.

“We already talked to them (about returning in 2009) and book them each year,” Hassemer said. Like New Auburn, Boyd gets a percentage of what the carnival takes in during the celebration.

Non-profit groups such as the Lions, Boy Scouts and Jaycees are allowed to set up food booths. But Hassemer said the village allows Indianhead Amusements to decide whether a for-profit company can set up a stand at the celebration.

Hassemer said sales at Ringelspiel Days were down by about $2,000 this year, possibly because of a rainstorm the Sunday of the celebration or because of higher fuel costs.

Fueling a solution

Those rising fuel costs led the Northern Wisconsin State Fair in Chippewa Falls to help its carnival company, North American Midway Entertainment of Jackson, Miss.

“We’ve been working with them for about 10 years,” said Julius “Pinky” Lee, the fair’s co-manager.

American Midway has three units, and plays in states in the Midwest. Besides the fair in Chippewa Falls on July 9-13, the carnival company will play in Wausau, Janesville, Elkhorn and Stoughton in Wisconsin.

“Fuel is a problem,” Lee said.

The carnival has self-contained bunkhouses for its employees that are usually powered by diesel fuel. But the price for diesel has soared even higher than gasoline.

So the fair this year is allowing the carnival to use the fair’s electrical power source for the self-contained units instead of burning diesel. The carnival will still pay back the fair for the cost of the electricity, but will have significant savings over burning diesel, Lee said.

“In the course of their season, they are looking at an increase of their (fuel) costs of over $2 million,” he added.

Lee said for many years, the fair in Chippewa Falls followed the same percentage system of payment by carnivals used by Boyd and New Auburn.

But that was switched over to a flat rate fee several years ago, and Lee said it’s a fair system because the fair needs a carnival and the carnival can’t exist without fairs.

He’s not surprised that, nationally, small towns are having a harder time lining up carnivals.

“It’s not unusual,” he said. “Say they are going on a percentage. They have to have the population to turn out.”

The carnival owner has to worry about needing to fix older equipment, passing state inspections, paying its personnel and soaring price of fuel.

“The times are tough,” Lee said. “I would hate to be in the carnival business now.”

Reach Rod Stetzer at rod.stetzer@lee.net.