With only a few months left before the Pacific County Fair, it has a new director. Pacific County Commissioners voted unanimously during a commission meeting on May 13 to hire Colton Nussbaum.

Nussbaum was selected to head both the fair and the parks division after a decision by Pacific County Department of Public Works Director Jennifer Oatfield, General Administration Chief Administrative Officer Paul Plakinger, and Human Resources/Risk Manager Marie Guernsey. They opted to combine the two positions.

“This was just supposed to be just the fair manager, and then when we started breaking down things about the amount of time that we are putting into management staff on the upper senior management staff actually for parks and the fair…,” Oatfield said. “Just working with Marie and talking to Paul about it, we decided to go ahead and make it a parks and fair manager combined.”

According to the agenda item submitted by Oatfield on May 2, Nussbaum will get a starting salary at Grade 12 Step 1, which is $4,394 a month, equating to $52,728 a year.

“Colton had an excellent interview, and he has some great fresh ideas coming,” Oatfield said. “I think that he will do an amazing job, he is very well known in the community and presents himself very well. We are very excited to have him this year.”

Office manager

The commission also made another significant hire for the fair during the June 10 commission meeting, where they voted unanimously to bring back Kathryn Southwick as a temporary fair office manager from June 10 through Sept. 30.

“We are excited to get Katie back again this year for the fair,” DPW Deputy Director Todd Strozyk said. “She has just been absolutely wonderful the past few years running the office there. Her and Colton have already been in contact even though she hasn’t started yet, so they are excited to get going and get things rolling with the contracts and stuff too.”

“Katie will start next week working remotely. She lives in Vancouver, and she had been in that work for us last year. She will be onsite probably the end of July or the first of August and will be on the fairgrounds full-time there,” Strozyk added.

According to the agenda item submitted by Strozyk on June 2, Southwick will be paid $20 per hour for the hours she works through Sept. 30.