A Guthrie Center farmer was recently reelected to represent the southwest district of Iowa on the state fair board for his 21st year.

C.W. Thomas represents 17 counties of the state, and he recently received the Heritage Award from the International Association of Fairs and Expositions for his work on the Board, not to mention his previous decade served on the Association of Iowa Fairs, and his volunteering for the Guthrie County Fair, for which he currently serves as vice president of the fair foundation.

Thomas mentions that he and the other State Fair Board members are elected at the annual State Agricultural Convention in December, “We have 70 full-time employees at the state fair, but we as a board meet and develop policies and give advice, yays and nays to our CEO (Gary Slater) which does a very good job. So it’s more of a policy directorship, but we meet once a month for two days, 12 months out of the year. Then you also call on all your county fairs and seek out if they have questions or (are) wanting to know what’s going on (at the) state fair, that sort of thing. We’re the liaison back to the county fairs to the state.”

A couple state fair projects Thomas is looking forward to this year is the $13.5 million renovation of the 4-H building, and continued plans for the development of the northwest corner of the fairgrounds for outdoor entertainment such as rodeos and tractor pulls. Hear more from Thomas during a two-part Let’s Talk Guthrie County program on air and at raccoonvalleyradio.com.