Fair board 'blindsided' by Kittelman comments

The Douglas County Fair Board criticized Commissioner Marilyn Kittelman for publicly voicing complaints about the Poison concert without first talking to Fairgrounds Director Harold Phillips.

Fair Board members said Friday they were “blindsided” by comments Kittelman made at the Aug. 15 commissioners’ meeting and in a column that appeared the same day in the North County News and the Winston Reporter.

At that meeting, Kittelman said she had received “lots and lots of complaints” about Poison’s Aug. 9 concert. The complaints stemmed, she said, from a video that played on a screen behind the band and that briefly showed bare-breasted women dancing.

During a joint meeting of the Board of Commissioners and the Fair Board on Friday evening that attracted about 30 people, Fair Board members told Kittelman she acted inappropriately by failing to address her concerns with Phillips first. The fair manager first learned about the offending video when The News-Review contacted him after the Aug. 15 meeting.

“To me, it was totally nonprofessional. If you have a problem with the fairgrounds, call Mr. Phillips or call a Fair Board member rather than put in your article in the North County News and announce it at your public meeting before we’ve even got a chance to know what’s going on,” Fair Board member and former Roseburg Mayor John Dunn told Kittelman. “I mean, you blindsided us. And I don’t think that’s right.”

Several times during the two-hour meeting at the Community Conference Hall at the fairgrounds, Kittelman questioned how Phillips and the Fair Board members knew nothing of the incident until she spoke publicly about it.

“I find it amazing ... that neither you nor any other fair members or Harold knew that that happened until the 15th,” Kittelman said.

“Actually, we did not,” Dunn said.

Dunn stood on the side of the stage during Poison’s performance, while fellow Fair Board member Bob Vangstad was backstage during the show. Neither one saw the clip that showed the naked women.

“Had we known, we would have stopped it,” Dunn said.

The day of Poison’s appearance, Phillips had his backstage manager contact officials with the Oregon Garden in Silverton, where the band appeared the night before. They were asked if there were any concerns they should be aware of. No problems were reported.

Vangstad told Kittelman that by first airing her complaints publicly rather than going to Phillips, she helped blow the incident “out of proportion.”

“I kind of wonder if it would have been brought up to Mr. Phillips or to us as a Fair Board, maybe we could have stopped this public outcry that is a small amount of people rather than a large amount of people,” Vangstad said.

Vangstad questioned Kittelman on just how many people complained to her. Kittelman, who operated a booth during the five-day run of the fair, said eight to 10 people contacted her that night after the concert and an unspecified number called the Board of Commissioners office later.

“But I don’t think it’s really a matter of how many people complained or how many didn’t or how many letters got wrote in,” Kittelman said. “What I felt is we needed to sit down all together — and that’s what I said at the (Aug. 15) meeting — and talk about it. I thought it was very inappropriate.”

Dunn continued to press Kittelman. During one exchange, Dunn told Kittelman she acted unfairly by not voicing her concerns to Phillips or giving him a chance to explain.

“Well, I didn’t feel like I needed to. I assumed he knew,” Kittelman said.

“You were here all week. His office is right down there,” Dunn responded.

At that point, David Jaques, Kittelman’s campaign manager and political adviser, who was sitting in the audience, interrupted. He shouted at Dunn, “Hey, calm down, please.”

Kittelman continued, “All I knew I had no clue that the Fair Board wouldn’t have known as I did.”

Kittelman also complained about one of Poison’s songs which includes sexually suggestive lyrics.

She didn’t raise the same concerns two years ago, however, when Ted Nugent appeared at the fair. The title of one of his songs generally isn’t printed in newspapers because of its sexual nature. The fairgrounds received a large number of complaints about Nugent, after he made insensitive comments about Japanese and other groups of people.

In the end, Kittelman said, voicing the concerns about Poison was productive. The agency that booked the band, along with Poison’s talent agency, issued apologies for the showing of the video. She also said Phillips has instituted additional steps to ensure nothing like that would happen again.

“I believe by getting that out there, by having people call, by having them writing letters, by addressing it, we made sure it’s not going to happen again. And it did get an apology in the paper,” Kittelman said. “That’s what my job is. When these concerns come to me, it’s my job to make sure they get answered.”

Earlier in the meeting, John McCulley, executive secretary of the Oregon Fairs Association, told commissioners that Douglas County’s fair consistently ranks as one of the top fairs in the state.

Even though Douglas County is Oregon’s ninth-largest county, it ranked seventh last year in attendance among the 36 county fairs, McCulley said. The fair is tops in the number of adult exhibitors, and second in youth auction proceeds, open class youth exhibitors and donations and sponsorships.

In addition, the fair is third in the number of 4-H and FFA exhibitors and in the number of non-profit organizations using the fairgrounds to raise funds.

“I think this speaks volumes about this fair,” McCulley said. “This is one of the top county fairs in the state of Oregon.”

This year, gate admissions were up nearly 9 percent, food vendor sales were up 5 percent, other vendor booths were up 4.5 percent and reserved concert seating was up 18 percent, said Phillips who spent the first 75 minutes of Friday’s meeting reviewing last month’s fair.



• You can reach reporter John Sowell at 957-4209 or by e-mail at jsowell@newsreview.info.