It’s 4:40 p.m. on Monday, August 28, and Troy Waffner is running late for a 3 p.m. interview.
He’s currently all the way across the fairgrounds, dealing with a parking issue—a few issues, really, parking and others—that will take up a sizable part of day six of the 2017 New York State Fair. When he returns to his office in the Administration Building near the main entrance, he’ll take the time to help a senior citizen return the motorized Scootaround he reserved for her before settling into his desk chair and giving the interview for his alma mater’s magazine.
He explains that he met the woman a few years ago when he was assistant to then-fair Director Joe O’Hara. “She comes to see me every year,” he said matter-of-factly, as if every director of a state fair took the time to cater to the individual needs of fairgoers.
Looking unflappable in khakis and a salmon-and-white checkered shirt, sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms, Waffner is in his fourth year as acting director of the fair. And if those around him are eager to see the “acting” part removed from his title, he is typically restrained in talking about himself. “It would be nice,” he said, “but it’s not my decision.” Waffner took a circuitous route to the Solvay fairgrounds. He graduated from Morrisville State College in 1993 (accounting) after an undistinguished high school career in nearby Cazenovia. “I came out of high school as a typical kid who didn’t study much,” he admitted. “Morrisville gave me the opportunity to succeed in small classes with great professors and to do quite well on my grades.”
He says the accounting program gave him a “basis of understanding numbers and the order that comes with them,” and he recalls fondly the late professor Jon Rogers (“a wonderful human being”) and professor Tony Zazzara as the mentors who had a profound effect on him. “I didn’t live on campus; I commuted from home, so it was all business,” he said. “Morrisville gave me a great start.”
After Morrisville, Waffner took a job with an accounting firm for a few years before joining the staff of New York State Assemblyman William Magee (D-Nelson), where he worked from 1996 through 2008. He became fascinated by public policy and did most of his work in drafting and negotiating legislative proposals. In 2000 he earned a bachelor’s degree in public policy from SUNY Empire State College after several years of part-time study. In 2008 he moved from Magee’s staff to that of NYS Sen. David Valesky (D-Oneida), where he stayed until joining the fair staff in 2010. The Great New York State Fair ranks in the country’s top 10 for attendance. With a spike in growth after 2016’s renovations, it has a decent shot at moving into the top 3, some note.
He laughs at the observation that nobody really goes to school to become a state fair director. “That’s for sure!” he replied. “But a lot of the policy issues are familiar to me, and I always loved coming to the fair as a kid, and there was a position as assistant director, so….”
With a year-round staff of dozens and a fair-time staff of more than 1,600 employees, plus 650 vendors, 10,000 animals and more than a million annual visitors, preparation is key.
Across Chevy Court at Emmi’s Little Italy booth in the International Building, Richard “Duke” Emmi of Canastota has seen a lot of change at the fair in his 41 years. He likes what he sees in the acting director. “Troy’s got a good concept of what’s going on,” he said. “The guy’s a straight shooter. He has hundreds of vendors, and I’ve seen him three times since the fair opened five days ago.”
Emmi appreciates that Waffner gives him and other vendors a chance to discuss ideas that will make the fair better. “He really listens. Not all of them do that,” he said.
Waffner has overseen massive changes at the fairgrounds, including a multimillion-dollar renovation over the past three years that improved access, widened walkways from the Midway to the entrance, and generally created a cleaner, more attractive fair. A new Expo Center is still to come.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has taken a heightened interest in the fair with directives in 2014 that resulted in changes like the addition of a skyride this year that gives visitors a view of the Midway from the air. “I think the sense was that it had become ‘The Syracuse Fair.’ We really had the opportunity to do some great things and open it back up to the entire state and beyond.”
The efforts have paid off with increased attendance; the fair now easily tops a million visitors annually—and general comments from fairgoers are far more positive. This year, the fair added a 13th day to the schedule for the first time. Total attendance for the run of the fair was 1,161,912, a bit more than the record-setting total for the 12-day run of 2016, when 1,117,630 people passed through the gates.
Waffner’s co-workers are fiercely loyal, giving him a lot of credit for the boost in attendance over the last five years. “Troy keeps an even keel, and that keeps us on an even keel,” says public information officer Dave Bullard, a longtime fixture on Syracuse radio and television. “He’s as good a leader here as I think you can find—creative, funny, and he keeps people engaged.”
An ongoing Morrisville connection for Waffner is Geneanne Keegan-Smith, who works as the concessions and exhibits manager for the fair. Her father, Gene Keegan, owned and operated Keegan’s restaurant and bar in Morrisville throughout the 1980s and ’90s. She has worked at the fair since childhood, when her father was a vendor there. At 14, she was already working at an information booth. She has spent the last quarter-century at the fairgrounds. “You couldn’t ask for a better ‘people person,’” she says of her boss. “He understands how to write a law, put something into a bill. And at the same time, he’s natural and honest with people and can work with anybody. I joke that he’s like the brother I never had; our birthdays are two days apart in the same year.”
Keegan-Smith recalls Waffner’s state-fair-themed wedding a few years ago, and how he texted her from Hawaii during his fifth anniversary to spitball a new idea about discount admissions tickets. “He’s such an idea person—always looking to make things better. He’ll text me at 10 p.m. some random day in the off season and write, ‘What do you think about this? Could we do this?’ He never stops trying to make things better.”
Waffner, has been known to drive random fairgoers to their cars just for the chance to ask them for feedback on their fair experience, sits back and thinks for a moment when he is asked what his message would be to current business students at Morrisville. “Nobody cares about what they can’t see,” he starts, recalling a lesson he learned during his stint on the Cazenovia Village Board.
“Change is hard, but change isn’t bad.”
“You have to focus to some extent on short-term goals, but you have to be in it for the long term. That’s what I would tell them.”
And with that, he’s off, striding across Chevy Court, interrupted every 10 feet by fairgoers official and unofficial, serenaded by the cacophonous sound-check of the Classic Rock band Kansas, for an impromptu appearance with the local ABC-TV affiliate, where he will recount patiently for yet another audience the coming and goings of day six of New York State Fair 2017.
Four years as acting director. And happily, no end in sight.
