Peggy Doering - Valleyfest

Peggy: 0:00

This is Peggy Doering and you're listening to One Hour to Doors.

Jon: 0:07

This is One Hour to Doors, a podcast about the business and soul of the festivals and events industry. I am your host, john Stone. Every episode of One Hour to Doors explores the people, issues, insights and trends impacting the enterprise of bringing people and communities together in common cause. We are recording today at the Washington Festivals and Events Association annual conference, this year taking place in Issaquah Washington. Our guest today is Peggy Doering, executive Director of Valley Fest in Spokane Valley, Washington. Peggy is also a colleague of mine and fellow past president with WFEA. Welcome to the show, Peggy. Well, thank you for having me, Jon, it's my pleasure.

Peggy: 0:52

It's a beautiful day today.

Jon: 0:56

Tell us about Valley Fest.

Peggy: 0:59

Well Valley Fest just completed its 34th year of producing a festival in the city of Spokane Valley, Washington, and the city of Spokane Valley, Washington this year also celebrated its 20th anniversary of being a city, so it's been quite a journey watching our community grow over the last 34 years, since we started the festival in a county park and had 4,000 people attending the first year and having a hay bale trailer being the main stage and one food vendor, which was Domino's Pizza, to what we have today at Mirabu Point Park, center Place, regional Events Center, Plants, ferry Park and the Centennial Trail, Wellesley Avenue and a parade on Sprague Avenue, usually pre-COVID. We attract a 34,000 visitors and guests to our events over the three days of fun and frivolity that we can provide to those who come to the city of Spokane Valley as tourists and to the people who live and work and play in the area.

Jon: 2:08

You'll have to forgive my lack of geographic knowledge of the greater Spokane area, but where is Spokane Valley relative to the city of Spokane?

Peggy: 2:18

Good question, Jon. I would like to take you on a little walk around with me. From the city of Spokane you head east towards Cortoling, and we are a valley between the city of Spokane and the Idaho border. Oh, okay, it's kind of a nebulous area because we also go north and south and we include four school districts in this geographical area. But the main connecting point is I-90. And if you are on I-90, you have no idea of what you're missing by just traveling the road between Point A, which is city of Spokane, and over to the beautiful jewel in North Idaho which is Cortoling. So taking an exit off of the freeway on Pines Road, I would direct you north to the Spokane River.

Peggy: 3:08

The Spokane River flows through the city of Spokane Valley, from Idaho down into Spokane.

Peggy: 3:16

We have rural area, we have parks, we have a centennial trail, we have fishing, we have kayaking, we have lots of outdoor activities along our Spokane River, in addition to an industrial area along the river, and recently the city of Spokane Valley acquired 65 acres along the river for future park development. So I always feel that we're five minutes away in this beautiful nature setting to enhance and to enrich our lives. And forget about that. Hurry, hurry, go, go, go between the two cities in the freeway. Also, off of Pines Road, you can head south towards the city center core, which we're developing as a new city. We have a city hall, a wonderful Balfour Park, and that's where our parade is, the centered Onsberg Avenue. So you really do have to leave the freeway in order to see the city of Spokane Valley. But it has a lot to offer with our schools, our students are the people that live there, and then we also have a huge shopping area in the city of Spokane Valley that attracts visitors from all over also.

Jon: 4:30

I want to ask is there significant population growth occurring in that area these days?

Peggy: 4:36

Yes, when we became a city 20 years ago, I believe, we were close to 78,000 residents, which was one of the largest new cities that has ever formed in the United States. In fact, the president.

Peggy: 4:49

In fact there's a proclamation that was sent by the president of the United States office at that time, congratulating us on that effort to bring managed growth and services to the community, that he had relied on county services for a very long time and so when the city was formed everyone was financially and fiscally very responsible for the city. So it's a lot of contract services there, which is a little bit different to how to manage a municipality in that part of the state. We did inherit all the park property from the county.

Peggy: 5:22

And then and then we were. In addition to that we had other center place, regional event center, and Mirber Point Park was being developed at the time and then that was deeded over to us. We've acquired since then just I think in the last year Plants Ferry Park, which is another county park. It's kind of shared with the city but that has the soccer fields and the baseball fields on that property also. Now our growth has grown to. I believe we're close to 130,000 families, huge growth in apartments and finding livable spaces and services for people, and also we are acquiring through World Relief and other refugee associations. Our city last year had 176 new residents from outside the United States and I believe they're on track for the same number of families to come into our city this year. For my edification?

Jon: 6:21

Were you involved with the formation of Valley Fest? Do you go that far back with it?

Peggy: 6:28

I was a PTA mom when Valley Fest was started by one of my very good friends, sue DeLuke. She and a group of neighbors sat around the table in 1989 and said what do we have to offer children and families in this Boocan Valley? The services, the nonprofit services, were not extended into the Valley at the time. I'm talking campfire, boy Scouts, girl Scouts, art, school, services for health and wellness, that children needed therapy services, etc. And so we decided that it would just. Why don't we talk to the county and to some other people, leaders in the businesses in the Valley, and see what they could do for us? And so a board was formed and a committee was formed. The county actually put a staff member to help with planning this in place. For many years, until we became a city, we always had a member of the county parks department on our board.

Peggy: 7:33

I became involved because Sue asked me if I would help with the food and if I could run cotton candy. So I started out making cotton candy at Valley Fest, right on. You have to have fun. And so I had these three. Well, one was pretty young, about four or five, but I had three children, and so I made the cotton candy and then they ran the front counter. We probably wouldn't have that relationship today at our festivals and fairs, having kids making change and handing over the cotton candy. But it was slow, but we had a lot of fun and a lot of spun sugar.

Jon: 8:14

Your origin story into the festival is very different than my origin story into the business. I like yours a lot better cotton candy and was Valley Fest. Your first was that your entry into the festivals and events industry.

Peggy: 8:29

Yes, it was yeah, but we had fun. I could see the benefit to the community. I could see that we were very, always, from the very beginning, we included nonprofits to be there for free or reasonable amount of money if they provided a free activity for children and Valley Fest was always meant to be free for kids to attend, for the community to attend. So we found sponsors for the inflatables and for the pony rides and the nonprofits brought cookie decorating or cookie stack Oreo cookie stack.

Peggy: 9:01

The activities were provided by the nonprofits and the stores and businesses in the area and in doing so you are able to communicate what they had to offer and how to enroll your children in these programs, how that you didn't have to have a lot of money to join. There were some other services that could help provide enrichment so we could grow a healthy group of people to continue to work and play and stay in our community and not leave or feel like there didn't have any advantages there, and that was always the main purpose of Valley Fest when I started, and of course we've grown over the years, we've added a lot of components to that, but that's how it started.

Jon: 9:44

I've read somewhere a description of Valley Fest. Two quotes kind of stuck with me. The first one was a true community festival, which I don't think I've ever heard that exact phrase before. True, what does that mean? And the other one is to serve as a bridge but that was a driver of the festival to serve as a community bridge, of sorts. I'm wondering if you've heard those descriptions and, if so, if you could elaborate on what that means in the local context.

Peggy: 10:13

A bridge. I think that when you do not have organized community or location or place place is very important in my thoughts that you don't know where to seek information or you don't know who to turn to. So the school districts were really important in getting information out to children and families. But their business is education, maintaining school property. So a bridge to that was that people felt like they couldn't communicate with the school or they didn't know that there was a baseball team or a soccer league or something like activities, how to get engaged with this. They wanted to have their kids involved but they didn't want to drive all the way into Spokane, which isn't that far, it's relative. It's space again, and place is very important.

Peggy: 11:10

I was a room mother for years. I would go with the third graders on the bus into Spokane to parks and recreation, the Manitow Park and to Riverfront Park and to the courthouse. Many of the kids had never been past Havana Street and were just shocked to see that their world had expanded. So how do you bring that part of the world into their world and what they know in their place and in their neighborhood? And so that's what Valley Fest I think is meant by a bridge for people to communicate and to feel comfortable in their place of origin or their place of employment or their home life.

Peggy: 11:48

That's a bridge that you can say, oh yeah, I know that I can get my kids involved in this. Or gee, we need a therapy for speech therapy or some type of services that you heard about but you didn't know how to access it by having a booth or a person there talking about it and your kids are playing and you go oh yeah, I got information, now I know who to contact. Or I need new windows for my house. You have a contact, you do business with your friends, you do business with people that you trust and you know, and that's another bridge that I think the community looks forward to those activities.

Jon: 12:27

The word connector comes to mind. That's what I'm hearing. The festival serves as a connector.

Jon: 12:33

I'm getting a picture in my mind of the community, just to your excellent description. It's making me think about it. In South King County there is a phenomena where there are all these different emerging communities two, three, four, five or six different communities and they're all very vibrant and they're all very much existing in their own bubble. So you can have two communities next door to each other, adjacent to each other, but there's not a lot of cross-pollinization. Everybody kind of lives in their own bubble and I had a client that was one of those communities and my client had a vision of a much more connected, larger whole community and they were interested in what it would take for them to be seen by all as kind of that hub, that connector bridging all these different communities. And it was very, very interesting but I'm getting this picture in my head at Valley Fest is kind of serving that purpose in some ways.

Peggy: 13:35

Yes, we do.

Jon: 13:36

You said attendance prior to pandemic was up to about 34,000. You took, I assume, at least one year off from the pandemic.

Peggy: 13:45

Yes, we did. We took 2020 off. We did have a neighborhood parade where we had a new police chief that year so he led the parade. We had cars. Every one was socially distanced. We had our royalty. We invited about up to 20 different organizations and supporters in cars, like the fire truck and everything, and we just went through the neighborhood parades on a Saturday morning and brought some cheer, some levity out into the neighborhoods that we felt had a density of children and families that might enjoy coming out and getting candy and surprised them with the parade. But we also had people who wanted to in the parade, who wanted to connect the mayor and the police chief and the fire department and our royalty and you just kind of have some fun. So we did that in 2020.

Peggy: 14:42

And then 2021, we had our cycle celebration, but we also had to cancel Valley Fest again that year. So we have a bike ride in July, which is 11 years old. That again was another connector that came to us 11 years ago. One of our former city council members was very thrilled with all of our bike lanes and bike routes in the city and our bike trails that are identified as family friendly and transportation movers. So we wanted to have a 10, 25 and 50 mile bike ride and it was the 10th anniversary of the city and I am a nonprofit, I have sponsorship abilities and we have an organization that helps support his idea. And they came with very enthusiastic bike riders and people who knew how to put on a 10, 25 and 50 mile bike ride.

Peggy: 15:34

And so for 11 years we have done the cycle celebration in the Spokane Valley and collaborated with the city of Spokane Valley and the county.

Peggy: 15:44

We're on county roads and on the state park land the Centennial Trail and have had a lot of fun. So there's some things that haven't worked with Valley Fest, for we've tried ideas and things haven't worked out over the years. But we work with a group of people that are interested in this, who come to us with ideas and they have volunteers. They need help with organization and a nonprofit status. They want to help us reach our people to, or are the people that live in the Spokane Valley or the visitors kind of showcasing what they have to offer, what we all have in our communities that are special talents or interests, and so by bringing small parts of this to a larger event we're able to help them with their activities or causes or business plans, and so that is something that Valley Fest has done over the years, and so cycle celebration is in July it's the last Sunday in July, but we have felt that it's been very successful in launching and bringing people together and launching our activities for the Valley Fest event, which is in September.

Jon: 17:01

But it sounds to me like Valley Fest is not only an event promoter, but it's also a vehicle for other folks, or? Other entities to be able to make their ideas come to life as well. Is that kind of accurate?

Peggy: 17:18

For several years I had a logging fest and we worked with the Spokane Sports Commission at the time. They wanted to promote logging sports. We had a young woman I can't remember her name right now but she has won national awards and around the world with her saw and her acts and she's quite an interesting person. She went on to develop a business based on what she learned in strength and endurance and so she's a very successful business woman in Spokane now. With her is a physical fitness program. But they came to us, the Sports Commission, and asked to do a logging fest and so I started learning about logging.

Peggy: 18:04

I went out and actually was introduced to a cottonwood tree in Hawaii. It's a bad tree for chainsaws and we looked at what kind of timber would be great for what kind of trees I needed for the pole climb and just a lot of different aspects. So we created an arena, so to speak, and we had a vista. Come in and plant the tall poles that we needed for the pole climb. We had water for the log rolling, we had targets for the axe throwing, we had a lot of chainsaws going and people loved it.

Peggy: 18:44

But the problem with it was it was a very limited number of people who are actually into this sport in Spokane region. So we would have to pay quite a bit of money for prizes and to draw people in to do their teams. And we had, like the crosscut saw I mean I don't remember all the names now John, it was really into timber sports. It was very enjoyable but very time consuming on my part. And then when the organizer of that says, oh, I don't know if I can continue this next year. There was no one to take that and so we let it go and it didn't develop into what the sports commission and I had hoped we could. We didn't have the people to continue it.

Jon: 19:29

Didn't have the critical mass of all of Valley Fest. What I'm hearing is a group of essentially volunteers that you all created something out of nothing. But what I'm not hearing which is unusual if this is correct is that what you didn't have at the formation of all of this was that seasoned event veteran, that visionary person. It sounds like it was just truly a grassroots community effort A lot of trial and error.

Peggy: 19:58

Yes, is what I'm hearing learn as you go.

Peggy: 20:03

I would say that no one actually has a degree in event management. What they have is a good heart and an interest in making their community better and, as I've said at many of my committee meetings, no one in this room has. It takes everybody's particular skill to make the whole thing come together. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things is how I actually see it. For one week or one weekend a year, we have an event coordinator who his job during the week is. He works for a large automotive parts store and he is managing all the event staff and the move in and the move out of the event. He is assisted by a young man who started volunteering when he was in high school with us. He's now an electrician working for an HVAC company and a young family with small children and he is the assistant event day coordinator.

Peggy: 21:06

These people are wonderful volunteers. They believe and love the event and they always are thinking about how to make it better and how to improve it, and they take ownership of this. This is their event, this is their community and they are going forth with it. And the same thing for we have about 26 committees with Valley Fest, and so most people take the ownership of it and they feel guilty when they can't do it that year. But you know you let people go. They usually come back or they find someone to replace them that can continue on Some of the challenges we're going to have this next year.

Peggy: 21:48

I just met with the volunteers who did the multi-sport Sunday triathlon, duathlon, 5k and 10K race. It's just overwhelming. Now, with the, we were on the river, we're on the road with the bicycling and then we're using this intangible trail for the 5K and 10K. Well, scope, which is our community policing organization that helps with road closures and intersections, on Friday night we have a parade. So we use over 26 of them volunteers on Friday night for the parade and then on Saturday they are involved with the Rockford Community Fair and then on Sunday we asked them to come back for road closures for the cycle.

Peggy: 22:32

And we just do not have enough people to do it.

Peggy: 22:35

And so we have to look at you know the numbers to see what we can do.

Peggy: 22:40

Maybe we take it back for a period of time until we can figure out what we're going to do the road is. When we first started doing this, the road wasn't very busy on Sunday morning, but now, with all of the new housing developments and apartment complexes, this has put us in a different situation that needs to be analyzed. And do we really have that many people doing that part of the event, or should we just focus on the 5K and the 10K and do it that way? This year we had 22 people on the triathlon, which is kayaking from Mirabu Park down to Plants Ferry Park, and then they transitioned to the cycle and to the running. But is it putting all those volunteers out there for 22 people? Is that what we really should be doing?

Peggy: 23:23

So those are some things that we're talking about now as we're going back and doing the analysis of it. We try to incorporate many activities that appeal to lots of people to get something for everyone. It's kind of been our motto really early on. It's impossible to do that, but we have tried to do that over the years.

Jon: 23:43

A question that I normally ask my guests on the show, my festival producer guests, is who has been your role model, who has been your mentor in the business? But it sounds like everything that you have done you're pioneering. There wasn't the elder leadership in front of you, it's like you and your team were the creators. The question that comes to mind is where have you drawn your motivation to keep the machine running and evolving for so long?

Peggy: 24:17

Well, there's a lot of parts to that question, Jon. I don't know where to start, but when I first started was 1996, I became the chairman of the event when the founder, Sue DeLukie, moved to the Tri-Cities. I was the only person around the table that day that did not look at the floor, so I inherited the job.

Jon: 24:42

I knew how that goes.

Peggy: 24:44

And at that point everyone gave a big sigh of relief and said well, stay with you for a year and help you out. No one quit. So they all stayed and supported me and trusted me. And there were some people that were very doubtful of this just because of my lack of experience and going from cotton candy PTA, like can she do this? So at the time that this happened there were some very strong board members that had been recruited to give this new organization lift off and one of them was Greg Bever. He was a community activist and leader and knew a lot of people.

Peggy: 25:26

So I went and talked to him and he could see I had no experience with sponsorship. I had no idea how to write a grant. I could talk to people. I wasn't really scared. I mean, it only took three months to plan Valley Fest and there's all. These people are going to stay with me. But I had to figure this out.

Peggy: 25:47

So he set me up with a meeting with another volunteer and she on the board and we went over to the North Idaho Fair director, who also was a member of ILEA, and she was a member of the festival and association industry, which I didn't even know existed, had no clue and she saw how green I was and how naive I was and how I needed assistance and she just poured tons of knowledge in my head and put me into contact with people in Idaho in the festival and event association in Boise, and Patty helped me with sponsorship because she worked for a grocery store chain that sponsored Valley Fest, and so the board of directors stayed, the volunteer stayed. They could see how naive and green I was but I stayed and I wrote the grants and I asked questions and followed the format that had been placed before me and everyone congratulated me on coming. You know we're getting it together that first year. It was fun. We had a lot of fun doing that.

Peggy: 27:06

People were appreciative of it. They were glad to see that it didn't go away when Sue left. I mean, there was some probably doubts that it wouldn't happen, but I had great belief in the people who said they would stay and help me and everyone followed through with what they said they would do and I was very excited I got. I wrote a grant to US Bank and we got money and our budget was pretty low at that time. I might add. It was like 15,000 to put the whole thing on insurance and everything. So it was, oh well, that isn't so bad, and so I signed on for another year.

Jon: 27:48

And from your roots in cotton candy, I understand that this year a panel of your peers has nominated you for induction into the Washington Festival and Event Association Hall of Fame.

Peggy: 28:04

Yes, they did.

Jon: 28:05

That's quite a journey.

Peggy: 28:08

It is amazing.

Jon: 28:09

How do you feel about that?

Peggy: 28:12

Oh, when I found out that I was being nominated and inducted, I looked at the people who went before me. I couldn't believe it and I'm still a little bit, you know, not sure of that.

Jon: 28:27

Imposter syndrome.

Peggy: 28:28

Yes, yes, yes, thank you, thank you.

Jon: 28:30

There's a name for that.

Peggy: 28:32

You know, because from Spokane we have Hootfest and Bloomsday, which are nationally known brands of events that are put on for a specific audience. A community festival organizer like myself, I am basically a volunteer with the organization. I am not it's not it's a business, but it's in the nonprofit realm. We are giving a lot to the community with the event and so, yes, I am humbled and I'm grateful, so at the same time, to be entrusted, to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Jon: 29:14

From my first years being a member of the Washington Festival Event Association. At the time I joined the organization and got involved. I at that time just happened to be working for a major event producer and I remember at the conferences, at the occasional meetings, whenever the membership would get together, there was this perpetual theme from the small community events that you know, all of these educational classes, all of this talking and sharing of things that are happening with the big events. That's all great but it's not really relevant to what we're doing. We're just a small community event and I never bought into that.

Jon: 29:57

I always thought that was almost a tragic short-sightedness, for two reasons. One because and this has been, I've proven this out time and time again over the years every issue that's ever going to come down the road and present a challenge or an opportunity to the smallest, most remote rural events first impacts the big ones and it always trickles down. Sometimes it might take 10 years before it trickles down, or it might be next season, but it always trickles down. So I always saw, I always saw WFBA as a way for the smaller events, the more community-oriented events, to kind of get a little glimpse into the crystal ball and see what might be coming down the road in the future and kind of get a jumpstart on that.

Jon: 30:46

But the other, probably the more important aspect of it is that at the end of the day we're all trying to make an impact, we're all trying to facilitate some sort of advancement of community and that always shines the brightest at the smaller community level events. In my opinion, the big events have all the literal bright lights and they make the most noise again, literally and figuratively, and they have the most zeros behind all the numbers on their P&L and all that. But at the end of the day it's just a bunch of zeros. None of that really matters. What matters is the impact on community and in that regard there's no real scale for that. We're all doing the same work.

Peggy: 31:32

Yes, we are. I've learned a lot from the WFEA and from the very beginning when I started going to conferences and meeting people, this organization, this Festival and Event Association, has been very gracious in sharing information. Absolutely, it's helpful to people who are starting out with a new Festival and Event, giving intuitive responses and listening to your ideas and redirecting or showcasing or telling you this is what you should be doing, this is what needs to be done. This happened to me. I don't want it to happen to you. Many, many conversations, both in conferences and out of conferences. I've always felt that I can turn to this organization, to the people that I've met are doing the same type of work and receive honest, true feedback that is given very generously.

Peggy: 32:25

There is a very uncompetitive atmosphere. I remember when I first came to Seattle for a conference it must have been 20-some years ago I was in an elevator and this man was talking to me and he actually ran a security company and spoke hand. He just took me aside and said I want to help you. That was Crowd Management Services, CMS, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm Started talking to me about security and things I hadn't even thought about.

Peggy: 32:56

It made a huge impact on me that a large company like that was not looking for me to come up with a budget that would meet what he would need to staff it with, but he was interested in making sure that my event was safe and that I was doing the right thing and I needed to know this information. I have always taken and listened to everyone at these events planning sessions and outside conversations or luncheons or dinners and listened to what people have said and taken the good ideas back and talked to my board and talked to the volunteers and said this is what we must do and how we have to make this stronger and safer for everyone and, as you know, security right now is probably the biggest challenge for all events, absolutely and numbers aren't going to come back to festivals and events without us reassuring our customers, as you will, our attendees, that they're safe and that we are looking out for everything we can to make their experience fun and pleasurable and secure.

Jon: 34:03

If you'll indulge just a little tangent here, you mentioned the CMS fellow in the elevator. You said roughly 20 years ago or something like that.

Jon: 34:12

That corresponds in the timeline perfectly with the professionalization of the festival and events industry that has occurred roughly over the last 20 or 25 years. When I first got into this circus, there really wasn't that much rules, regulations, code on the books. Events were just. They weren't regulated or governed by any particular authority or scheme. You basically just kind of did what you wanted to do, and those are really fun times and they're also highly problematic times.

Jon: 34:46

And then, for whatever reason or reasons, around the mid 90s, at least in the greater Seattle area where I spent most of my time, that started to shift and we started to kind of self professionalize as an industry Fits and starts. Two steps forward, one step back, people all forward, other people kind of against it. But you fast forward to present day and this is a legitimate industry sector and society and governments and communities expect us, they demand us, to conduct ourselves as such, and so it sounds like the CMS fellow that you remember was kind of on the leading edge of that, and that's again that's another thing that WFEA is really strong in is that sharing of information, regardless of the size or scale or scope of your event. If you're in this long enough, you know that it's all going to come around and affect everybody and it doesn't do us. It actually hurts us as an industry now when there are bad actors or innocent but naive actors. We can't afford to let that happen. We have to keep pushing the ball forward in terms of professionalism.

Peggy: 35:58

There's a lot of things I've learned and good ideas from conferences and talking with other people that we have taken back to our community and gone to our community sponsors, your civic leaders, fire and police departments and we have been able to adapt them to the rules and regulations that we have in our communities to make events safe, food vendors safe, our stages safe for performers. There's many safety features involved in the production of the festival and I have to say that we all work together on making our plan work. We have a very organized plan that's reviewed by the police and the fire department, goes through our security private security agencies that we use. We just had our valley fest two weeks ago. We haven't quite had our recap with everybody yet, but after the event we go back over everything that we had planned, we evaluate it and make recommendations for next year. Some of the fun ideas I've come back with from Valleyf est.

Peggy: 37:08

On entertainment the steam stem activities A few years ago we had a huge Lego presentation. We went back and talked with our universities and school districts in the Spokane region. Now we started it prior to COVID, but the last two years I'm going to refer to Our steam activities have been extremely popular at our festival. I want you to remember that this is a community festival, so it's not just a one-theme situation. I mean we have dogs, steam cars, pancake breakfast runs, walks, booths. I mean there's a lot of things going on here, a lot of moving parts going on here, but steam, I think, has been one of the biggest and most fun challenges that we've had in bringing industry and businesses, bringing activities for 10 to 15-year-olds to participate in, and what we have said to them is that this is your future workforce. We have a lot of activities for children under the age of 10, but by the time they reach nine or 10, they've done everything, and so we need to encourage this next level. And so the businesses have stepped up with lots of interactive activities that they actually have created at their business.

Peggy: 38:30

I'm going to pick on one. Wagstaff Engineering is a metal manufacturing I don't know manufacturer in Spokane. It's huge. They have made their models down so where kids can pour molten chocolate through and then they have a chocolate bar at the end. Awesome, and it's fascinating for both parents and kids to be interactive with these women scientists and engineers and men engineers from Wagstaff. But they are working with their future workforce. Everyone's excited about it. It's an activity at Valleyf est. Again, they're already planning how to make one part of this bigger and better for next year, and so it's fun to see the successes. I've talked about things that kind of we started and then, for whatever reason, we had needed to stop it, but then we keep looking for other ideas or trends that we can bring into the festival. What we have in our community that can be showcased and developed.

Jon: 39:30

A very similar concept to my recent episode with Robin Kelly, and one of my questions for Robin is how, in the heck as Issaquah Salmon Days stayed as popular, stayed as current, stayed as contemporary today as it was 30-some odd years ago, especially given the extraordinary change in the community of Issaquah population growth, demographic shift. It's extraordinary, yet Salmon Days through it all just keeps humming right along. And she told a very similar story about how every year they have to look at nothing sacred, I guess is one of her main themes.

Jon: 40:09

They take really hard, honest, open looks at all these activities, no matter how beloved they are at the time. And every year some things go and some new things come in. And it's never an easy process, she said, but it works, it's effective.

Peggy: 40:24

You do, and there's more people moving in. They have other ideas they're bringing from other communities that they would like to see at your festival. Before COVID, I started working with some multicultural organizations in Spokane and Spokane region and we started planning our multicultural festival. Within the festival, we'd always had had entertainment on our stages from these different groups, but I felt we were now needing to open this up to where their organizations and groups should be telling more of their story and taking more ownership of parts of the festival. And so last year we did a multicultural Sunday up at Center Place Regional Event Center and it worked out well for our first time since COVID doing this. But they wanted to be included more into the center of the festival, which is we have like two or three venues here. So if you're not having been there, I'm just trying to visually transplant you. So we listened to their evaluations last year. So this year we moved them into Mirabu Point Park where we have over 250 booths and two entertainment stages and there's a larger audience and it's Saturday and Sunday incorporated these booths into a village this year and included more entertainment. I think it worked out fine. I haven't heard too much about it yet. We haven't had our post evaluation, but my observation is maybe I moved too fast, too soon to two days for some of these small nonprofits to be able to staff a booth for two days. So I'm interested to see what their evaluation is going to be, but I do know that they were very excited and felt very welcome.

Peggy: 42:10

We want to have that continuation of how we can put more of that into the festival and then be more inclusive.

Peggy: 42:18

Our population is changing. We need to be aware of the fact that we are now pushing past 130,000 people in the city of Spokane Valley and we need to be aware of who all we have. We're not the same community we were 34 years ago of people basically graduating from high school going to work for Kaiser or the lumber industries or staying there and their children going to the same schools. Now there's a lot of people who are coming in with different interests in food or different interests in shopping or customs, and we need to be aware of them and help them find their place in the community too and feel a sense of belonging. So that's kind of another challenge that I'm looking at to see how we can work with our community partners on this and listen to their advice and move forward with what we can do, and then other people can come alongside all of us and help us grow, and help the people that are attending and the businesses.

Jon: 43:27

It's that balance of tradition and the need for new routes Exactly Very common theme these days. I don't know if you want to talk about this. If you do, great, if not, that's great as well. Last night we were chatting for a little bit and you floated the notion that perhaps you might not keep driving the ship at Valley Fest forever and that you're starting to think about things like succession planning and what the future looks like. And how does that even? How would that transition, even what would that look like?

Peggy: 44:06

That is a question I receive a lot. I've been doing this for a long time and I think people just assume I'm going to continue on. But people are asking questions, and by people I mean the City of Spokane Valley Economic Development Office and the City of Spokane Valley Parks and Recreation. My board has been asking me also the same question. The answer is I still enjoy what I'm doing, but we do need to think about how we can successfully transition this to keeping it as a community event that's free and open to the public, engaging children and families and serving the community with the current mission statement that we have. So there are some variables there.

Peggy: 44:51

So I still haven't given up those reins on guiding people with the vision that we started with when we're trying to continue. But I do know that I have to be replaced and we need to find an answer for that, and I'm working with the City of Spokane Valley. I don't know if we can separate. I personally have to separate my Peggy Doering from ValleyFest and make sure that ValleyFest can continue without Peggy, and I think a lot of people. I think I have to help people with that struggle, and so that's what I think we were talking about last night is how to transition this into a freestanding, non-profit event that I've given a lot of time and heart to, obviously, but there are a lot of good people out there that want to see it continue.

Jon: 45:46

Is it the board's responsibility to find that answer?

Peggy: 45:49

Whalen Traditionally, yes, I would say that would be it, but they're just as lost as I am sometimes on the questions because we don't know how to find the financing to have a paid Executive Director.

Jon: 46:04

I see.

Peggy: 46:04

So it's the funding. Funding is key here.

Jon: 46:11

Well, if there's a silver lining to that conundrum, I would point to population growth. You know, at least with population growth in theory at least along with that comes funding opportunities. Yes, some way, some way.

Peggy: 46:30

We are looking and talking with a lot of our partners currently to see how we can do that, and there are a lot of models in this state that might work with a public private funding mechanism and with Parks and Recreation Departments and non-profit board of directors. There are some models out there that we might be able to use.

Jon: 46:58

After all of these years with this event, what enables you to get out of bed in the morning and get right back to it?

Peggy: 47:10

Well, I-.

Peggy: 47:12

On a good day, I'll qualify no, no, no, no no, no, I actually think that if you see my face right now, I'm smiling and I'm laughing. I have fun at Valley Fest. I enjoy meeting all the sponsors. I enjoy finding out about my community. I'm very inquisitive. I ask a lot of questions. I have had opportunities to sell my city, to sell my community and my schools, my where I live in my place, and share that with everyone. And I think the biggest pleasure I have are the smiles on kids' faces and in many different places. So I'm just going to give you a few places where I've seen these smiles.

Peggy: 47:55

A few years ago I went into a small Indian owned gas station in the valley and asked the man if I could put up posters about Valley Fest and he went no, no, no, no, no posters, no posters. And his kids were elementary school. They were behind the counter and they heard the word Valley Fest and they all popped up and went Daddy, Daddy, this is Valley Fest, we get to go down everything. Remember, Daddy, it's in the park and it's free. Daddy had no question after that that he was putting up the poster.

Peggy: 48:30

His kids were so excited and they shared a lot of memories with me about the fun they had and I thought, oh, that's good. And I have three beautiful grandchildren and they were at the festival a couple of weeks ago and they said grandma, we love riding on golf carts. Can we go on a golf cart ride? Well, I'm not taking you on a golf cart ride, but your dad can. My children all grew up volunteering at Valley Fest and so they went on a golf. They came back and they said grandma, we want you to start the Junior Princess Program. We want to be Junior Princesses. You've got to start that right now.

Peggy: 49:13

And they were taking ownership or involvement in their community event. They could see themselves volunteering at the event and they could see themselves participating in the parade. They thought I could implement all of that for them. But I think what it what the kids saw and we have a lot of students that are in middle school that volunteer at the event that they're too old to do. You know, do the petting zoo or the face painting, but they still all want to belong and participate in some fashion with something that's fun and cool. They can still be kids, but they're not. They're not grownups in there, you know, in between. So they see themselves belonging to this, whether it be my grandmother is got a golf cart I can ride around in.

Peggy: 50:06

But I said you know, this comes with volunteering. You're going to have to go out and pick up garbage if you're going to go on the golf cart with your dad. And they went why? And I said well, that's how he started. He started going out picking up the garbage with the park employees and I said so there's, there's a lot of cleanup that goes on at a festival and event. Then you can come back and eat all the snacks you want, but you know this is a given to take kind of thing. But the kids have fun, the families have fun, they like to dance and they like to eat the food and just be one of the things I was going to refer back to you when you're talking about the big festivals and everything, I don't allow generators or TVs at Valley Fest.

Jon: 50:49

Oh, interesting.

Peggy: 50:52

It's. I feel like you can't visit with people if you've got all this noise going on, and the purpose of this is to be connected to people, and so we place booths fairly close together. There are fire lanes and all that there, but people are visiting with each other and talking to each other, and that's the only way you're going to get a healthy community if you're talking to each other.

Jon: 51:15

That's really interesting. No generators, right. That's really unique and really interesting.

Peggy: 51:24

They're noisy.

Jon: 51:25

It actually paints a picture in my mind. The picture feels very peaceful.

Peggy: 51:33

Outside. Tvs don't work, you can't see a TV screen and it's too. You know everyone's got their cell phone yes, there's tons of cell phones and everything. This park that we have the one venue, a Mirabu Point Park, and then we have Center Place, regional Event Center, both very large venues. But Mirabu Point Park has no internet and it has no night lights. It was designed that way, so I have to bring internet in in order for the businesses to have access to an internet connection, and we have the astronomy clubs come out at night because the sky is so dark at night you can actually see things with the night scopes. So there's pros and cons to all of this. I mean you could probably have more businesses doing business with generators. We have electricity, we put in portable dog houses and stuff, but I have one or two generators in case something fails, which has happened before, just in case we can continue on, save the food, whatever. But I don't allow the noise.

Jon: 52:43

That's the most interesting thing I've heard all week.

Peggy: 52:47

I'm quite. I really like things organized. I'm sorry, I'm just telling you this, yeah.

Jon: 52:54

I want to enter the. We're going to enter the random question phase here, oh okay. Picking up on the generator story. What is your favorite sound?

Peggy: 53:04

Oh, my favorite sound. Well, I like upbeat, happy music, so things like Jeremiah was a bullfrog. You know that gets me dancing and kind of moving and everything like that. But a sound of nature is probably water over a waterfall or a creek or a river.

Jon: 53:28

That is the number one most common answer that people have been responding to that question with.

Peggy: 53:34

Is the water which I find interesting, the water, sound of water. It's calming.

Jon: 53:39

Who's your favorite ancestor?

Peggy: 53:44

So are you referring to my immediate family? Anyone in?

Jon: 53:48

your family throughout time.

Peggy: 53:53

There have been very strong women in my family over the years we have had. Many of them have had very long lives and I'm from a pioneer family in Idaho. My great great grandmother came to the Waihe Mountains after they worked on the railroad to Utah. Then they found gold in the Waihe Mountains so they traveled up and lived at Shoefly Creek and she had eight children and they were a way station for horses and the miners and the priests and the people who were working in servicing the miners and their camps up in the mountains and she decided that was not a life for her.

Peggy: 54:42

Before Idaho became a state she divorced her husband and left and moved to Boise and remarried and my grandmother's her daughter was very much involved in building the Boise with her husband and married a man who advocated for the right for women to have the vote in Idaho. I believe that he was influenced in his decision by reading the back records of everything. For women to receive the right to vote was because of my great great grandmother and his wife Winifred, and then his daughters. So I respect these women, their pioneer spirit and their courage to be strong in their life and education for their children, all of their children like great great grandmother sent her children to boarding schools in Utah for education. So I just really, as I'm reading the stories about this and the family history, I really admire those first early women pioneers and their influence on getting the women right to vote in Idaho before it became nationwide.

Jon: 55:56

That's a remarkable story. Just sitting here thinking about the context and the time. Wow.

Peggy: 56:04

I know it is a very. I could go on and on about this family history, but my when my parents my daughter passed away about two years ago and my mother before that my dad and I had gone through all of the family records and so I actually have in his handwriting what my grandfather had written. He was an attorney in Idaho and very involved in the government. That was how he had to write that. He had to propose that at the time Women weren't able to get that moving forward, but if you look at the women that he was surrounded with, they're really you know he was impacted by their desire and education to move this forward and for the state of Idaho. I could go on and put more of the strong women in the family.

Jon: 56:54

That's like a whole other episode.

Peggy: 56:56

I know the Idaho History Channel will be the next one.

Jon: 57:01

Last random question you walk into a nice cream shop. You're going to get an cream cone, two scoops. What are the flavors?

Peggy: 57:11

Oh, Huckleberry and chocolate.

Jon: 57:20

Which one goes on top.

Peggy: 57:23

Huckleberry goes on top.

Jon: 57:25

Why?

Peggy: 57:26

I don't know, sweet, tart, chocolate, chocolate. You just finish this off.

Jon: 57:36

That's one of my favorite questions.

Peggy: 57:38

Is the ice cream?

Jon: 57:39

Yeah, sometimes the answer is pretty straightforward. Other times we go off on another little short adventure. Okay, talking about that, you'll hear them as you listen to some of the episodes.

Peggy: 57:48

Okay.

Jon: 57:49

Well, Peggy, thank you so much for your time today. It's been a wonderful conversation.

Peggy: 57:54

Well, thank you for having me, Jon, it's been a pleasure.