Open Letter From Reichert Celebration to Exhibitors
Dear Horse Industry Exhibitors,
To begin, we’d like to thank our friends and family in the horse industry for their continued patronage to The Reichert Celebration since the show’s inception in Iowa in 1999.
We would like to take this time to confirm that will not be having The Reichert Celebration this year in Texas, but that doesn’t mean we won’t have it in the future. The reason we’re not having it, quite honestly, is because we still haven’t been reimbursed for over $600,000 in expenses from the years of 2013 and 2014. We get that money from the state of Texas as reimbursement money. We’ve been able to keep putting the show on for the last two years without being given our reimbursement from the years before.
We aren’t an association. This is a family operation. We don’t have extra cash from memberships or registrations to float that amount of money. We don’t do this for a profit; the money from the Texas Fund, sponsors, vendors and the sale go back to the exhibitors and owners. On our behalf, all futurity monies have been paid from 2013 and almost everything has been paid for 2014, with the exception of some of the sale classes.
It’s important to clarify, that in our contract, there is nothing that says the state has to pay us within a certain amount of time. We’ve been told that everybody will get paid, it’s just taking them quite some time. We didn’t say anything for the longest time, because we didn’t want to upset the State of Texas legislature and cause even more delays. We’ve stayed very quiet, other than talking to people personally. Since then, we’ve spoken with a lawyer in Texas, and he has spoken with his contact within the government. The money is coming; their proceedings are just taking a long time.
It’s difficult to hold an event like the Reichert Celebration at the Fort Worth facility without state reimbursement money. We originally counted on that for added money and prizes, and that’s why we’re able to do so much and buy a lot more awards than many other shows do. We will probably come back and do this again, but we can’t say for sure whether it will be in Texas. If we’re going to do it again, we will do it like we did in the beginning, going back to the basics.
We would like to thank horse industry exhibitors for your continued patronage over the years. We are hopeful The Reichert Celebration will return in some form at some point in the future.
Thank you
The Reichert Celebration
