Rental rates to board horses at the OC Fairgrounds Equestrian Center are set to soar upwards, nearly doubling some residents’ monthly bills by next year.
The OC Fair & Event Center Board of Directors narrowly approved the rent spike last week, which actually includes three different rate increases by January 1, 2025.
Monthly rates will increase by 45% by June 15, another 10% by October 1 and another 10% by January 1, 2025.
That means renters who currently pay $644 monthly for a 12-by-12-foot boarding stall for their horse will have to pay $1,130 per month in the new year.
Renters who pay $1,023 monthly for a 12-by-24-foot stall will have to pay $1,795 starting on January 1.
Those monthly rates don’t include charges for horse feed, which typically costs a few hundred dollars per month.
The board voted 3-2 on March 28 to approve the increases.
Fair board members Doug La Belle, along with Nick Kovacevich and Barbara Bagneris, voted in favor of the rent increase.
Board members Tanya Bilezikjian and Newton Pham voted against the item. Dimetria Jackson abstained from the vote while Natalie Rubalcava-Garcia and Robert Ruiz were both absent.
Board members in support of the item said they needed to raise rates to cover expenses.
A staff presentation before the vote argued the facility pays about $1,102 per month per horse for cleaning, feeding and maintenance, stating rates need to increase to better match expenses.
“It may be higher than some private entities that are providing certain facilities, but by the same token, we do need to get to a point where we’ve covered our costs,” said La Belle, who supported the item, said during the March 28 meeting.
Board members in favor of the rent spike argued that the facility is more expensive to operate because it’s on state-owned land.
Meanwhile, residents are pointing to a 2022 maintenance contract they claim is too costly.
The OC Fair & Event Center has an agreement with contractor Lopez Works, Inc. to feed all the hoses twice a day, clean stalls and water and drag arena areas in the center.
According to the contract approved in 2022, the center pays up to $1.3 million annually for horse feeding and stall cleaning and another $268,000 for arenas.
Aileen Anderson, a 57-year-old Irvine resident who boards a horse at the center, said she’s been alerting fairgrounds staff that, in her opinion, they’ve been overpaying.
She wrote a letter to the board of directors in 2022 arguing that boarding fees would eventually need to increase in order to make up for the center’s expenses under the Lopez Works contract.
“If you’re going to pay a company $1,000 an hour to feed horses and $600 an hour to drag an arena — we’re talking about tasks that take minutes — of course you’re gonna run into deficit,” Anderson said in a phone interview. “This isn’t something that is viable or sustainable.”
When reached for comment, Lopez Works President Andre Lopez said he was unable to comment at the time.
Fair board members argued they had little choice when that contract was approved in 2022. The center put out a call for bids, and Lopez Works was the only contractor that responded.
“We have to follow the public bidding requirements and all the requirements that are imposed upon us as an entity when we issue a proposal,” La Belle said during the meeting. “We got one bidder. It would have been nice if we’d had two or three and there would have been some comparison that we could look at.”
Leigh-Ann Kazolas, a 53-year-old equestrian enthusiast from Newport Beach, doesn’t think it was that simple.
“We understand that they have to accept a sole bid, but once they were told how out of industry-standard it was, they should have re-issued it or spent some time solving their cost problem,” Kazolas said.
Theresa Sears, Voice of OC’s involvement editor and an experienced equestrian for decades who was asked by fairgrounds officials to review operations, spoke publicly at the meeting saying she analyzed the center’s expenses and found they don’t need to raise rates if they change how they manage their funds.
“If managed correctly, the current income more than covers expenses, leaving about a $300,000 profit,” Sears said, after handing out her research to the board members. “Those profits can be used to repair the barns.”
“You need an experienced operator to run this facility,” she said.
Some residents who spoke at the March 28 meeting questioned why the center isn’t cutting down on expenses to help the issue.
Anderson — who’s also a professor at the University of California, Irvine — said this rate increase will make it unsustainable for many local families to continue boarding their horses at the center.
She said it will also force many families to reduce or cancel riding lessons as instructors up their prices to make up for the increasing rates.
“This decision will end access to lesson programs for hundreds of kids and adults and is not compatible with expanding access for underserved populations or anyone else,” Anderson said. “The only people that will be left with access are private owners that can afford the most expensive equestrian facility in Orange County, which also happens to be the one with the most minimal and unmaintained facilities.”
Angelina Hicks is a Voice of OC Tracy Wood Reporting Fellow. Contact her at ahicks@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @angelinahicks13.