Share of Billing for a Simi Days Sponsor Possible

They’re thinking Wal-Mart’s Simi Valley Days. Or Target’s Simi Valley Days.

Heck, even Some Generous Rich Guy’s Simi Valley Days would work.

Faced with a staggering fund-raising effort to finance improvements to a new fair site and keep the annual rodeo and carnival from being postponed, organizers of Simi Valley Days are--gasp-- considering soliciting corporate sponsorship for the first time.

“If Bob Hope says, ‘I want to have this as my legacy,’ wonderful,” said Jo Ann Macek, executive director of Simi Valley Days. “We’re willing to talk to anyone. Money talks.”

Not blunt enough? Ed Levine, executive vice president of Simi Valley Days Organization Inc., puts it like this:

“We are officially whoring and bastardizing the grand name of Simi Valley Days in the name of turning a couple of bucks,” said Levine, who volunteers his time to the organization. “I think it’s rather tainted and jaded, but nonetheless, it’s a community approach to solving a problem.”

The problem is that the annual western-themed event has to relocate from its longtime home at Madera Road and Los Angeles Avenue, where a housing development is underway.

The new site--an undeveloped foothill location owned by the city of Simi Valley--needs extensive engineering improvements to be usable. That means grading, drainage and fire road work, and the installation of water and power lines.

Organizers say more than the September rodeo and carnival are at risk. They estimate that the nonprofit organizations that operate the parking, carnival and other concessions raised $60,000 that was fed back into the community last year.

“I commend them for going out and looking for corporate sponsorship,” Councilwoman Barbara Williamson said. “That’s what they should have been doing six to eight months ago.”

Simi Valley Days organizers estimate that the cost of the move, consulting and engineering work at about $300,000. Levine signed a contract with a union training program--the Operating Engineers Training Trust--to do all the grading work for the experience--a $180,000 savings. And organizers are looking to the city to chip in an unspecified amount of cash and in-kind services, such as discounted permits and other fees.

That leaves the group about $75,000 in the hole. And that’s exactly how much the organization said it would cost a business, corporation or private individual to attach its name to Simi Valley Days 1997.

“We don’t want to commercialize this even to this extent, but we’re getting down to the wire, and we’re worried there might not be any other options out there come June, July and August,” said Keith M. Jajko, a Simi Valley Days committee member and aide to County Supervisor Judy Mikels.

And just in case the corporate sponsorship thing doesn’t pan out, organizers have another idea. They also plan to ask every one of the city’s 103,200 residents to donate $1. Those who want to donate to or volunteer for the event can contact Simi Valley Days at 581-4280.