Funding for the Haines Sheldon Museum in this year’s Haines Borough budget remains an open question after more than an hour of discussion at a Government Affairs and Services (GAS) Committee meeting Tuesday.
“I hope that the timeline (for reaching a decision about museum funding) is rational and is not a slow-rolling disaster, but on July 1, if there’s no payroll for this museum, there’s going to be a serious problem,” interim accountant Burl Sheldon said at Tuesday’s meeting.
The current draft of the budget eliminates funding for museum payroll, an expense the borough has traditionally covered.
The museum is quasi-governmental, somewhere between a nonprofit and a borough department. The collection is owned by nonprofits and housed in a borough facility. Staff are borough employees. The museum director is overseen by the borough-appointed nonprofit board. Since summer 2020, the museum board has been exploring the idea of becoming an independent nonprofit in an effort to simplify the organization’s structure and save operating costs.
At a board meeting in March, trustees said they were putting the restructuring effort on hold due to ongoing pandemic challenges. The board submitted a funding request for $112,000 to support “a skeleton crew” of part-time borough employees. Trustees described it as an unsustainable budget, but said it was part of their effort to be “team players” during financially difficult times.
The funding request wasn’t reflected in the manager’s draft budget published on April 1. At Tuesday’s meeting, borough officials cited the nonprofit’s separation effort as the reason for eliminating museum payroll funding.
“You started to make changes. We started to make changes… You’ve restructured staff in a way that no longer conforms with our collective bargaining agreement and our negotiated wages, and you did that, I think, because you were pushing forward with a vision of separation,” chief fiscal officer Jila Stuart said. “There’s no status quo now. There’s only going back or going forward. We can’t maintain things the way they are.”
Museum trustees countered that the museum hasn’t fully separated.
“You have borough employees at this time,” board president Kelleen Adams said. “To be realistic, you have to go forward with the employees you have.”
Sheldon added the board had undertaken the separation effort with the assumption that the borough would continue to fund payroll.
“At no time has the Sheldon Museum board of trustees had any idea that there wouldn’t be funds coming from Haines Borough to support the museum’s operation, principally payroll,” Sheldon said.
Assembly members had a different understanding.
“I don’t like spending money I don’t have. I’m kind of at a loss here. I don’t like saying, ‘No,’ but I don’t have any ideas,” assembly member Caitie Kirby said. “The ball seems like it’s already kind of rolling and there’s not really any going back. Once you say you don’t want to be part of the borough and set that in motion, it’s out there.”
Others said it might be possible to fund museum payroll, at least in part, while the museum transitions to independent nonprofit status.
“I would be very interested in transferring money that has been previously allocated to the museum to carry them through this transition phase,” assembly member Cheryl Stickler said. “Eventually the transition will be complete, but it takes time to do that, and in the process, we can’t just cut them off.”
Stickler added that she thinks other borough entities like the library, Chilkat Center and pool, which have “outside support,” should follow the example of the museum by weaning themselves off borough support. The entities she listed have affiliated “Friends” nonprofits that work to attract support and supplemental funding for the services the institutions provide.
“We’re not in a position to be the Santa for everybody,” Stickler said. “It is time, in my opinion, for these (entities) to be weaned. We are in a financial crisis.”
Assembly members decided to hold off on a final museum-funding decision due to variables including a $350,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant that may need to be returned, uncertain federal and state funding for the borough, and a proposal from the Chilkoot Indian Association (CIA) to take on the building.
“That changes this whole (dynamic) yet again. If they buy the building, will they keep the same staff, or will that be the borough’s obligation?” assembly member Gabe Thomas said. “There’s multiple discussions happening, and really, you need to have one finished, so then we can finish the next one.”
The CIA offer is in early stages of discussion.
“We’ve made a proposal and the proposal is taking into consideration the age and condition of the building,” CIA tribal administrator Harriet Brouillette said in an interview Wednesday. She declined to offer specifics while the borough is consulting with its attorney.
“We submitted a proposal to the borough, and they are discussing with their attorney whether the proposal should be confidential or not, because it’s just an opening offer,” she said.
CIA’s interest in the building is tied to the tribe’s effort to start a cultural center. Last year, CIA was selected to participate in “Culture Builds Community: Facilitating the Planning and Construction of Native Museums.” Administered by the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums, the program provides training and resources to help communities create a roadmap for designing and building a cultural center.
Brouillette said the tribe is willing to forego the option of a new building in favor of taking on the museum building which is in need of significant renovations.
“This is an opportunity for us to help out the borough and help keep an institution in our community, and I hope people see it that way,” Brouillette said. “Right now, the building is sitting there without life, and I think that the tribe has the opportunity, the means and the desire to make the museum into a viable cultural center that will be alive and used.”
She stressed that CIA taking ownership of the building wouldn’t force out the nonprofit-owned collection.
“I know there’s some fear in the community that it will become exclusively a Native cultural center, which is absolutely not true. There are objects in the museum that belong to the (nonprofit) and objects that belong to local clans. We have no intention of telling them they can’t stay there,” Brouillette said. “European history is an important part of our modern history and the European settlement of Haines is most definitely going to be included in any museum or cultural center that the tribe builds.”
It’s unclear how CIA ownership of the building would impact the nonprofit board’s effort to separate from the borough.
“The borough doesn’t have anything to do with the collection. We own the building, so any agreement (regarding the collection) would have to be worked out separately between CIA and the Sheldon Museum,” Mayor Douglas Olerud said at Tuesday’s meeting.
Adams said in an interview Wednesday that the board hasn’t been involved in borough discussions with CIA so far but hopes to be included as negotiations become more serious.