Historical society, Miami Co. museum in uncharted territory
PERU, Ind. (AP) - Since 1916, the Miami County Museum has been home to the county's history and heritage.
Head to the museum, and you'll find three floors of Native American artifacts, memorabilia of Broadway composer and Peru native Cole Porter and hundreds of items documenting the county's circus past.
In fact, over the last few decades, the museum has amassed more than 300,000 historical items, making it the largest archival collection of any county museum in the state and one of the largest small-town museums in the country.
But after nearly 100 years of preserving the past, could the museum itself become just another piece of history?
That was the question members of the Miami County Historical Society asked last year, when county commissioners proposed removing museum employees from the county payroll and selling the museum to the historical society for $1.
In essence, commissioners proposed cutting the museum loose from county purse strings and turning the museum into a stand-alone facility.
It would have been a huge change for the museum, said Gary Hawley, president of the historical society. A change that likely would have shut them down, he said.
"I told (the commissioners) that wouldn't work for the museum or the historical society, especially taking ownership of the building," he told the Kokomo Tribune (http://bit.ly/1yxXJ1l ). "I didn't think we could handle that financially. We wouldn't have been able to function. We could have limped through this year, but after that, we'd be in trouble."
Since 1985, the county has owned the building where the museum is housed and leased it to the historical society for $1. The county also has given enough money to allow the historical society to employ three full-time workers.
It was all part of a deal agreed upon when the county purchased the old, dilapidated Senger building at 51 N. Broadway.
Hawley said the historical society put in more than $800,000 to repair the building, including in-kind donations of supplies and labor. In return, the county signed a 99-year agreement to lease the building to the historical society for $1 a year, maintain the facility and pay a portion of the utilities.
It was a deal that worked until last year, when the county learned it needed to cut $1.5 million from the 2015 budget due to a severe shortfall in revenue.
In the end, council voted to eliminate 10 full-time workers, including the three employees at the museum.
Council did appropriate $100,000 to the historical society for one year, but that's it. Commissioners agreed to keep ownership of the museum building and help pay for maintenance.
Commissioner Larry West said commissioners decided to continue to own the building after realizing the crippling financial impact it would have on the historical society.
"We told them we were not going to pull out the rug from under them, but we do want them to at some point to become more self-supporting," he said.
Hawley said the deal ended up not being as devastating as they anticipated, but it still pushed the historical society into uncharted territory.
For the first time in decades, the historical society would have to start venturing out on its own as a self-sufficient organization, without any guarantee the county will continue to help fund the museum.
In response, the historical society board voted to close the museum in January to restructure and reorganize how the museum operates. It will reopen in February, but with reduced hours.
"This is a whole new ball game for us," Hawley said. "There are a lot of things to solve, but we'll figure it out. If we get past the original shock of all of a sudden we're on our own, and start looking at the positive stuff, we'll be OK. . We're disappointed, but we're not all gloom and doom."
Currently, the historical society is employing one full-time and one part-time person after the full-time curator and archivist left last year with the prospect of budget cuts looming.
Sara Marburger, a historical society board member, said the board plans to hire a full-time director this year who will spearhead a full-on fundraising effort to start beefing up the historical society's coffers in the event county funding goes away.
"With the new director, we're looking for more of a fundraising type of person rather than a curator," she said. "That's what we need - a grant writer and someone who is going to go out and shake the trees."
Hawley said the historical society is starting to prepare for less county funding, but it hopes the county council will continue to appropriate money beyond this year. Even with a stronger fundraising push, he said, the museum still needs the financial boost.
"To just maintain, what we got this year from the county would be pretty close to the minimum," he said. "Our goal right now is to find our footing so that we can just maintain what we have now. . If they can maintain that $100,000 every year, we'll survive. Things will be different, but we'll make it."
Commissioner West said the county has no intention of cutting funding to the museum next year or beyond if the budget remains stable.
"We don't intend to get to the point where the museum has to shut down," he said. "We don't want that to happen. We'll work hard with them so they can become more self-supporting."
And in the end, West said, that's the commissioners' ultimate goal for the museum as they try to figure out how to operate county government after last year's painfully deep cuts.
"We all agree that the museum is a good asset in the county, and we want it to continue to be that," he said. "We just have to figure out how to make our dollars go around."
Hawley said the historical society is staying positive about its new situation, and charting the course to become a more self-sufficient entity.
"It's all going to iron itself out as we get our feet on the ground as an independent organization and not totally depending on the county," he said. "Everybody wants to see us survive. I think 95 percent of the public would be heartbroken if this museum went away."
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Information from: Kokomo Tribune, http://www.ktonline.com