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City museum staff spend last days getting plans in place for downsizing that takes effect Friday
- Mark Sabbatini
- 16 hours ago
- 5 min read
Museum will be closed Sundays through Tuesdays, open reduced hours other days due to budget cuts; seasonal workers will supplement volunteers and lone holdover employee
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
Dara Lohnes-Davies spent part of Monday morning showing areas in the Juneau-Douglas City Museum’s storage area that are vulnerable to flooding to the city’s chief librarian, who will add management of the museum to her other duties starting Friday.
Lohnes-Davies, the museum’s curator of collections and exhibits for the past three years, will still be a caretaker of local historic items a week from now, but for Sealaska Heritage Institute’s exhibits and materials a few blocks down the street. She and the two other full-time managerial-level employees at the museum are departing this week in the wake of budget cuts passed by the Juneau Assembly, leaving one permanent part-time employee and reduced operating hours in place as of July 10.
The budget cuts eliminated the two other manager-level jobs, held by Museum Director Beth Weigel and Curator of Public Programs Elissa Borges, while keeping the job held by Lohnes-Davies. But she said in an interview Monday she partially decided to depart because the budget cuts left her concerned about the museum’s future stability.
"The opportunity was there and the city’s not given me too much confidence that they have a plan for what’s going to happen here," she said.
The city last Thursday announced the museum as of July 10 will be open from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, compared to the existing daily schedule of 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekends. Also, a $45,000 donation from Norwegian Cruise Line will allow seasonal museum workers to be hired, who will supplement a couple of dozen volunteers who typically handle front desk and other duties a few hours a week.
The person in charge of the museum as of Friday is Catherine Melville, director of Juneau Public Libraries. She said the museum was under the direction of the Parks and Recreation Department for most of its 50-year existence, but has been under the library’s jurisdiction for the past decade or so.
"I would expect that I will spend more time interacting with museum staff in terms of becoming a direct supervisor to more of them than I was previously, and as we figure out this transition from the level of staffing that the museum previously had to the level of staffing that we have as a result of the budget reductions and having a vacant position," she said.
"I think we'll start to hit our stride, but it's definitely going to be a period of transition," Melville added.
Lohnes-Davies said she did a walkthrough of the museum with Melville on Monday morning to familiarize the librarian with a checklist of duties the curator does daily.
"Just like basic security issue-type things like making sure that the city's aware of who has the keys to what," she said. "I'm leaving maps around with, like these are the places that the water intrusions happen consistently and this is where other damage is happening consistently, and you need to make sure the doors are locked at night and the alarms are set."
The Assembly’s cut occurred following tax cuts passed by voters last fall that are expected to cost the city up to $12 million in revenue during the fiscal year that started July 1. The first draft of the city’s budget contained $562,300 to continue status quo operations. Alternatives presented to Assembly members included a $261,500 cut that would reduce staff and operations, and a $479,300 cut that would close the museum and divest its collection.
The Assembly ultimately passed a $261,000 cut, with the intent of eliminating two of the 3.75 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions and reducing operating hours. Members said the museum ended up being of lower importance among residents asked about budget priorities, with the city’s two public pools and other recreational facilities getting preference.
Lohnes-Davies said she feels the museum got hit disproportionately hard by the cuts and some people may not have been aware of the impacts that would result.
"The museum can bounce back, but it's not going to be where it was for a while, just through losing all of that institutional knowledge," she said. "And it's not like a normal turnover where you can pass that knowledge on — it's just gone."
Lohnes-Davies said she thinks it will be hard for someone like herself to consider a job at the museum "unless they had some incentive and some guarantee that it's going to stay around." She’ll start her new job next Monday working with a collection at Sealaska Heritage Institute that’s smaller — perhaps 1,000 items compared to 100,000 at the city museum — and focuses on the area's Alaska Native history and culture, but much of the work will be familiar.
"It's the equivalent of this role, essentially, so I'm working with collections and the exhibits down there," she said.
The lone holdover employee on the current city museum staff is Cate Ross, an administrative assistant who accounts for the 0.75 in the 3.75 total FTE being downsized. She said in a June 30 interview she isn’t sure yet how the changes will affect her day-to-day work.
"Because we're a very small staff admins do different things in different departments, and because we're such a small staff I have historically helped out with a lot of areas. We all work collaboratively," she said.
Seasonal employees have also assisted operations in past years, along with the volunteers — although not all are expected to continue after July 10 since they were working specific shifts when the museum will now be closed.
Melville said museum curators are "absolutely people with specialized knowledge and education," and it can take some time to advertise and find a highly qualified person. She said twice in past years a temporary curator has been hired while a more extensive search occurs, which is a possibility during the current situation.
"We are lucky in that the town of Juneau has a lot of people in the community who have enthusiasm for the city museum, and can share their expertise and their institutional knowledge," Melville said. "And so I anticipate that together with supporters of the city museum and the staff that we have we’ll be in the process of figuring out how the city museum moves forward."
While the cutback of staff and hours means special activities will also be curbed, the museum is planning to go ahead with its hosting of a free author talk by Patrick Bringley, whose book "All the Beauty in the World" was the inspiration for the "Slow Beauty" exhibition at the museum. The talk is at 7 p.m. Friday at the University of Alaska Southeast’s Egan Lecture Hall.
A concern expressed by museum employees and some Assembly members when the proposed cuts were being discussed this spring is that it will be difficult to revive operations once they are cut. Two ballot measures seeking to increase sales and property taxes — and thus offsetting some of the effects of last year’s election — are likely to be voted on during the Oct. 6 municipal election, but whether that will make a difference for the museum in future years is unknown.
"What our budget situation will be next year is very uncertain and depends on things that I don't think anyone can predict at this point," Melville said.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
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