{"id":1312767,"date":"2019-07-24T09:50:41","date_gmt":"2019-07-24T15:50:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/?p=984668"},"modified":"2019-07-24T09:50:41","modified_gmt":"2019-07-24T15:50:41","slug":"museum-of-northwest-colorado-could-be-history-within-next-year-after-budget-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/museum-of-northwest-colorado-could-be-history-within-next-year-after-budget-cuts\/","title":{"rendered":"Museum of Northwest Colorado could be history within next year after budget cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Museum
Museum of Northwest Colorado<\/strong>
File Photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Personnel with Museum of Northwest Colorado say the establishment will run out of money in less than a year and be forced to close its doors if officials don\u2019t act to reinstate the museum\u2019s gutted funding \u2014 a development county and city officials say they\u2019ll be working in the coming months to fix.<\/p>\n

In May, the city of Craig and Moffat County initiated a discussion to jointly fund Craig\u2019s Museum of Northwest Colorado<\/a> and the community\u2019s libraries. Commissioner Ray Beck met with city councilors Chris Nichols and Brian MacKenzie along with other city and county staff to explore what a city-county partnership would look like in regard to keeping the community\u2019s libraries and museum open.<\/p>\n

The discussions came about due to county commissioners drastically cutting the funding<\/a> for the museum and libraries in 2018 and 2019 budgets. A November 2018 ballot initiative that would have funded both the libraries and museum failed to pass muster with voters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Paul Knowles, assistant director of the museum, said the defeat \u201cwas a little disheartening but not horrible considering that was our first time on the ballot and considering how angry people were with commissioners in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knowles has been making the rounds these past few weeks, making presentations to the county and city about the museum\u2019s drop-dead date when they\u2019ll run out of money and be forced to close the doors. According to Knowles\u2019 projections, the museum will be forced to close June 2020.<\/p>\n

Knowles said the only reason they\u2019ll be able to stay open that long was folks who voted no on the ballot initiative came forward in droves this year and donated tens-of-thousands to keep their museum afloat.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of those donations were from people who voted no,\u201d Knowles said.<\/p>\n

He added those who donated felt like county commissioners were trying to blackmail voters into raising taxes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a no vote to being blackmailed\u2026 into justifying another tax,\u201d Knowles said.<\/p>\n

In May, Commissioner Don Cook said some tough decisions had to be made about the budget and the library and museum cuts were to help the county\u2019s financial standing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you were looking into the future and you could see that the way you were currently running your business right now, you\u2019d be broke,\u201d Cook said. \u201cWould you change your business?\u201d<\/p>\n

But now the county and city are both in better financial standing after the county\u2019s budget cuts and a city sales tax increase, so officials with Craig and Moffat County are signaling their financial support for the museum and libraries.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we do need the library and we do need the museum,\u201d said new Moffat County Commissioner Donald Broom in May. \u201cI have two kids of my own who use the library at Maybell. To me it\u2019s a very important thing and I\u2019m for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Commissioners Beck and Cook have since both signaled they plan to hash out any possible additional funding as part of their ongoing budget discussions \u2014 which will wrap up October 15 \u2014 in conjunction with the city of Craig\u2019s joint services group.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are starting to make some good strides on that,\u201d Cook said of museum and library funding discussions with the city. \u201cMore cooperation is always good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beck didn\u2019t make any promises, but he agreed commissioners would be working with the city to reinstate some museum funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe joint working group is in discussions about this, so as we work through our budget, I think there\u2019s an exerted effort to see what we can do on both sides,\u201d Beck said.<\/p>\n

Commissioner Broom seems ready to do his part in the library-museum budget talks, also.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guarantee we\u2019ll do the best we can do to keep those going because they\u2019re important to me too,\u201d Broom said.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Museum of Northwest ColoradoFile Photo Personnel with Museum of Northwest Colorado say the establishment will run out of money in less than a year and be forced to close its doors if officials don\u2019t act to reinstate the museum\u2019s gutted funding \u2014 a development county and city officials say they\u2019ll be working in the coming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1312767","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-21 06:11:33","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1312767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312767\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1312767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1312767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1312767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}