By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
CARIBOU — Though discussions have just begun regarding the impending belt-tightening of Caribou city government, one thing can already be unanimously agreed upon by council members and department heads alike — the budgeting process is never easy for any municipality and FY12 isn’t looking to be any better.
The Nylander Museum is among the city’s valuable non-essential services to experience possible budget cuts, and preliminary discussions regarding the possible closure of the museum — even just a temporary closure or “mothballing”— has the museum’s executive director Jeanie McGowan particularly concerned.
“My concerns are that this museum, once mothballed, will never come back on board; that’s a classic historical element that many museums have suffered over the years,” she explained. “Once you shut a museum down, it very rarely comes back on.”
McGowan is also concerned for the collection as a whole.
Citing historical precedence from museums statewide to the Nylander itself, she described how a mothballed collection without anyone acting as a watchdog tends to lose pieces over the years.
“When Nylander died in 1943 there was no one of his caliber to take his place; this building was filled with his work and his collection, they took all the collections out of the building’s upstairs and put it all in the basement,” she said.
Shortly after, it’s speculated that some sort of authorization was given to the University of Maine to obtain the collection. “Two women who lived here locally observed two University of Maine at Orono museum vans at the back of the Nylander Museum as people carried out boxes of we don’t know what.”
The exchange of collections between museums is a relatively common occurrence accompanied with ample paperwork, but neither McGowan nor any of her predecessors have found a single document regarding the removal of collection pieces from the museum.
“It was not done appropriately, not done according to museum standards — not done according to anyone’s standards — because no one was watching the collection and no one was making sure its pieces were being handled correctly,” she said.
Members of the city council, aware of the situation’s precarious nature, are actively seeking options that are beneficial to the taxpayer — economically, culturally and historically.
“As the budget process continues during these tough economic times for the city, the Council must review all aspects of the budget in an effort to find savings and the Nylander, like all other departments, is under review,” said Caribou City Councilor Mary Kate Barbosa, who represents the council on the Nylander Board of Trustees. “I do not believe anyone is happy with discussions of mothballing our valuable museum, but the reality is that the city must make painful decisions in cutting the budget; everything is on the table for examination.
“In looking at options, both the Council and the Nylander Trustees have proposed separately that the Caribou Chamber of Commerce co-occupy the Nylander to save money for both the Chamber and the Nylander, provide more parking and easy access for the Chamber, and increase viewing of the Nylander and borrowed collections, an ongoing goal of the curator and trustees,” she added. “This idea could solve some current problems for both parties if the Chamber, which is not a department of the city, is amenable to this proposal.”
Through creativity and old-fashioned Aroostook ingenuity, the council is hoping to maintain as many non-essential services as possible.
“For the past several years, department heads and their staffs have been wonderful in proposing some significant savings options in their respective areas,” Barbosa said. “They have now cut almost everything that can be cut without altering programs, services and facilities that are assets to our community. We also cannot rely on money streams from outside sources that were once predictable.”
