City council's decision to reject further slashes to the museum services budget last week was seen as a pleasant surprise to its curator.
Karen Bachmann, of the Timmins Museum National Exhibition Centre realized that council was under public pressure to shave dollars off the city's budget this year.
“Going in we knew that we needed to trim some spots, so we had already trimmed about 3% percent of our budget going into council as the budget process started. Then we were surprised to be asked to cut even more, considering no other departments were being asked to do the same,” she said.
“We can justify everything that we've put forward.”
She says the museum is one of the smaller sub-budgets within the total city budget, and a cut that looks small to some people can have a highly visible impact.
“We were quite happy though that council saw it our way, quite shocked actually,” said Bachmann.
Council approved the initial museum services budget for 2016, which included a 3 percent reduction. The second wave of cuts would have trimmed another 4 to 6 percent from the museum services budget.
Among the secondary cuts that Bachmann and Director of Development Mark Jensen reluctantly presented to council included the elimination of a $3,000 grant to the Connaught Museum, cutting the travel budget in half, and eliminating all part-time hours on Wednesdays.
With those being ultimately rejected by council, staff can breathe a sigh a relief.
“It allows us now to move ahead and complete some of the projects that we want to complete and move forward with developing more of our programming we want to do in the evenings and having it more accessible to the community,” she said.
It would have affected the museum staff directly, reducing their hours to the point where staff losses were a real possibility.
“It also impacts the community as a whole. Yes, it affects the organization but the community also has less opportunity to access the site. The site is part of the municipality, it is owned by everybody,” said Bachmann.
She says that the new location sees a lot more people accessing the site, and with certain areas available for rentals, they have diversified their user base.
“If we have that staff, then the community can use it for a variety of different things. We've always had a lot of groups using. Everything from the United Way to Goldcorp have used the facility and rented it out. You cut back on our hours, you cut back on our staff, we can't do that anymore, and that's a revenue generator for us.”
Among the recommendations within the KPMG report was an increase in user fees, and possibly an entry fee for the museum.
“We had done that in the past. It impacts our attendance drastically, a lot of people don't want to pay for it. They say: 'Well, I've paid my taxes, therefore I should be allow to go in'. Our Museum Advisory Committee has taken that approach as well. People pay their taxes, this is part of what you get as as a service in the community”
The museum does charge users for 'above and beyond' items such as workshops.
This week, a report came out from federal Heritage Minister Melanie Joly, stating that Canada's six national museums were underfunded by over $78 million dollars annually. Notes within that report also stated that 77 percent of the 1,500 museums in Canada are housed in buildings more than 35 years old, with many needing major repairs.
Finance Minister Bill Morneau will table his first budget in March, with many in the heritage and historical sectors hoping for some financial acknowledgement from the federal government.
Bachmann has been a member of the Canadian Museum Association for a number of years, and is the VP this year.
“We were just at Parliament Hill a few weeks ago, talking about museum funding and its been a gradual erosion. When governments cut, that's the first thing they cut, no matter if its national, or way down at the municipal level, culture and soft services,” she said.
However, there was some encouraging news this week.
“I was really happy to see the House of Commons is now striking a committee to look at funding for smaller museums. Now they want to look at how we're dealing with our culture and heritage across this country through museums. Hopefully they'll be visiting here, because they're going to take the committee on the road to have a look,” said Bachmann.
The Timmins Museum has been at their current location on Second Avenue since September of 2011.
Their old location on Legion Drive in South Porcupine was operational from 1975 to 2007.
