It’s been a rough year for the Douglas County Historical Society and its popular Watkins Community Museum of History.

Seven months ago, the museum’s seven-member management committee let it be known the museum had been spending more than it was taking in.

Steve Jansen, historian, looks through some information at Watkins Community Museum of History. The museum and its staff have undergone several changes this year.

At the same time, it announced that Steve Jansen, the museum’s director for the past 22 years, would no longer be running the museum. Instead, he had been named historian and would be responsible for education, research, exhibits and public relations. Judy Sweets, who started at the museum in 1987 and served as registrar and exhibit coordinator, was named collections manager.

With the new titles came pay cuts. Jansen dropped from $43,000 to $31,000 a year. Sweets’ salary fell from $29,000 to $21,000.

The management committee also began looking for funds to hire a full-time administrator/fund-raiser to take over Jansen’s administrative duties. Until then, the committee is and has been overseeing the museum’s daily operations.

Jansen and Sweets each warned that if their salaries weren’t restored, they would be forced to seek better-paying jobs.

“I love my job and I really think this is what I should be doing. I don’t want to leave,” Sweets said last month. “But at the same time, I need to make enough to live on. I don’t know how much longer I can stay.”

Jansen has said he is reluctantly looking for other work. Like Sweets, he can’t afford to take a large salary cut.

Controversy soon followed as area history and genealogy buffs rushed to Jansen’s and Sweets’ defense. Over the next five months, five of the seven committee members involved in the decisions either resigned or declined reappointment.

So far, neither Sweets’ nor Jansen’s salary has been restored and it doesn’t look like that will happen anytime soon. The money still isn’t there.

More areas to target

Phil Godwin, president of the Douglas County Historical Society, sees a lot of problems that need fixing.

He recently appointed subcommittees to:

l Overhaul the society’s role in overseeing the museum’s operations.

l Increase fund-raising efforts.

l Seek funds for a full-time administrator/development director.

l Obtain financial support from the City of Lawrence.

“Right now, we get about $60,000 a year from Douglas County, and they give us a few thousand dollars for building maintenance,” Godwin said. “But we don’t get anything from the city. A lot of us don’t think that’s right, considering how much we do for them.”

Godwin said he’s optimistic the museum will mend itself.

“In spite of all the bad publicity, we’ve added 25 new members,” he said. “I think that shows the support is out there. We just have to figure out how to take advantage of it.”

Unfortunate timing

It’s unfortunate, Godwin said, that the management committee’s concern over the budget coincided with the changes in Sweets’ and Jansen’s duties. The two issues, he said, are not related.

The change in job titles, Godwin said, was intended to make better use of Jansen’s and Sweets’ skills and was not meant to imply poor performance or mismanagement.

The cuts in pay, he said, were driven “by the fact that we’ve been spending more than we’ve had coming in for the past three or four years. If we’d kept that up, we’d be out of operating funds in just a few more years.

“This is not a reflection on Steve and Judy. They’re both valued employees,” he said. “We want to keep them, but we can’t keep spending money that’s not going to be there.”

Godwin stressed that while the pay cuts have attracted the most publicity, several other “significant” reductions in spending have been made.

“Not everything has been put on Steve’s and Judy’s backs,” he said.

The situation was compounded by many members of the Douglas County Historical Society governing board assuming they were in charge of the museum, when, in fact, the museum’s bylaws assign that authority to the management committee.

Thirty years ago, the arrangement made sense, Godwin said, because the historical society and the museum had separate agendas. Since then, however, the differences have faded.

“I’ve appointed a committee to look into revising the bylaws,” Godwin said.