The Watkins Community Museum of History is exhibiting enough turmoil, dissension and disorganization to threaten its very survival, Douglas County commissioners say.

Rocked in recent years by dwindling donations, board defections and employee and visitor complaints, the museum this week will face a major test of its fortitude when commissioners ask its volunteer leaders to offer a clear plan for restoration of the operation’s finances and reputation.

The county finances about a third of the museum’s annual operating budget, but commissioners say that pool of money could dry up fast if they aren’t convinced that an overhaul is coming soon.

“It’s very difficult for anybody to change,” Commissioner Bob Johnson said. “I understand that, and sometimes people won’t face up to the fact that a change is necessary until they see the money is gone and they simply can’t continue operating as they had been.”

Added Commissioner Charles Jones: “Fine-tuning the management structure isn’t good enough. We’re going to be looking for some changes in direction … a fairly radical shift in management and style.”

The museum, at 1047 Mass., is run by the Douglas County Historical Society. It has been operating without a paid administrator for more than a year, after the museum’s two longtime employees were demoted, their salaries cut and five volunteers on the museum’s management committee left the organization.

The society still hopes to have a balanced $163,000 budget for 2003, after at least two years of running deficits. But leaders know they cannot afford to lose the county’s annual infusion of $55,000.

“I don’t know if it’s a threat or a promise,” said Marnie Argersinger, a member of the board. “If the board can’t straighten up the museum, we will no longer get the one-third of our operating budget from the county. And it’s already hard enough to get the other two-thirds. I don’t know what we’d do.

“I don’t know what the answer is. Maybe there isn’t an answer. Maybe we need to fold our tents and steal away.”

In recent weeks, commissioners declined to disclose specifics of their desires for changes at the museum and its leadership. But commissioners say they have received letters, phone calls and other personal communications describing shoddy storage of artifacts in the building, inconsistent policies for operations, unpaid bills, disorganized resources, employee-management friction and other problems.

Administrator needed

In July, commissioners warned Phil Godwin, president of the historical society, that they wanted to see changes made during the next year; otherwise, future financing might be a challenge. During their meeting, commissioners and Godwin discussed the museum’s professional staff and their salaries, which Godwin and the society’s board had agreed needed to be augmented before any other spending decisions were made.

That’s when Johnson advised Godwin of “an old adage” in business: “The people who get you into trouble are not always the ones to get you out of trouble.”

Bob Piller, who took over as the society’s treasurer this summer, said last week that the museum “desperately” needed to hire a professional administrator  something that would require another $50,000 or $60,000 to accomplish. But he acknowledged that finding that much money would prove difficult.

The museum recently collected $1,500 from a letter campaign directed at Lawrence businesses and business leaders who had not donated previously to the museum, Piller said. As many as 1,200 solicitation letters were mailed.

“Obviously, if we had the money for a historian and a director and a collections manager and an executive secretary or bookkeeper, that would be the best. But those things take money,” Piller said. “Right now a lot of the work is being done by volunteers. There’s no way the museum or the society can continue to function indefinitely with just volunteers.

“So, there’s a place for everybody if we can pay for it. If we can’t? We have decisions to make. If we can’t pay for it, we’ll have to do like we’ve done in the past. We’ll have to cut.”

Argersinger, a former mayor, said the museum had $150,000 in reserves when she served on the board about 12 years ago. Since rejoining the group again in November, the reserve funds have dwindled to about $50,000.

She sees Steve Jansen, the museum’s former longtime director and current historian, as key to the overhaul. Last year, the board cut his salary from $43,000 to $32,000.

Today, Argersinger said, many of the relatively few donations the museum receives are earmarked for restoring his salary, while many potential donors refuse to donate anything unless he’s gone.

“Half the people you talk to are going to want Steve fired, and the other half say he’s an icon and we can’t get along without him,” Argersinger said. “We either have to fire Steve or keep him. We can’t have this in between.”

Personnel decisions

Argersinger, for one, counts herself in the “dump Steve” contingent.

“We can get a new, young person to take that job over and who can talk to groups and do all the administrative details that just slipped through the cracks all these years,” she said.

For his part, Jansen said that hiring an administrator would be fine, but not if it came at his expense. He spent 17 years as the museum’s only full-time employee and continues to talk about history in schools, retirement communities and anywhere else the job takes him.

“I wouldn’t want it to have an adverse impact on my ability to be paid what I used to be paid or to receive justified and warranted increases,” said Jansen, who acknowledges feeling “like a dead man walking.”

Steve Glass, a member of the board and the museum’s management committee, said he was confident that the museum could find a solution to meet the community’s needs.

“There’s a division of opinion on the board, and that needs to be resolved,” Glass said. “Steve has a great many assets and a lot of supporters in the community, and we recognize that. And so, as we proceed forward, we need to weigh all the pluses and minuses.”

Thursday’s meeting, which is open to the public, is scheduled for 3 p.m. at the museum.