Douglas County commissioners increased pressure Thursday for leadership changes at the Watkins Community Museum of History, telling the museum’s volunteer board members in a well-attended meeting that they run a dysfunctional operation with misplaced priorities.

During a meeting Thursday afternoon with the board’s management committee, commissioners spoke individually but with a united voice about what the museum needed to do to keep receiving its annual contribution of $58,000 from the county, which accounts for more than a third of the museum’s annual operating budget:

Dozens of people attend a meeting regarding the fate of the Watkins Community Museum of History. Douglas County commissioners renewed their promise to withhold the county's annual 8,000 contribution to the museum if significant management changes were not forthcoming. The meeting, open to the public, was Thursday at the museum, 1047 Mass.

Hire a professional administrator/fund-raiser, possibly by “reallocating” tight financial resources. Left unsaid but implied: Existing museum employees may need to lose their jobs.

Create clear direction for the museum’s future, possibly with help from a museum-management class at Kansas University.

Set up a board structure that encourages unity of purpose instead of division and indecision.

“Our hope and our belief or feeling is that you, as a board, will be perfectly willing and anxious to somehow or other reconstitute yourselves so that you can cause this museum to be what it ought to be,” Commissioner Bob Johnson said. “And if you’re not committed to that, just resign.

“I think you people have let the organization down. You need to get your act together. You need to get a plan that is workable. You need to back it up 100 percent. And if you’re not able to do that, you ought not to be on the board.”

Commissioners have no direct control over the board of the Douglas County Historical Society, which runs the museum at 1047 Mass. But board members acknowledge that the county’s support is vital.

¢6News video: Pressure is put on the Douglas County Historical Society

The museum has been operating without a paid administrator for more than a year, after the museum’s two longtime employees including director Steve Jansen were demoted, their salaries cut and five volunteers on the museum’s management committee left the organization.

Even after the changes, commissioners say they continue to receive complaints about shoddy storage of artifacts in the building, inconsistent policies for operations, unpaid bills, disorganized resources, employee-management friction and numerous other problems.

Jere McElhaney, commission chairman, said he would give board members “30 days of freedom” to come up with a long-range plan for fixing the museum’s problems.

“It upsets me, the fracture in the community I’ve seen from this,” McElhaney said.

Douglas County commissioner Charles Jones, left, listens to Phillip Godwin, president of the board of directors for the Douglas County Historical Society, discuss the accomplishments of the Watkins Community Museum of History. Godwin gave his report Thursday at the museum.

The fracture was on full display Thursday, as nearly 100 people showed up for the meeting in the basement of the museum. Many showed up either to support Jansen, the former director who now works as historian, or to back efforts to see him fired.

Ian Naismith, grandson of the founder of basketball and former KU coach James Naismith, said he had driven 1,000 miles to attend the meeting and stick up for Jansen. He even told officials that he’d donate $25,000 a year “for as long as it takes” to help pull the museum out of its financial constraints.

But two things must happen, Naismith said: Closure of his 18-month-old deal to sell his grandfather’s original set of basketball rules to the Smithsonian Institution; and Jansen needs to be retained at the museum.

“If the money’s there, a lot of these personality problems go away,” Naismith said. “It’s like a marriage. (But) you don’t do it by firing the best man.”

The full board of directors is scheduled to meet next Thursday for its regular monthly meeting, and could discuss possible courses of action then.

Jansen isn’t sure what to expect, but he does know that getting the issues out in the open should help the museum move on. He’s just hoping that he remains included in the plan, something he’s counting on the public to make clear to decision-makers.

“The solution to our problems has to come through greater community awareness,” he said after the meeting.