Museum of Ventura County gets $125,000 and six months to come up with a plan

The Museum of Ventura County has a busy six months ahead.

In the upcoming days and weeks, it must show how it will one day be able to support itself, start assessing a collection of 181,000 documents and artifacts, begin the process of developing a $10 million endowment and look at ways to turn its programs and offerings upside down.

It’s a tall order for the institution, but those are the conditions set by the Ventura City Council and Ventura County Board of Supervisors in giving the museum taxpayer funds.

Both bodies have approved $125,000 for the next six months. Ventura’s approval came July 10, while supervisors approved the museum's request Tuesday.

Read more:City of Ventura throws museum a possible lifeline

In the supervisors’ motion, which was approved on a 4-1 vote with Peter Foy dissenting, the board included a provision that the museum return in three months with an update and stressed the importance of focusing on the collection.

Much of the museum’s holdings are owned by the county — that much is known. But how many or what, from whom and from where has not been fully cataloged.

Getting to the bottom of that is a big reason Supervisor Linda Parks supported the museum’s request, despite the institution’s ongoing financial problems and unclear future.

The museum, with locations in downtown Ventura and Santa Paula, sent requests to the city and county last month. Without the support, the museum would be forced to close by the end of July, officials said then.

Museum board member John Orr acknowledged there had been mistakes in the museum’s operations. For roughly five years, it spent more than it made. Even as fundraising flailed, Orr said, the board couldn’t see reducing events, programs or exhibits. That would drive away donors, board members felt.

The board remained “optimistic” that donors would come in to help, Orr said.

That optimism caused the museum to dip significantly into reserves to keep going.

To Foy, the museum has never been able to support itself and has been bailed out by a generous benefactor or capital campaigns for new brick-and-mortar structures. What the museum has never been able to do is pay for its day-to-day operations, he said.

“This is what concerns me about the whole operation,” he said. “It doesn’t have a history of ever making money.”

Parks noted that the county had given the museum an additional $75,000 in 2006 for a planned expansion of the research library that never happened. Orr said the money had been spent on computers and half was still in reserves.

More than two dozen people at Tuesday's supervisors meeting expressed support for the museum. They included Ventura Chamber of Commerce President and Chief Executive Officer Stephanie Caldwell. Foy asked whether chamber support meant the organization's members had pledged financial support.

Caldwell said several board members had agreed to help invigorate the museum. Chamber board chair Nan Drake, who spoke, said she was a great museum supporter and donor.

Ultimately, Foy felt he couldn’t support the museum because he didn’t see a “real plan” for how the museum would turn itself around. He wondered if there wasn’t a better way to showcase the collection, perhaps by placing items at highly visible, publicly owned buildings.

“Is the model the right model?” Foy asked.

The museum's interim executive director, Elena Brokaw, who accepted hugs and congratulations after the meeting, said she believes it is.

“I understand his comments, and I believe that we have a very solid plan,” Brokaw said.

On Wednesday, the museum’s board of directors will meet to get going on the plan, which includes figuring out how to catalog the collection, developing a path toward creating an endowment, clarifying its vision, reaching out to the community and ultimately determining the best way to draw people there repeatedly. 

The museum gets 390 paid visitors per week. Visitors spend 15 to 20 minutes going through it, Brokaw said.

After the board meeting, Brokaw will head to meetings with Santa Paula and the Ventura County Transportation Commission. She’s hoping to get money from each entity.

The museum is scheduled to return to the Ventura City Council the first week in August. Because the city conditioned its contribution on the county giving its full share of the initial request, double what supervisors ultimately gave, the council will need to decide what to do, Council member Christy Weir said. Weir, along with council members Cheryl Heitmann and Jim Monahan, urged supervisors to approve the funding request.

The Ventura County Taxpayers Association sent an email to supervisors, urging them to withhold giving any money until the museum could show a plan for how it would sustain itself.

Last month, supervisors ordered a financial review before distributing $38,000 to the Ventura County Resource Conservation District. 

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"VCTA believes the same prudent procedure that was applied to RCD's request should be applied to the museum before dispersing additional funds — even if that results in the temporarily closing, time that may allow directors to get its house in order," David Grau and Dick Thomson of the association wrote to supervisors. 

Museums are important, they wrote, but giving the organization taxpayer funds without review "would be the classic case of throwing good money after bad."