Peoria Pundit

Via Merle Widmer, who has actually paid a visit to the Dubuque Museum and finds the lack of transparency troubling:

Everybody who works at this museum is thrilled. They have a nice job with benefits. But financially, the nice museum which I have visited is a financial bust even though originally financed by a grant from the the State of Iowa for $50 million. The Chamber of Commerce supports the museum as do all chambers everywhere, support projects using taxpayer dollars. Since it received the large lump sum grant, it has received other taxpayer funded grants and at least $1 million dollars from the gambling boat next door. Despite drawing 301,000 visitors the first year it still failed to meet its operating budget by $500,000. The second year, the museum drew 250,000 and the third year, 220,000. Since then, the museum will not release numbers to outsiders.

The Build the Block crowd cites this museum when it makes hard-to-believe claims about local attendance. How can they, when the Dubuque Museum stopped telling people how many people are visiting the place? That would be a red flag to anyone wanting to gather honest and accurate statistics, rather than just create propaganda. It’s like they aren’t even trying to make up good lies.

Merle also looks at Lakeview Museum’s, surprise, lack of transparancy about financial problems.

This entry was posted on January 30, 2009 at 10:22 am and is filed under Local with tags Build the Block, lakeview, Museum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed Both comments and pings are currently closed.