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HomeMy WebLinkAbout3.19.21attachment 1331 Algoma Boulevard, Oshkosh WI 54901 • 920.236.5799 • oshkoshmuseum.org MEMO TO THE MUSEUM BOARD March 19, 2021 To the Board, Attached is the draft agenda for April 1. Please note the first item is the presentation by Associated Bank related to the Durow Trust. While I am pleased to say that last weekend’s attendance was over 300, this is one of those memos when I also have to include discouraging news. When the Durow Trust’s current holdings were purchased in 2019 the yield on the 5-year US Treasury Bill was around 1.8%. Since then the yield has dropped to 0.35%. Maturing bonds are being reinvested at about 0.85%. What all this means is that, as of now, we can reasonably expect annual earnings on this $3.3 million trust to be in the $40,000 to $60,000 range. However dispiriting this is, the purpose of reviewing potential interest is to help plan the best use of the Durow bequest in the coming years, and thus ensure the trust is not over-spent. Assistant Director Anna Cannizzo has completed the loan contract for White Christmas: The Exhibition, and it is now in the hands of the owners for review and signature. Looking at my March Director’s Report, I see that I somehow forgot to mention an important relationship. Former Miss America (2000), Heather French Henry, and her husband Dr. Stephen Henry, are the owners of the White Christmas collection. Because of Ms. Henry’s interests, White Christmas: The Exhibition is connected to a broader emphasis of helping veterans. The Henrys will be on hand to help install, and then to help Marketing Coordinator Tammy Malewski promote the exhibition and also the veteran causes. Having Heather French as a spokesperson while she is here should generate a high level of public interest. The exhibition will open on Saturday, November 13, and run through January 23, 2022. This year will have three popular, and most likely well-attended exhibitions, plus the Pow Wow, so we should end 2021 with a high profile and in a strong position. On Tuesday, Anna and Assistant Curator Katrina Achilli met with Menominee Dawn Wilber and four of her students. She is the niece of Jim Frechette, Jr., creator of the Clan figures; she and her brother will be head dancers at the Pow Wow. Dawn teaches traditional crafts after school at the Keshena High School and we need a reproduction made of a blanket created by Louise Dutchman, c. 1900. The blanket is too fragile to continue to be shown in People of the Waters. Later this year, Katrina will take the blanket off exhibit and Dawn will get a close-up look at the blanket to enable her to develop an estimate. That will most likely be a Collections Fund expense, as the blanket would be added to collections as an example of contemporary Menominee art. Dawn is willing to be filmed talking about it so we can add the video to the People of the Waters exhibit interactives. She was very impressed with the Clans Room and was emotional when she saw it. Dawn is making a new dance dress for the Pow Wow based on “Beaver Woman,” perhaps the most popular Clan figure. Of note, one of her High School students is a great- great-great granddaughter of Chief Oshkosh and is interested in coming back to see his collection items not on display. 1331 Algoma Boulevard, Oshkosh WI 54901 • 920.236.5799 • oshkoshmuseum.org Page Two The Museum is serving an increasing number of Menominee. We are honored to be able to correctly present the story and culture of some of Wisconsin’s indigenous people. In a quick departure from the work of the Museum, I cannot help but comment on the appointment of Native American Deb Haaland as Secretary of the Interior. The media was incorrect in reporting Ms. Haaland was the first Native American to hold a cabinet-level position. Charles Curtis, of Kansas, was elected Vice President to Herbert Hoover in 1929. Curtis was a member of the Kaw tribe. Archivist Amy Fels selected 36 new historic photographs and wrote labels for the lower level exhibit. Graphic Artist Daniel Fiser is now sizing the images, as each is unique and we intend to reuse the existing frames. (Historic images are of varying sizes and not standardized across decades.) The lower level photographs have been on view for 15-years and this project enabled Amy to not only select her own images, but to also present her own interpretation. Historic photos are an enduring visitor favorite. Exhibit Technician Greg Witthun is working on artifact mounts for the upcoming Durow exhibit, Iridescence, which opens in April in the Sawyer Library. In the long miscellaneous paragraph, Theresa and I are working on compiling estimates of our loss of income in 2020 because of Covid. Our biggest loss, of course, is the admission and special store sales from Titanic. However, you might recall that the photographic exhibition, Then & Now, was off to a great start. Our Enrichment Programs had gained tremendous momentum, so we lost that revenue, and we reduced the size of our cemetery tour groups. We also lost the revenue from the November Gala. All the staff time we devoted to Titanic in 2020 had to be re-established in 2021. Moving on, our capital improvement projects are still working their way through the approval process prior to the bidding procedure. And finally, the replacement of our street signage is a key project for me, having started it many years ago. I am especially keen to replace the sign on the northwest corner. There has been a sign facing High and Congress for the 32-years that I have been Director. When the old wood sign finally rotted away a number of years ago, we replaced it with the temporary sign that is currently in place. The plan has always been to build a larger and more attractive sign that matches the Sawyer home architecture. I remain hopeful we can accomplish this in 2021 prior to White Christmas. Lastly, Tammy Malewski is recruiting volunteers for Titanic, as an adequate number of trained volunteers is one key to establishing a positive visitor experience. Preferably, we need 12 volunteers each day. As part of her efforts, she is creating a pleasant volunteer area in the lower level where staff recently painted and had a new floor finish poured. This area will provide volunteers a place to secure their personal items. That ends the week and I hope you have a pleasant weekend, Brad Larson Director March 16, 2021 Acting Director Rob Fairweather Office of Management and Budget 725 17th Street NW Washington, D.C. 20503 Dear Acting Director Fairweather: We write today to express our concern about the recommendations from the Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Area Standards Review Committee (Committee) published in the Federal Register on January 19, 2021 (Federal Register Number 2021-00988). Specifically, we are opposed to the reclassification of a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) as an area with a population of at least 100,000. This change will result in 144 areas in 45 states and Puerto Rico losing their MSA designation. As you know, when the original MSA designation was made just prior to the 1950 Census, a population of 50,000 persons was set as the minimum population level necessary for an urban area to be considered an MSA. The Committee’s recommendation to increase the minimum threshold to 100,000 persons is based on one factor only; that the minimum population required for an urban area to qualify as an MSA has not kept pace with population growth of the U.S. Because the U.S. population has more than doubled since 1950, the Committee therefore believes the minimum MSA population standard should double as well. That rationale is devoid of any cogent, scientific, or statistically relevant standard. In the Committee’s report to the Office of Management and Budget, dated August 1, 2019, the Committee makes no argument detailing the statistical need for changing the minimum MSA population threshold. Without clearly explaining the statistical drawbacks of adhering to the current population threshold and the statistical advantages of moving to the proposed new threshold, the change is based solely on the feelings of the Committee members and not on evidentiary proof or any scientific basis. Doubling the population threshold for an MSA merely because it sounds fair to the Committee is not an appropriate standard for changing U.S. Government policy. Currently, roughly 86 percent of the U.S. population is designated as living within an MSA. Should the proposed change be adopted, that figure would fall to roughly 80 percent. Again, the Committee provides no discussion of whether this change makes MSA data significantly more statistically insightful or useful. Since the Committee ignores the argument altogether, we can only assume that the Committee did not do its due diligence and made an arbitrary recommendation. Additionally, the Committee evidently ignored how this population threshold change might affect broader statistical analysis. Since this threshold has been consistently in use for over 70 years, it is reasonable to assume that changing it now would create crucial data inconsistencies, especially for any longitudinal statistical studies in process from the federal government, state and local governments, academic institutions, or independent policy groups. Finally, though we realize that the Committee does not take policy outcomes into consideration when offering its recommendations for the MSA threshold change, and we know that the U.S. Census Bureau and OMB routinely advise federal agencies that the MSA designation should not be used as a basis for implementing policy, it is well-known that federal agencies have long ignored that advice. As such, we would be remiss if we did not highlight how this proposed change could negatively impact our local communities. Many federal programs incorporate the MSA designation into the decision-making structure of how federal dollars are spent. From the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), to the Office of Personnel Management’s Locality Pay Program for General Schedule Employees, to the Department of Health and Human Service’s Medicare payment system for hospital inpatients, and the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program, to name a few, the definition of what constitutes an MSA is critically important to communities across America. Losing an MSA designation could mean tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in lost federal grant money to communities already struggling to rebuild economic engines that have been damaged by our current Covid-19 crisis. The American taxpayer deserves to know that this proposed change was made using data-driven evidence and that all reasonably foreseeable effects from the change were carefully evaluated. While we appreciate the Committee’s work, given the arguments made above, we believe the proposed change to be arbitrary and capricious and urge the Office of Management and Budget to reject the proposal. Sincerely, Bruce Westerman Susan Wild Member of Congress Member of Congress Robert B. Aderholt Member of Congress Mark Amodei Member of Congress Cliff Bentz Member of Congress Sanford Bishop Member of Congress Mike Bost Member of Congress Mo Brooks Member of Congress Salud Carbajal Member of Congress Jerry Carl Member of Congress Earl L. “Buddy” Carter Member of Congress Matt Cartwright Member of Congress Ben Cline Member of Congress Michael Cloud Member of Congress Jim Costa Member of Congress Rick Crawford Member of Congress Rodney Davis Member of Congress Suzan DelBene Member of Congress Antonio Delgado Member of Congress Randy Feenstra Member of Congress Russ Fulcher Member of Congress Paul A. Gosar, D.D.S. Member of Congress Sam Graves Member of Congress Glenn Grothman Member of Congress Jim Hagedorn Member of Congress Ashley Hinson Member of Congress Fred Keller Member of Congress Daniel T. Kildee Member of Congress Anne Kirkpatrick Member of Congress Ronny Jackson Member of Congress Teresa Leger Fernández Member of Congress Frank D. Lucas Member of Congress Tracey Mann Member of Congress Peter Meijer Member of Congress Dan Meuser Member of Congress Barry Moore Member of Congress Blake Moore Member of Congress Frank Mrvan Member of Congress Richard Neal Member of Congress Tom O’Halleran Member of Congress Greg Pence Member of Congress August Pfluger Member of Congress Mike Rogers Member of Congress Austin Scott Member of Congress Jason Smith Member of Congress Bryan Steil Member of Congress Thomas P. Tiffany Member of Congress Dina Titus Member of Congress Glenn “GT” Thompson Member of Congress David Trone Member of Congress David G. Valadao Member of Congress Tim Walberg Member of Congress Don Young Member of Congress