CITY COUNCIL TO CONSIDER HERITAGE MUSEUM LEASE
The Brenham City Council will consider what to do about the problems at the Brenham Heritage Museum Thursday. The museum was ruled unsafe by the city two weeks ago, after electrical problems were found. The museum has been closed to the public after flood waters damaged the basement in May of 2016. The building is now completely unoccupied until repairs can be made. The city owns the building, which was Brenham’s Post Office for many years, and leases it to the Brenham Heritage Museum. That lease calls for the museum to pay for any repairs, but the cost of those repairs continues to grow. At the last city council meeting, City Manager Terry Roberts said the city was willing to look at ways to help with the needed repairs. The city council will go into executive session during their meeting Thursday afternoon to consider the lease with the museum. They may then vote on any action concerning the lease. City Council meets Thursday at 1:00 on the second floor of City Hall.
Personally, I would prefer to see the $300,000 in repair costs spent on improving city streets please. How about telling us how many visitors the museum has had the last two years? Unless that number is in the several thousands, consider rotating exhibits to other public buildings around town, our refurbished library, the Barnhill Center, or sharing with Washington on the Brazos. Time for common sense and taxpayer relief.
I keep seeing references to poorly maintained city streets in KWHI comments. Just curious which streets are in question? I must never drive them, because I’m not aware of any.
The city needs to just make the repairs and get the museum back in place. Please dont do what we always do, shut the building down because we want to build something new and shiny and spend 14 times what it would have cost to just repair it.
Yeah, but then we could just reopen it in a couple years to use as a new early-learning facility, or a meeting place for pregnant or nursing women, like we did with the old police station and Alton Elementary.
Agreed. It seems to me a cut & dried case.
If the city ownes the building, then they need to fix it.
Keep the building and the museum there.