Anchorage Daily News (Alaska)

August 6, 1997, Wednesday, FINAL EDITION

MUSEUM STAFF QUITS IN ANGER

BYLINE: S.J. Komarnitsky; Daily News Mat-Su Bureau

SECTION: NATION, Pg. 1A

LENGTH: 975 words

DATELINE: Wasilla

Opal Toomey, Esther West and Ann Meyers don't seem like politically  
active types. There are no bumper stickers on their cars, no pins on  
their lapels.

But the three gray-haired matrons of Wasilla's city museum decided to  
take a stand last week. Faced with a $ 32,000 budget cut and the  
prospect of choosing who would lose her job, the three 15-year-plus  
employees decided instead to quit en masse. They sent a letter to the  
mayor and City Council announcing they plan to retire at the end of  
the month, leaving the museum without a staff. They also sent a  
message: They'd rather quit than continue working for a city that  
doesn't want to preserve its history.

"We hate to leave," said Meyers, who at 65 is the youngest of the  
three. "We've been together a long time. But this is enough." If the  
city were broke, it would be different, she said. "If they were even  
close to being broke."

Instead, the city is flush thanks to a 2 percent sales tax passed in  
1994 that has left it with $ 4 million in reserves. There is no  
reason the museum's budget should be cut, Meyers said.

But the mayor and several City Council members who supported the cut  
say the budget surplus is beside the point.

They were elected on a platform to minimize government and  
concentrate on infrastructure -- paving roads and extending sewer  
lines. They appreciate the museum and the work the women do to manage  
it and several buildings that make up a historic townsite in downtown  
Wasilla. But the operation needs to be more efficient, they say.

"I think everybody was in agreement there were ways to make the  
museum more efficient, to spend taxpayers' dollars wiser over there,"  
Mayor Sarah Palin said.

The museum, which had an annual budget of more than $ 200,000, was  
costing roughly $ 25 per visitor, she said. Besides, she added, "if  
you talk to someone in Wasilla (about) where they want their tax  
dollars to go, nine out of 10 say, 'Fix my road. I still don't have  
water in my area. And protect our lakes with a sewer system.' "

That philosophy, supported by Palin and many City Council members,  
has been debated in the town since the mayor took office last fall.  
Some say the museum is just the latest example of cutting government  
at the expense of the community.

The women are only the latest to leave the city payroll, noted John  
Cooper, who was the museum's director until Palin fired him last fall.

In addition to Cooper, Wasilla Police Chief Irl Stambaugh left last  
winter after Palin fired him, and planning director Duane Dvorak and  
Public Works director John Felton turned in their resignations this  
summer.

"People are voting with their feet," he said.

Palin maintains she is doing what voters asked. To have $ 4 million  
in reserves is prudent. That's not even an entire year's budget, she  
said.

Much of the latest flap over the museum is a misunderstanding, she said.

All the council wanted was to cut back the museum's hours in winter  
from seven days a week to five. The women made the decision to  
resign, Palin said.

West, Toomey and Meyers disagree. They say they were told that one of  
them would have to leave in September.

Regardless of what was intended, museum supporters say, losing the  
women will be a blow to the city.

The three have run the two-story building just off the Parks Highway  
since the early 1980s. And while it is no National Gallery of Art,  
its collection of mining materials, homestead memorabilia and early  
Wasilla history has its charm, said Fran Seager-Boss, Mat-Su Borough  
anthropologist.

"It's people and characters of the area you wouldn't find anywhere  
else," she said. "It reflects their location and is unique."

Several of the items in the museum were donated or are on loan,  
including an ore stamp mill built in 1900. Used to crush ore, the  
hefty-looking piece of steel machinery was carried from Knik to a  
mine north of Wasilla by four Chinese laborers, according to the man  
who donated it.

Nearby is an ancestor of the modern game of foosball, with  
handcrafted soccer players in place of molded plastic figures. Miners  
paid a dime a game to pass long hours at the mines. The outside edges  
still bear burn marks where the players placed cigarettes.

The three women bring their life experiences to the collection.  
During a recent tour, Toomey, 77, added snippets of her years growing  
up and homesteading in the Wasilla area. She remembers riding the  
train from Anchorage to Wasilla and waiting at the freight station  
where the family received its furniture, lumber and other goods.

"That was how everything came in those days," she said.

West, 74, recalls wearing metal hair clips similar to ones under a  
glass display at the museum. The metal curling irons next to them,  
which were heated on stoves, were before her time though, she explains.

The three also bring their institutional memory. The museum used to  
be a community hall that was built in 1932, they said. Dances were  
held there, and the City Council used to meet in the basement. It was  
dedicated as a museum in 1967.

Seager-Boss said she frequently calls the three for information that  
could take much longer to gather from traditional sources. "Opal is  
my source," she said.

The museum and a farmer's market held each Wednesday in the old  
townsite, she noted, have given a heart to a town that is mostly  
business.

"Everything else is strip mall," she said. "But suddenly there's a  
nice little area right in downtown."

Palin said she doesn't downplay the museum's importance but at the  
same time she has to look out for the city's budget.

For now, there are no plans to try to woo the women back. For their  
part, none of the three expects it. Palin said she plans to meet with  
members of a local historical society to discuss options for finding  
replacements.

LOAD-DATE: August 7, 1997

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo By Stephen Nowers; Anchorage Daily News; DOROTHY PAGE  
MUSEUM EMPLOYEES ESTHER WEST, OPAL TOOMEY AND ANN MEYERS

Copyright 1997 Anchorage Daily News

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