Museum executive director Robert Hunter said they need at least $225,000 a year.
“We are hoping to get the basic minimum of about $225,000,” Hunter said.
But he said they had only been given a budget of $110,000 in the past years, less than half of what they need for basic necessities.
Hunter added that the museum used to get a budget of $585,000 each year.
He said they used to be a part of the budget hearings where they could air their side, justify what they needed, and where they could cut.
“It was more like a negotiation type of process but it has been gone long ago, and that to me has been a very necessary thing,” Hunter said.
With the huge slash in the museum’s budget over the years, Hunter said the staff has gone down too, from 10 to three.
He said the remaining staffers have not received a raise in their salaries since they started working for the museum.
Hunter said the museum lacks basic necessities like security, toilet paper and light bulbs.
The museum could never be self-sustaining because only a few people visit each day.
“We pay about $40,000 a year for the storage facility which we rented at the back of the museum. This covers power, rent and other expenses. This means almost half of our annual budget goes to the storage facility,” Hunter said.
He added that the storage facility holds the bulk of the artifacts in the museum, and the number of items is increasing.
“Every time there is a survey or development in different sites, the museum, by law, is the recipient of any artifacts found so the boxes in the storage facility keep on adding up, and we have to run the facility properly everyday,” Hunter said.
On some days, he said the museum gets busloads of visitors but usually, they only get 20 or even 10.
“The $1 fee for students and $2 fee we collect from tourists is not enough to pay for the operations of the museum,” Hunter said.
