DOUGLAS COUNTY, Ga. — On Monday, the chair of the Douglas County History and Art Museum resigned. The next discussion of the museum’s future was heated as commissioners discussed working on a plan to take additional next steps.
Former museum Board Chairman Joe Phillips went to Monday’s county commission and resigned, after pleading with commissioners to keep the museum open.
Channel 2 Action News covered how Phillips went before the commission and asked if a change of leadership would help them take a step back to reevaluate the museum’s imminent closure, then ended his tenure without further discussion from commission members.
On Tuesday, the commission met again and discussion of what to do with the museum’s lease was less than calm.
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Discussion of the museum’s soon-to-be ended lease started about two hours into Tuesday’s commission meeting.
From the start, members of the commission were split in tone and approach for how to proceed, and how they wanted to talk about it.
The current museum lease is set to expire Dec. 31 and the agenda for discussion had a plan of switching to a month-to-month lease until a more definitive plan for the museum’s continuation or cancellation could be reached.
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Commissioner Henry Mitchell III said it was important to set boundaries and goals for how to move forward with the museum, if the board decides to do so.
He made a motion to amend the agenda item to create a committee to decide steps on how to adjust the museum’s space.
Mitchell’s comments on getting the item back in committee led to a back-and-forth over procedure for how to move the item forward, before any actual discussion of the agenda began.
At one point, Comm. Whitney Kenner Jones said deciding if the lease discussion should have been put in committee should have happened several months earlier.
“Y’all have left these people in limbo because you want to keep dickering around about a decision that has already been made,” she said. “Issues have been conflated, people have decided that termination of the lease means people do not want a museum at all and that is simply not the case.”
Kenner Jones said in the past 60 days, those involved with the museum have been unable to seek assistance from organizations or commissioners, nor the ability to get feedback or direction.
Kenner Jones said that it was unnecessary to continue parading people before the commission and creating an issue that otherwise wouldn’t exist.
Either way, since the museum is a private nonprofit, Kenner Jones said the commission didn’t have the legal ability or right to make strategic plans for it, or any other private entity.
She criticized the commission knew this already and said without giving them a 30-day notice to leave the space, they would already be a month-to-month lease. Kenner Jones also said the county wasn’t giving the museum the resources to even attempt coming up with a new strategy, either, prolonging the issue.
“Regardless of whether I agree that their lease should continue or not, this is cruel,” Kenner Jones said. “Stop playing with people. Make a decision and stick with it because the grandstanding and the nonsense, we look ridiculous.”
More discussion among commissioners ensued, before a vote happened to approve a month-to-month lease while a plan was developed to make improvements in its current space, or move it to a different space.
First, commissioners voted 3-2 to agree to making an amended motion on the lease topic, adding the committee to review future museum strategy and the new lease.
Then, after that motion passed, the commission voted 3-2 to approve a month-to-month lease beginning in January. The committee about the museum’s future will begin meeting in December.
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