Museum of the Cariboo-Chilcotin Requests Funds from the City of Williams Lake Due to Challenges at New Location

The Museum of the Cariboo Chilcotin is seeking to make up lost revenue and is requesting the City for aid.

Despite seeing an increase in visitors since its move to the Tourism Discovery Centre last year the Museum has lost $9,000 in revenue.

“When we moved to an admission by donation policy because of the reduction in square footage, we haven’t seen a pickup from that whereas we used to charge five dollars for an adult visitor at the old site on 4th Avenue,” says Museum coordinator Joe Borsato.

“We also haven’t been able to run a gift shop because there hasn’t been enough electrical wiring for it.”

Borsato adds that there have been quite a few delays with finishing the basement and getting proper lighting for the area.

“I had hoped we would be well-done renovations this time eight months ago,” he says.

“It’s too bad but at the same time we have opened up the area for visitors to experience. I think we’re headed in a good direction; it’s just taking us a really long time.”

Borsato says the Museum is also hoping to hire an additional staff member to finish a lot of what was started during the move including making sure the collection is properly cataloged.

“At the old site we had a database that kept track of everything but since we moved to the Tourism Discovery Centre a lot of that information is not necessarily accurate based off what location it tells us an artifact is stored in or what the condition of the artifact is so we’re hoping to get some staff to try and rectify that, try and update everything so it actually reflects the information that we need in order to maintain the collection and manage it effectively,” Borsato explains.

“We’re hoping that Council will able to support that especially since it is for the preservation of the community’s history, and with that, we do have matching funds for that so we’re not going cold turkey into this.”

Council said Tuesday that the City was having difficulty in finding a contractor to complete the work in the basement, and referred the Museum’s request of $9,000 for the lost revenue and $15,000 for an additional employee to its finance committee for consideration.

“We’re optimistic that we’ll be able to use whatever support they can give us as effectively as possible,” says Borsato.

“We’re working pretty hard to make it work as much as we can. Obviously support from the municipality is extremely important to us for our long-term success.”