Railway Museum Closed for City Sponsored House Cleaning

San Angelo's Railway Museum is not open today, the day after the museum's lease with the City of San Angelo expired.  A sign on the entrance door stated the museum is closed for cleaning and suggested readers come back next Saturday.

This post appeared on the Railway Museum's facebook page on September 4th. 

The City sponsored housecleaning started September 5th when it rebuked Board President David Wood in full public view.  Wood resigned later that evening in a called Board meeting.  Volunteer Executive Director Shannon Carpenter resigned less than a week later.

Downtown San Angelo is promoting the Railway Museum for an event next weekend and for the upcoming Christmas Holidays.  Mayor Brenda Gunther also lends her time to Downtown San Angelo.

City Council will entertain lease renewal at their September 19th meeting but it's hard to believe the nonprofit museum can reconstitute itself in such a short period of time to be worthy of a twenty or fifty year lease.

Oddly the September 5th City Council minutes omit public comment from then President David Wood.

Motion:   Council Member Hiebert made a motion, seconded by Council Member Thompson , not to renew the lease related to 703 S. Chadbourne .

It does not mention that he spoke much less the points he made after introducing himself.

Wood :  We've been working closely with Daniel (Valenzuela - City Manager) and Cindy on getting all the figures and stuff together for them, that they asked for.  They told us there would not be a problem with renewing the lease.  So this is quite a surprise.  May I ask why?

Valenzuela:  Theresa (James - City Attorney), he's asking why we are not renewing the agreement.  So, he is asking for a response on that.

James:  That was issues that we were discussing in Executive Session and as attorney-client privilege requires I am not able to discuss it in an open meeting, nor will they discuss it as well.

Wood:  Y'all can't say why that just last week Daniel was saying everything is fine.

James:   I will say that in the meantime since you had the meeting with Daniel issues have came up that have degraded our belief that it would be prudent for the city to continue that lease.

Wood:  There's going to be a large campaign going on then, I guess through the media, that we will start today working on. If this release is not renewed let me assure you there will a large community outcry about it.  We've done everything we've been asked to do.  We had a problem with the lady that Daniel asked to come up and be the go-between between with the city and the Depot.  She just did not perform the duties as she said she was going to.  We've hired an Executive Director to take over that and we've been keeping Daniel and Cindy apprised of everything.  We've got everything ready to present to y'all.

We were told it wouldn't be done until next meeting.  We were told there was nothing on the agenda for this meeting.  So this is quite the surprise that this comes up like this.  We've got all the money shown and how where we're going to raise it as you asked for Mayor. We've got projections shown for.  We've been working with ASU even though they don't work with nonprofits normally.   ASU Small Business Development  made sure everything was up to snuff on everything in our business plan.  So this is quite the surprise that y'all decided to not renew this lease.  

Wood sat down and council voted.  The minutes recorded:

The motion carried unanimously seven (7) a yes to zero (0) nays.

Let the record show what a difference a day makes.

Update 9-19-17:  The City gave a decimated Museum board six months to get its act together after the city ran roughshod over the Museum's volunteer leaders