Silver City will keep its museum

By JUNO OGLE
Daily Press Staff
After a nearly two-hour closed session and 30 minutes of public input on the topic, Mayor Simon Wheaton-Smith cast a tiebreaking vote Tuesday night on a proposal for the town to keep its ownership and management of the Silver City Museum, and to negotiate with the Silver City Museum Society to fundraise for the museum with no operational input.
The vote on the final agenda item of the three-and-a-half-hour meeting was split, with District 1 Councilor Angela Salaiz and District 4 Councilor Victor Nañez voting no, and District 2 Councilor Nick Prince and District 3 Councilor Stan Snider voting yes. Wheaton-Smith voted yes to break the tie.
“The town will, therefore, continue to operate the museum as it has done approximately for the last 40 years, and we will then have going back to good operational activities there, and the society and the museum will repair themselves, and I think we’ll have a much better museum,” Wheaton-Smith said after the vote.
Wheaton-Smith told the Daily Press on Wednesday that had the council’s majority vote been against continuing to operate the institution, he would have continued negotiations in good faith with the Museum Society.
At the beginning of Tuesday’s regular council meeting, Salaiz made her position clear — first in an attempt to remove the item from the agenda, saying it was an inefficient use of council time.
Her motion to remove the item failed for lack of a second, but Salaiz spoke against it during council comments shortly after that. She noted the council had voted unanimously in two previous meetings to negotiate with the Museum Society — first at a special meeting on June 15 and then in a vote against postponing negotiations at the regular meeting on June 23.
“I don’t believe we’ve had any meetings with the society since then,” she said, adding that she was not aware of a response from the town to a letter from the society asking to continue the negotiations.
“I believe that you’re subverting the will of the council,” Salaiz said to Wheaton-Smith. “We voted not to postpone, and you have taken measures that are, in effect, postponing negotiations with the society, and I disagree with that wholeheartedly.”
She also questioned the museum’s budget, which in the recently completed fiscal year 2026 overran its budget by $200,000.
“Why are they getting and spending more money at the museum than what our road department gets?” Salaiz asked. “If you want to complain about the potholes in our roads, look no further than this.
“It is unacceptable that we should fund the museum this humongous amount of money and not someplace like our road department. We’ve got aging infrastructure that is ready to fall apart, but we are sitting here still arguing over the museum,” she continued. “I am tired of it. I have had enough. I made a decision. We all made a decision and we need to stick by it. Instead, we have No. 14 on the agenda, asking yet again what to do even though we already decided. We have other things that are far more pressing.”
As the mayor would later mention, Salaiz said the museum and the society had worked together well for 40 years.
“That museum is in good shape because the society helps to fund it by hundreds of thousands of dollars a year,” she said. “There was never any problems with the museum and the Museum Society until our current director. I’m just going to put that out there.”
Museum Director Bart Roselli was placed on administrative leave this spring, after allegations arose at the April 28 meeting’s public input about abusive behavior toward staff and members of the Museum Society.
“I’ve had enough. I’ve seen enough. I’ve heard enough. I’ve read enough. I’m done,” Salaiz said. “I’ve made my decision and I’m going to stick by it, and that is to be accountable for your tax dollars.”
In his own comments moments later, Wheaton-Smith addressed the delay in setting talks with the Museum Society.
“At the last meeting, we did discuss that wouldn’t it be a good idea to know what kind of museum do we actually want?” he said. “Nobody had asked that question, and out of that came, ‘Why don’t we go talk to the visitors and the volunteers?’ For that reason, I sent the president of the society a letter saying we’re going to hold off until we’ve done that.”
The museum issue drew attention in public comment as well, with 10 of the 15 speakers addressing the topic. Due to the number of people signed up to speak, Wheaton-Smith limited speakers to three minutes instead of the usual five.
One of those public commenters was former Museum Director Susan Berry.
“I have heard so many inaccurate statements this evening and half-truths, it’s hard to know where to begin,” she said.
She urged the council to do its due diligence on an agreement with the society, the same as it would with a contract with a large company.
Berry said she was present when the society was formed and, as director, was required by the group’s bylaws to attend its meetings.
“The director is literally the person who has supervisory power over the society,” she said.
She said for six fiscal years, the society gave $200,000 to the town in annual support for the museum, including the 2024 fiscal year.
“A good portion of those funds were budgeted for salaries of part-time staff overseeing educational programs, management of volunteers, events, the gift store and community engagement,” Berry said. “The society officers at that point in time decided that they should have the right to determine how those dollars were spent, but that is not the way the organizational structure is set up to be.”
The society pulled its financial support, she said, and then-Town Manager Alex Brown directed funds from other parts of the town budget to keep the formerly society-supported staff members in place, creating last year’s budget overrun, she said.
George Carr, a member of both the Museum Society and the Town Council-appointed advisory board, also criticized the town for the delay in negotiations, saying the town had not followed the code of the West.
“When you give your word, you do it,” he said. “To say tonight that you’re excused from this obligation because you want to decide what kind of museum you want to have … this has been going on for two years. That does not cut it.
“If that’s the way you want to do it, I guess we’re going to go to court. I guess we’re going to have this issue go on for years and years. It’s just simply nonsense,” Carr concluded.
Grant funds OK’d
In other business, the council unanimously approved two resolutions. The first approved participation in the N.M. Department of Transportation’s Local Government Road Fund, providing almost $84,000 toward chip-sealing on A, B, C, D, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth streets, acting Town Manager Jacqui Olea said. The town owes a 25 percent match of about $28,000 in the $112,000 project.
The second resolution authorized a funding agreement with the N.M. Interstate Stream Commission providing $906,000 from the New Mexico Unit Fund for an asset management plan to assess the town’s potable water system, and to create a GIS map of the system to help provide better maintenance schedules, Olea said. That grant funds 100 percent of the cost of the project.
Prince said he would be happy to forward the passage of the resolution to Grant County Commission Chair Chris Ponce.
“Chairman Ponce from the County Commission was wondering what’s happening with the Interstate Stream Commission money,” Prince said. “I’m happy to say that we’re able to get some asset management money that’s going to help the rest of the county out.”
The council tabled several action items Tuesday, two at the recommendation of Olea. On an item about the destruction of town records, Olea said she wanted to make sure all the proper procedures were included. The council was also scheduled to approve appointments to the Local Labor Management Relations Board, but because the unions had not yet made their recommendations for their members, Olea requested that be postponed as well.
The deadline to appoint those positions is Aug. 4, she said. If the appointments are not made, the local board will be dissolved, and any labor relations issues would be referred to the state board.
After some discussion, the council also agreed to table discussion and any action on the town application process for special dispenser and celebration alcohol permits.
Wheaton-Smith appointed Bruce McKinney to the Downtown Action Committee and reappointed McKinney and Harry Browne to the Trails and Open Space Committee.
The council also heard reports on its Reuse and Recycle Committee, the Municipal Library Community Advisory Board, the Economic Development and Research Committee and the Lodgers’ Tax Committee.
Juno Ogle may be reached at juno@scdai lypress.com.