Motueka Museum Trust Board chair Chris Sutton says that the Motueka museum has long since run out of space to store their artefacts, and she is calling for the council to finally commit to working with the board to pin down an appropriate space.
“The storage issue has been a conversation with the council for at least eight years, and I would say even longer than that,” Chris says. “It’s just become critical now really.”
Chris says that one of the museum’s duties is to save artefacts for future generations. These artefacts include documents, machinery, pottery, artworks, furniture – a wide range of items that mark the history of the town.
“Therefore they must be treated and stored correctly in a controlled environment that ensures their preservation.”
Chris says that the museum now has the equivalent of four rented garages, as well as volunteer storage in at least four different parts of Motueka.
As well as being complicated and time consuming for the museum’s staff and volunteers, Chris says that the current storage is not climate-controlled with humidifiers and heat pumps, which makes it unsuitable for long-term storage.
The trust board is hoping that the council will commit to allocating the former Laura Ingram Kindergarten building for a dedicated storage space, which the board will then pay to refit through grants and their own funds.
The issue may feature at this week’s council meeting, which is scheduled to discuss the issue of the kindergarten, old library and current service centre, in a commercially sensitive confidential session.
A council spokesperson says that the section of Thursday’s meeting deals with the future of the building but not its future use.
“If there’s a recommended outcome over what’s going to happen with the building, then future investigations will decide on what they may be used for.”
Chris says that the councilors have promised that the issue would be on the council’s agenda every month since last December.
“We appreciate it has finally made it to this month’s agenda, but the Motueka ratepayers, especially the groups who have taken the time to put together and present submissions expressing interest in the old library, deserve better.”
She says that the number of years that it has taken for any decisions to be made has been “hugely frustrating.”
“Both buildings [the kindergarten and old library] have been left vacant for too long with the Laura Ingram building continually being subject to vandalism and squatters. Most of their reasons for the delays we have heard ad nauseam, posing the question as to why it has taken so long, at least five years, for each of the reasons to be addressed.”
She says the fight has been wearying, but she is not going to give up.
“We’ve gone too far. It’s got to be resolved. We can’t just give up and leave it to someone else to do.”
