The Daily
News, Thursday, January 11, 2007
Longhorn
museum moves forward
LEAGUE CITY: Council agrees to seek bids for contract to
continue renovation work
By SARA McDONALD The Daily News
It may have been just one item to vote on for city council,
but Bettie Moss said it feels like five steps forward for
the Butler Longhorn Museum.
The council voted 4-2 Tuesday night to seek bids for a
design-build contract that would pick up where the other
renovations to the museum site left off more than a year
ago.
Moss, one of the members of the city-appointed board that
advises the council on the museum's progress, admitted the
halfcompleted project has been riddled with problems "It's
been messed up from the very start," she said. "We've
slowly been making progress. And I mean slowly."
But just as she started to digress into the complications
and delays of remodeling the historic Walter Hall Estate,
her fellow board member, Jamie DeFabio, interrupted her.
"All good things take time," he said.
But for some council members, the project to convert the
house that was once home to a prominent League City family
into a museum is nothing but a headache. The museum will
honor the founding families of the city and the cattle
bloodline that spurred growth in the rural community.
"I know all those people have their hearts into the
museum," council member Chris Samuelson, who voted against
the measure, said. "That doesn't make it a viable project.
It doesn't make it a good fiscal decision."
It's the money that upset resident Lynn Biyant, who went
before council to compare the museum to a boat both holes
that you put money into, she said.
"Despite the fact that most of you position yourselves as
Republican, you seem to be willing to spend," she said.
"It's not a museum. All you have is merely city property.
What is the museum? It is body parts of animals we are
paying to store in Houston. It's people on the payroll.
This was someone else's dream, and it has become your
nightmare."
The city has spent about $1.4 million on the project since
acquiring the building in 2001. An estimate prepared by
Steve Harding, who owns a museum design company, counts the
renovations needed at about $350,000.
That's money for roof repairs, flooring, widened doorways
and about $117,000 worth of electrical rewiring the city
has already paid for once but which wasn't done in
accordance with the site plan.
Council member Tommy Cones, who put the item on the agenda
to move the project forward, said he'd support the $350,000
figure so that the museum could finish.
"I want to go ahead and complete the project," he said.
"They're just stalling it to make it a political issue."
But there's still the $700,000 to $988,000 Harding
estimated was needed for museum displays and lighting - an
amount that curator Jennifer Wycoffvan der Wal plans to
raise.
It's that additional amount that has Samuelson worried.
"We need a complete set of plans, and when it's going to be
done," he said, "No one from the museum has come to us to
say whether they've had any success raising money."
Major fundraising won't come until the building is
completed, Wycoff-van der Wal has said.
But board President Betty Specion has collected about 900
signatures of museum supporters and said the construction
bids are a move toward completion. "I hope this is just one
of many other steps in that direction," she said.
How they voted
Requesting bids for Butler Longhorn Museum design-build
contract FOR: Tommy Cones, Phyllis Sanborn, Jon Kenney and
Jim Nelson AGAINST: Tad Nelson and Chris Samuelson ABSENT:
Mike Barber
