Work group: Have 3rd party assess Delbridge animals
Museum closed since arsenic discovered in taxidermied menagerie
The first meeting of the Delbridge Museum work group took place Wednesday morning, with members discussing the future of the more than 150 taxidermied animals in the museum, which has been closed since Aug. 1 after many of them were found to have detectable levels of arsenic.
While much of the information shared with the group has already come up in some of the many other meetings or press conferences around the subject over the past two months, members already had several steps identified for where they’d like to go next.
For one, there’s interest in getting a third party to assess the museum’s collection, specifically how much it would cost to repair the specimens and/or mitigate the risks from arsenic that led to the museum’s shutdown.
While an assessment was done on the current quality of the museum’s animals, Great Plains Zoo CEO Becky Dewitz said they had not received written permission from the taxidermist to share the full report publicly and seemed to believe that getting that permission was unlikely.
Councilor Alex Jensen was the first one to float the idea of getting a third party assessment, with Councilor Rich Merkouris agreeing that it would be good to have “one objective set of data that we’re all looking at.”
Dewitz also shared that since the museum’s closure, they’d performed both air quality testing in the museum, as well as testing of employees who had significant exposure to the mounts themselves. Both tests came back negative, she said.
When Jeff Scherschligt asked about visitation data for the museum, Dewitz said, as she has before, the zoo does not keep specific data on visits to the museum but noted that they didn’t see the museum drive traffic during the offseason.
Where July attendance at the zoo could be something like 45,000, Dewitz estimated, attendance last December was 1,900 – 700 of those people were attending a special event.
Dewitz also said there would need to be a refinement of some of the cost estimates they had come up with for upgrades like adding glass enclosures and improved ventilation, which had previously been cited as between $3.4-$4.2 million.
Those were “very high-level estimates,” she said, and could be made more accurate.
The committee will also take a tour of the museum at some point in the future, with the goal being to see in-person some of the damage to the animals.
Councilor Rich Merkouris said near the end of the meeting that he appreciated that the work group was having discussions in a public space. He added he’d like to see sessions set aside specifically for public input in the future.
The group’s next meeting will take place at 8 a.m. on Oct. 19 in City Hall.