Museum tax key, backer says Without it, marshals site fundraising will stall, he states

FORT SMITH — Rejection by voters of a proposed temporary 1 percent sales tax to complete work on the U.S. Marshals Museum would cripple continuing fundraising efforts, the museum’s main fundraiser said Wednesday.

Before people in one community will send their money to another community, such as sending donations to Fort Smith for the museum, they have to have positive feelings about that community, said Jim Dunn, president of the museum’s foundation.

“What I fear most is that, if this tax fails, we have to go back out of town and convince people to send money to this community,” Dunn said Wednesday.

He said it would take years to raise the $15.5 million that officials say it will take to complete the museum. The tax money would pay to install the exhibits in the 53,000-square-foot museum.

Dunn and other museum staff members met Wednesday in Creekmore Park’s Rose Room with about 30 residents for the first of three public meetings scheduled in the weeks before the March 12 special election. They answered people’s questions about the marshals museum, which is under construction on the banks of the Arkansas River.

The other two meetings will be from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Feb. 13 in the Fort Smith Senior Activity Center at 2700 Cavanaugh Road and from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Feb. 27 in the Elm Grove Community Room at 1901 N. Greenwood Ave.

Museum President and CEO Patrick Weeks said the exhibits are being developed by the Thinkwell Group of Los Angeles, one of the world’s premier experience designers.

The U.S. Marshals Service’s national museum will consist of five galleries: Defining Marshals; The Campfire, Stories Under the Stars; Frontier Marshals; A Changing Nation; and Modern Marshals. The museum also will have the Samuel M. Sicard Hall of Honor for marshals killed in the line of duty and the National Learning Center.

“It’s not just stuff in boxes,” Weeks said of the museum. “It’s stories. It’s attachment from our guests to the stories of the marshals, what they mean.”

Fort Smith city directors passed ordinances last month setting the election for the temporary sales tax. In addition to how the tax money would be used, the ordinances called for establishment of a public facilities board composed of citizens that would buy and own the museum building and grounds, and lease it back to the museum to operate the museum.

Dunn said rumors that the tax would be permanent or that the city would have some ownership of the museum are not true. He stressed that the tax, by ordinance, would last for nine months then expire, and that the city would have no part in owning or operating the museum.

Also untrue, Dunn said, are stories that museum officials wanted the special election because it gave an advantage to those who supported the tax.

Dunn said there was no time to conduct a campaign before the Nov. 6 general election that museum officials felt was needed to persuade voters to support the tax. On the other hand, special elections don’t have a good track record in Sebastian County for passing tax questions, he said.

He explained that there had been a potential donation — seven figures in size, he said — that included a challenge for the museum to raise the remaining money in a year. It became clear over the summer that the challenge could not be met, and the donation fell through.

Even though the museum had not raised enough money to complete the museum, officials decided to start construction in July because of the expected rise in the cost of steel and labor,

Dunn said. And despite 35 days of rain that stopped work, museum officials are scheduling the museum to open Sept. 24, the 230th anniversary of President George Washington’s establishment of the nation’s oldest federal law enforcement agency.

Dunn responded to another story that the marshals museum received $25 million from the state.

He said Fort Smith area legislators got a bill passed in 2005 that allocated $25 million for the museum. The governor’s office had to satisfy the state’s educational needs before doling out money to the museum, and it ended up receiving $2 million of the $25 million allocation.

State Sen. Jake Files, R-Fort Smith, proposed a bill in 2011 that passed, allocating $25 million to the museum. Dunn said the museum wasn’t funded until other state bills were paid first and it ended up receiving $1 million from that legislation.