Soon this “monument” will be fenced off from access, just like the sand dunes we used to “picnic” in. All you can do now is crawl into your spirit nest and get poked by twigs.

The Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History plans to collaborate with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to help build public awareness about the rocks, islands, reefs and marine-life habitats under the stewardship of the California Coastal National Monument.

The goal is to generate support for the monument, which consists of more than 20,000 offshore rocks, small islands and exposed reefs along the 1,100 miles of California coast from San Diego to the Oregon border.

“The role of the museum is one of public education, and our partnership with the bureau is a perfect example of how that can work,” said Lori Mannel, executive director of the museum. “The message we’d like to spread to the public is how to value, preserve, protect and enjoy” the monument.

Mvsevm Purpose: Gain Support For Monument Of Shoreline Rocks

Who is true here, someone with years of experience in operating many of the Mvsevm’s functions – or out of towners with none at all.

In June 2009, the City Council approved a public-private partnership between the city and the Museum Foundation of Pacific Grove Inc., in which the city leased the museum and its collection for 15 years, while retaining ownership of the museum’s property and its collections.

The foundation is responsible for operations, planning and management.

The Pacific Grove Museum Foundation board “in reality is a private organization unwilling to work with the city board,” Trosow wrote. “We have been accused of micromanagement of the museum; we have not had the executive director of the foundation present at a single meeting and we have been ham-stringed by Byzantine rules about communicating with the foundation.”

She also contended that substantive reports on museum activities are not given in a timely manner and described executive director Lori Mannel’s monthly reports as “generally void of useful information about operations at the museum, contain questionable statistics, and lag behind two or three months between the time period they cover and the time they are shared with the board.”

Other documents posted on the Museum Foundation’s website, she said, including business plans and exhibit plans, “are vague and lacking in specifics,” and in some cases have been edited after being posted and information on them deleted.

Mannel disagreed.

The foundation, she said, “is fulfilling its obligations under the lease agreement, and working hard to support the mission of the museum.”

Mvsevm Board Member Quits

And now they have to take a full inventory.

Attendance in May exceeded last year’s by 80 percent, said museum director Lori Mannel. She attributes increased public interest in the museum’s programs for children and adults.

Its Science Saturdays bring scientific experts from throughout the region to the museum, other programs feature artists demonstrating their work and techniques and authors lecture on their books. The restoration of the Native Plant Garden was completed in April. These events have advanced the museum’s role as “a living field guide for the Central Coast,” Mannel said. “We’re becoming a regional resource.”

Artists demonstrating their work. Authors lecturing on their books. How many of these visits have nothing related to a museum? Sustainable P.G. kooks lapping up Dan Cort rewriting the history of his failures should not count as visits to view natural history.

Let’s give out free beer at the Mvsevm during the farmers market and we can quadruple attendance.

See What Happens When They Don’t Lock The Doors To The Mvsevm?

The transformation from a resource to catalog and display real history of the area to some kind of art gallery and substainable re-education camp is complete. The quickly fading current city council team approved it. Only Dan Miller opposed the giveaway.

Doubling the length of the Museum Foundation of Pacific Grove’s lease from 15 to 30 years, and changes allowing it more control over museum funds, facilities and administration, were approved 6-1 Wednesday by the Pacific Grove City Council.

The changes were part of an agreement hashed out in February by City Manager Thomas Frutchey, Mayor Carmelita Garcia and museum foundation board president Jason Burnett as part of a six-month review of the original lease agreement approved by the council a year ago.

Ignored in the process was the Pacific Grove Museum Advisory Board, the original oversight body established by the city charter.

Former museum director Vern Yadon told the council that the charter requires review of policies affecting the museum by the museum board, particularly those involving major fund transfers, but Frutchey said he didn’t believe an advisory body — the museum board — should have oversight over a governing body — the foundation board.

Frutchey said the museum foundation faced deadlines in its application for major grant funding from the National Endowment of the Arts and needed to move ahead.

Mvsevm As We Knew It Officially Gone For Good

Public-Private Partnership. Cradle of Corruption.

Opinion Piece in Hear-Old by our own esteemed judge of morons, Dan Cort.

Despite the museum’s cultural and scientific treasures, the city had cut the museum’s budget to a bare minimum and more cuts were on the horizon. But with the City Council’s vote Wednesday night, it looks like the museum will emerge from a chrysalis of under-funding and near-closure to a revitalized resource with an energetic future. What lessons can we learn from this success to help keep other community assets viable in these financially challenging times?

The answer is we need to reinvent our relationship with our government. We need to realize that government is very good at some things, and the private sector is very good at others. By forming partnerships between government and the private sector, we can strive to achieve the best of both worlds. In Pacific Grove we’re doing just that. The city and a private group of citizens formed a public-private partnership that was supported Wednesday night by the City Council..

Our Mvsevm Is Gone