City Council to discuss possible sale of Rigby museum building
Published at | Updated at
RIGBY — Residents of Rigby are wondering what’s going to happen with its local museum.
Rumors have been circulating for at least a week about the city potentially selling the Farnsworth TV & Pioneer Museum building. On Thursday’s city council agenda it also shows a discussion about the sale of the building.
EastIdahoNews.com reached out to local officials for more information.
Rigby City Council President Doug Burke says discussions in the community about the potential sale of the building have been blown way out of proportion. No decisions have been made, and any talk of a sale is still in very early stages.
“It’s come up for discussion. There’s been some interest in somebody purchasing that building. As far as that — it’s just in the discussion phase,” Burke says.
The museum’s curator Cleve Reddick says Mayor Jason Richardson recently attended a museum board meeting and proposed a plan for a new building.
“They’ve promised a new building out in the rodeo ground area,” Reddick says. “We’ve had no input on the design or what kind of building it’s going to be.”
Burke said if any decisions were made to move the museum it could be moved to the property the city owns near the south park rodeo grounds.
Reddick said last Wednesday was the first time he’d heard of any plans for the museum. He said initially he was hoping to speak with city officials about a roof repair to the museum.
“Have them fix the roof and leave us alone. We’ve been here 25 years and that’s the first major maintenance we’ve asked to have done,” Reddick says. “We were told that there was $55,000 budgeted to do the roof and some other maintenance work.”
Reddick says the museum’s move could be a rough one because of work that has been done like hand-painted wall murals in some of the exhibits.
No formal decisions have been made about moving the museum to a new location. Burke assures that no matter what happens the museum will not be shut down.
“People get so tied up into some of the old buildings and we would never get rid of the museum,” Burke says. “We would never get rid of the museum unless we had another museum already built.”
He says there are plans to repair the facility. Tonight the city will discuss if the building will be declared as a city surplus property. He said that discussion is mandatory before continuing on in other discussions to sell the building.
“If it’s a possibility that we have an opportunity to sell that property to get the money to build a new one, I think it’s something we need to look at,” Burke says.
A city council meeting will be held tonight and is open to the public. It will begin at 7 p.m. at the city hall at 158 W Fremont Ave.