Editorial: Future of closed Belleville Area Museum in doubt

At the Oct. 4 Belleville City Council meeting, Councilman Tom Fielder announced that the Belleville Area Museum now is closed for the rest of the year, the director laid off, and the locks changed. He said he asked VBT Director Elizabeth Renaud, now in charge of the museum, about Harvest Fest and the Christmas trees and was told nobody is allowed on the grounds. He said he asked about the mail, because the letters had just gone out for Historical Society memberships. He said Renaud said she would pick up the mail and all phone calls are now going to the township.
Councilman Fielder, who also is president of the Historical Society, said the city and township have a lot of archives in the museum and recently Officer Wickham wanted to find out who owned property before the present owner and was denied access to the city’s archives. Fielder referred all museum questions to Renaud at 699-8921. He said it looked like they were closing the museum forever and people could want to get their loans of historic items back from the museum. Councilman Ken Voigt said the city deserves a straight answer and this has been very poorly handled.
On Tuesday morning, VBT Supervisor Kevin McNamara said, “What we do with the museum will be brought before the people.” He said he doesn’t think closing the museum forever is “in the cards.”