News
Statement by Richard Patterson, Director of the Old Barracks
To: Chair, Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee
The Old Barracks & the Loss of Its Base Funding by the State of New Jersey
Testimony by: Richard Patterson, Executive Director, Old Barracks Museum
Old Barracks Association, 101 Barrack St., Trenton, NJ, 08608
barracks@voicenet.com (609)396-1776
I appear before you today as the Executive Director of the Old Barracks, and on behalf of the Old Barracks Association, its Board of Trustees, its Members, and its many thousands of visitors, to express our concern over the elimination of the Old Barracks from the State of New Jersey’s proposed budget. Let me say up front: This elimination will not only cause us to close our doors, but it will likely cause the Old Barracks Association, incorporated in 1902, to go into bankruptcy.
The Old Barracks has had a line item in the State’s annual budget since 1917. That’s a precedent of 93 years of policy that has spanned many administrations, two World Wars, the Great Depression, and numerous downturns in the national economy.
The Old Barracks’ line item had been at essentially the same level, $375,000, since FY ’94, when it covered 76% of our operating expenses. In FY 2010 that same amount represents about 45% of those expenses. In some recent fiscal years it represented as little as 34% of our operating funds. In FY’94, our staff was actually larger, and, prior to our restoration in 1998, our public floor space was less than half of what it is now. The Old Barracks Association has not been profligate with its funding. From the executive director to the front line visitor service employees, our staff are compensated between 24% and 28% less than their counterparts at State-run historic sites in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, as well as by the National Park Service in this region.
As with so many other entities in Fiscal Year 2011, the Old Barracks’ line item was completely eliminated. The $375,000 that elimination represents is 45% of the current Fiscal Year’s total operating budget. Given the deep and broad cuts the Administration and the Legislature had to make to eliminate the State’s unprecedented budget deficit, we expected to take a much greater cut than the 20% reduction we took four years ago. We were shocked to find our line item eliminated completely. When viewed from an historical perspective, the effect of the elimination funding is far greater. Over the previous sixteen years, while our line item remained, on average, unchanged, rising expenses had already, in effect, reduced this support.
In lieu of a trust fund or any significant endowment, this funding has served as the basic and permanent underpinning of the Association’s annual efforts to raise sufficient operating funds and to provide the many services and programs the public has come to expect and enjoy over the decades. Eliminating all of our State funding stops our ability to attract further private and corporate funding and destroys our re-accreditation by the American Association of Museums. It will further cripple the already- halting efforts at promoting Heritage Tourism in New Jersey, and perhaps most importantly, will eliminate our ability to offer a uniquely effective educational program to so many of New Jersey’s students.
This arrangement between the Old Barracks Association and the State of New Jersey was spelled out in the Deed of 1914, whereby the building and property was conveyed by the Association to the State, and the Law of 1917, which officially put the funding arrangement into practice. That Law obligates the State to provide sufficient funds as needed by the Association to support the museum. In 1946, the Attorney General confirmed that the 1917 Act requires New Jersey to appropriate each year enough money "for the maintenance, repair and administration" of the museum to augment what the Association could earn or raise itself. It also specified that, for that year, the State would commit $2500 to the Old Barracks Association. That conservatively converts to $46,540.73 in 2010 dollar value.
The Old Barracks Association has managed all growth since FY ’94 by increased performance from admissions, museum shop, our annual fund raising event, and via grants from corporations, foundations or through success in competitive grant programs offered by Federal and State agencies. The Old Barracks has consistently served over 20,000 New Jersey students a year in our formal, curriculum based programs at the Museum (and several thousand more in outreach programs at the schools), reaching over 23,000 in FY ’05 alone, from every County in the State. In the school year 2008-09 we served 18,406 students from every county except Warren.(please see the attached). If this is more than any other historic site, why not say so?
This elimination comes at a time of decreasing support for Arts and History from New Jersey’s corporate sector. The severe cuts in State support to school districts virtually assure a dramatic further reduction to our earned revenues from schools visitation. Having exhausted almost all of our unrestricted funds over the previous two fiscal years in order to balance our budgets, our reserves, at great reductions in staff and days of operation, will only allow us to remain solvent for two months at most. The checks resulting from the few grants we may still get given that the otherwise stable source of State funding will be gone, will mostly arrive in the 3rd quarter of FY 2011, and almost 60% of our annual earned income (such as it may be with severely reduced school visits) traditionally comes in the 4th quarter of the fiscal year. Were we to lay off the entire staff, including the executive director (as we did in 2007), we will, after the first few thousand dollars, owe Unemployment Insurance of 60% of all salaries for the duration of our staff’s eligibility. The Old Barracks Association will literally be bankrupt after an existence of 109 years. There will be a derelict building next door to the New Jersey State House, to say nothing of the hole it will leave in the State’s soul.
The Old Barracks is an historic site that stands at the heart of New Jersey's history. Built by the colony of New Jersey in 1758 as winter quarters for British regulars during the French and Indian War, it is one of the only significant buildings still standing to have witnessed the Battles of Trenton on December 26th, 1776, and January 2nd, 1777. The Old Barracks Museum is one of only nine museums in New Jersey fully accredited by the American Association of Museums and the only historic site among the nine. It is a State and Federal landmark, and a key site in the new Crossroads of the Revolution National Heritage Area. It is one of only two Revolutionary War sites in New Jersey, along with Morristown National Historical Park, ranked among the 25 best Colonial and Revolutionary War sites in the Country, according to a recently published book.
The Old Barracks Association asks the members of the Committee to take into consideration the 16-plus years the Old Barracks has played “the good soldier”, growing its non-State resources, while making do with the same level of base funding. Please consider how we have coped responsibly and without complaint until now. If there is any way to restore any significant amount of support via a line item in the State’s budget, please help us.
