| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Proposed closure of Wandsworth Museum | |
| Posted by: | Tony Belton | |
| Date/Time: | 04/03/07 19:57:00 |
| If I may make a couple of comments re recent notes then first the annual cost of running the Museum is £417,000. The Council considers the cost of running the Museum until 30 September this year and of the subsequent redundancy and other closure costs to be equivalent to an ordinary annual cost and, therefore, no savings are forecast for the coming financial year but then there will be savings of £417,000 thereafter. There is nothing as yet that I can see in the budget for the costs of setting up the "new" Wandsworth library other than a further saving of £100,000 in 2009/10 when, it is argued, there will be staff savings on running just the one central library as opposed to both West Hill and Alvering. Yes, Councillor Lister had a great deal to do wth the founding of the Museum. He was Chairman of what was then the equivalent of the Environment and Leisure Committee and was very supportive of it. We should give him credit for that but also marvel at how he has changed since. I was collecting signatures for the Save the Museum in Balham High Street and a man came up to me. He said something like this, "Yes, of course, I will sign. I was Hungarian but I came here in '57 and have lived in Balham ever since. When the Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest, they tried to destroy our society and close down our museums. A society without a history is a society without a future". I am not quite comparing Cllr Grimston to a Soviet tank but it was a moving moment. |