Would it truly surprise anyone reading to hear that Sue Gunn did not attend last Wednesday’s Historical Commission meeting? Thus, the meeting proceeded without having its staff person attending, and thus unanswerable to problems that concerned commissioners. Things like scheduling an exterminator to exterminate carpenter ants and termites to address destruction at Mill Hill.
Apparently Gunn called for an exterminator and scheduled an appointment for a Saturday. Presumably Gunn picked a day after consulting her calendar, a day that she would be there. But no, according to Peter Bondi she picked a day she assumed Bondi would be there. Except that Bondi wasn’t aware of that. Or why should he be? The curator made the appointment and should have made it for a day she was intending to be there, it is one of her union contract duties to run the maintenance of the Mill Hill properties, and thus she failed to execute this rather simple task. Bondi, realizing that everyone at the meeting had yet another item to question the job performance of the curator, quickly added that it was his responsibility to be there, instead of being outraged that his staff person was shirking duties.
Gunn must have been too busy researching Klondike park, the driveway sized land strip and that is Ken Slapin’s cause celeb. Last week, the Hour’s John Reilly published Mayor Moccia’s unannounced announcement about the ownership issue. Slapin insists on lecturing from his soap box at the concert on the green, doing his best Judge Webster Thayer impression. Bondi did not explain just who it was that ordered Gunn to research the Klondike Park issue.
Or maybe it was the Summer Youth Program intern busy investigating Klondike Park. But even that raised questions about where Gunn disappeared too. The intern was reportedly left alone for several hours, locked in the museum. This concerned commissioners, but did not concern Bondi, who said that Darlene Young was also not concerned. Except that there’s a whole litigation trail about making sure Gunn, is not left alone in the museum, therefor it seems contradictory to not be concerned about leaving a summer intern alone. Not to mention that there’s the concern that the Common Council has over how guidelines are followed by all departments concerning the supervision of children in the summer youth program. According to Young though, this intern is 17 years old, graduated and heading into the military. In Young’s estimation, the intern was more than capable of working unsupervised at the museum, because Young and Gunn communicate all the time. So I asked who Young spoke to regarding the incident, and Young said “Sue Gunn.” Funny, because Bondi said he spoke to Darlene Young about the issue and that Young said she was unconcerned. Ruh-roh, something is not adding up in the stories here, but let’s really earn that scooby snack.
Most historic documents, need to be cared for to prevent deterioration. Paper is susceptible to all sorts of time related destruction, and so keeping paper in appropriate storage is paramount. The Norwalk museum has a vault for such papers, and other artifacts that are also deemed valuable. The vault door apparently has been left open. Needless to say, some commissioners are concerend. Bondi says that the vault was never left open. Commissioner Mathies responds that she personally saw that the vault was left open. Bondi responds that Gunn told him that Gunn had locked it. Commissioner Mathies asks if Gunn/Bondi is saying she is lying. Bondi repeats that Gunn had locked the vault. ANother commissioner adds there are pictures of the vault open. Bondi quickly says that there are other people who could have opened the vault. Here’s where we get that scooby snack, the vault door wasn’t found open when Gunn was on leave and the only other person who might have access to the vault combination does not have the current alarm code. The vault was found open on Gunn’s return. And according to commissioners, it has been an ongoing problem for years. So much so that a resolution was voted on that required that the curator lock the vault each night.
While it seems absurd that these issues dominate the discussions during the Historical Commission meeting, they are the kinds of issues that are unheard of in other museum facilities. No one would ever support a staff member who neglects to take care of the maintenance of buildings, or the care of documents, paintings, film negatives or other artifacts. Which brings us to the shards of unknown pottery that lead to a testy exchange between Bondi and the other commissioners.
It began innocently enough with some discussion of the pottery shards that were “donated” to the museum by someone who dug them up when working on a building. It gets testy with questions about how much time is spent by the curator on the issue. Bondi gets defensive when he is repeatedly questioned about who had brought the shards in for appraisal. It turns out that it was Bondi who brought in the buckets of pottery shards. Unfortunately, also revealing that they had no provenance, or any documentation and a pottery archeology expert has not been brought in to assess the historical value. This was too much for Bondi. WIth a raised voice he exclaimed, “I don’t care about the shards, I want them separated and out of here. I’m trying to fix buildings and fix cemeteries. I really want to get the buildings maintained because its driving me crazy. I want to keep the museum open and the maintenance and this is the big picture. The shards have no significance to what I’m doing.”
Except that the significance of actions that Bondi has undertaken are contradictory. He’s introduced items into the museum that have no historical or archaeological documentation, covered up for the curator who is not following through on maintenance of the Mill Hill properties, and relied on the curator’s explanations without verifying the facts. These are not the actions of someone who is passionate about preserving and maintaining the museum collections and properties.
In the larger picture, it is odd that the City does not take responsibility for the maintenance of its historic properties since maintenance contracts are efficiently managed by DPW. It doesn’t make any sense to have the Museum not a part of the operations of the rest of the city, when things as simple as being part of the new phone system aren’t happening. The dysfunction is not doing anyone any good.
