Addendum: Fact Check on the PHMC Emails Revealed in “Shipwrecked by Command!”

by Katie Z.

Articles

0 Comments(s)

May 29, 2024

The blog post “Shipwrecked by Command! How PHMC Cast Away its Volunteers” includes several documents from our Right to Know Requests. We felt those documents deserved additional context, but including it in the piece focused on volunteers did not feel like the right venue. This companion to Ginny’s post about the volunteer council explains the actions and statements occurring between PHMC, FNL, and legislators that influenced and informed the volunteer experience and decisions described in her article, “Shipwrecked by Command! How PHMC Cast Away its Volunteers.” We hope it supports the reader’s understanding of the complex issues at play over the past few years.

Document:

Nov-Dec 2020 Interim Erie Maritime Museum (EMM) Site Administrator Tyler Gum communicates with Flagship Niagara League (FNL) Executive Director Billy Sabatini about the new direction for the volunteer program.

From the post: “In November 2020 [Tyler Gum] began conversations with FNL stating that they need to ‘bring the volunteer program at the EMM complex in line with PHMC standards . To do so, we need to depart from the existing Volunteer Council model and move toward a model that places the responsibility and oversight of the program solely under PHMC’s Museum Educator…’” (see email)

Context and Comments:


  1. This is the sort of PHMC double-speak that leads to miscommunication over and over and over.
    They say the council model needs to change and the PHMC Educator must manage all volunteers. But they also say the volunteer meetings should continue and the PHMC Educator can designate FNL’s Captain Cusson to implement programs.
    So where is the line? What is and is not acceptable? Vague, vague, vague…

  2. The Maritime Museum’s previous Site Administrator Walter Rybka asked FNL to step into the volunteer management role years ago. Museum Educator Chuck Johnson was only hired in 2018. Prior to that there were only two PHMC employees at the Erie Maritime Museum: the Site Administrator and a Clerk/Typist.
    So the Site Administrator looked to FNL for assistance in multiple capacities across several departments. That appears to be similar to what Gum says the Educator is able to do for Captain Cusson in this email communication.

  3. Gum references PHMC policy and the Educator’s job description. It’s unclear from this email whether managing the volunteer program was part of Johnson’s job description when originally hired or whether it was added more recently. It is likely language that’s part of the standard PHMC Educator job description across the entire agency, since that job is covered by a union. It is probable that since the day-to-day portion of those duties had previously been delegated to FNL, that Site Administrator Walter Rybka chose to allow Johnson to focus on the educator side of his role and continue to delegate the volunteer management to FNL.
    If PHMC wants to change that under a different Site Administrator, that’s clearly their prerogative to do so.
    The challenge for the relationships is that over and over, instead of acknowledging the existence of their own PHMC employee’s previous decisions, and the culture and relationships that had been built over decades, PHMC consistently seems to blame FNL for the state of operations.
    Although FNL has been operating in ways they’d either been asked to, or been given permission and freedom to do, PHMC seems to regularly assume that FNL has behaved as a usurper with negative intentions. As someone on staff at the time, I can say that over time it became more and more difficult to maintain an intention of collaboration in the atmosphere of suspicion and distrust PHMC entered the situation with and escalated over time.

  4. Bureaucratic bottlenecks and logistics: The system described by Gum adds a large amount of responsibilities and daily tasks to a role the Museum Educator had been performing for two years. Under FNL the many tasks of volunteer management were split under several staff, making all the tasks more manageable (sailing support staff handled confidential trainee medical forms and waivers, administrative staff handles general clearances, one person managed the museum docent program, the Captain handled ship volunteer planning and communication, etc.). But now all those separate tasks fall to one individual. The Educator must now reduce the time he spends on education-focused activities to handle all the volunteer-related administrative, communication, planning, logistics, and technology tasks. In addition to reducing education-focused time it also creates bottlenecks. The Captain has to send Johnson information to put in an email. Then the Educator has to field all the questions about programs he knows nothing about, and basically just forwards it to the Captain or has to sit around and wait for the Captain’s reply before responding to a volunteer’s inquiry. More work and more delays for everyone.

  5. As mentioned in the volunteer article, for the summer months of 2020 there were joint emails featuring content from both organizations. By Thanksgiving FNL was dropped entirely from the emails with Erie Maritime Museum sending the emails themselves, no more “From the Captain’s Desk” message, and any ship information buried within the rest of the museum’s information.

This brings us to the essential philosophical difference in PHMC’s new management direction. FNL believes that both the ship and the museum should be equally strong in their mission, programs, and offerings. They feed into and reinforce each other’s messages, and they do so in a very different way – hands-on, living history and a museum experience based in artifacts, reading materials, research, and a more traditional museum experience. The ship conveys information about the battle, the people, and expands into the history and technology of sailing… And the museum has the opportunity to talk about the greater war of 1812, the community then and now, and the importance of Lake Erie and the Erie Canal to our economy and culture – the entire story of Erie’s maritime traditions.

That’s the rub for PHMC. Current PHMC leadership sees the ship as just one element in Erie’s maritime story. To them, Niagara is like one really big artifact that doesn’t fit inside the museum. And over the past several years they have sought to downsize and diminish Niagara, her role, and autonomy.

Here is a copy of FNL’s 1982 Articles of Incorporation: Click here. FNL was brought into existence to support the U.S. Brig Niagara. But over the years FNL has provided a large amount of support to the museum, in ways the previous Site Administrator requested. Even internally, PHMC previously had the U.S. Brig Niagara and the Erie Maritime Museum designated as separate historic sites within their Bureau of Historic Sites and Museums (BHSM). The ship already existed when the museum was built in the 1990s, and both entities had separate Site Administrators. Walter Rybka was made Captain of Niagara in 1991 but someone else was Site Administrator of the Museum and they were run as separate entities. In 2001 Captain Walter Rybka was put in charge of both the Museum and the Niagara, although both still existed in PHMC’s official organization as separate sites. It was only merged into one single site in either 2022 or 2023.

PHMC’s behaviors consistently show that their intention was to make the museum appear better by making the ship’s role smaller. When I was an employee of FNL, all our staff’s opinion was that both the ship and the museum deserve to be strong, and what each has to offer should strengthen the other. Don’t you think it would make more sense to build the museum up to the level of success Niagara had? Instead of knocking Niagara down? Shouldn’t you use the success of one to help build up the other? Good will is not a finite resource – if you start with some you can make more of it. This sentence can be read two ways: “Niagara is amazing, but she’s only one part of Erie’s amazing maritime history.” Do you give that a period and say it in a petulant voice? (As in “They’re all paying attention to Niagara and no one is paying attention to my museum!”) Or do you say it with an exclamation point? (As in “I agree, Niagara is very cool. But did you know X, Y, and Z? Oh! There’s so much to explore!”) PHMC says it in the first manner. I think the second option is a better way to garner supporters, funding, partners, invite people in, and build relationships that lead to loyalty and investment (emotional and financial).

You can operate from a place of fear and an assumption of resource scarcity as PHMC does, or you can choose to grow the good. I prefer to grow the good. Why can’t we have an amazing ship AND an amazing museum? Other organizations, like the Maine Maritime Museum, demonstrate what it can look like to support a diverse offering including museum exhibits, active historical research fellowships, woodshop classes, a sailing vessel, lectures, paddleboat outings… Or Mystic Seaport Museum with a traditional museum, a seaport village with an immersive experience of living history, an active shipyard, many historic vessels, and even a planetarium! I guarantee there are some folks who show up because they are interested in the night sky and the planetarium’s offerings, but it doesn’t mean that won’t branch into an appreciation and interest in celestial navigation, and who knows where that will lead. These locations host diverse ways for people with diverse interests to engage in maritime learning, and perhaps woo them into other areas of learning by engaging them in a way they feel comfortable first. But that’s achieved by having robust programs across the board, not a museum with a boat tied up out back.

Can’t we have both an active and robust ship program AND an active museum? Why do we have to cut one down in order to build the other up?

Document:

Spring 2021 Letters between Lt. Governor Fetterman and PHMC Executive Director Andrea Lowery

From the post: “On May 14, 2021 [Lt. Governor Fetterman] sent a letter to PHMC Executive Director, Andrea Lowery imploring ‘the PHMC to reconsider their decision, uncover the ship and let it set sail this year, for at least the purpose of being taken to shipyard for maintenance.’ The letter was also signed by PA State Senator Dan Laughlin and PA State Representative Ryan Bizzarro. On May 19, 2021 Lt. Governor Fetterman received a response from Andrea Lowery stating that ‘…the PHMC and FNL agree that the ship can be uncovered…’ and ‘PHMC and FNL will be working together to ensure the Coast Guard inspection is scheduled as soon as possible.’” Fetterman letter, Lowery letter

Context and Comments:

On May 19, 2021 Lt. Governor Fetterman received a response from Andrea Lowery stating that “in light of the most recent updates to the state’s mitigation measures and [FNL’s] ability to find housing for their crew……the PHMC and FNL agree that the ship can be uncovered…”

FNL had been talking to PHMC about sailing and taking the cover off since January, but PHMC dragged their feet on any sort of response. Even after announcing to the press that all PHMC sites would be reopening on April 30th (which you would assume should include preparing Niagara for visitors, since she is one of PHMC’s historic sites), PHMC still couldn’t manage to provide any straight answers.

Lowery’s letter references “an approach developed by PHMC and FNL in early April.” There was no such thing. Early April consisted of Site Administrator Jim Hall avoiding as many people as possible. The Erie Maritime Museum was expected to reopen from covid to the public on April 30th. Hall refused to share with FNL staff even a draft version of the covid mitigation plan (which Hall concocted by himself and we had no ability to comment on) until April 15th. April 16th is when he sent a cease and desist letter for Niagara’s cover removal (after FNL felt Hall had given very clearly written permission to do so, and as you’ll see in later documents Hall himself contradicts whether he did or didn’t give permission). For months, FNL had sought PHMC feedback and approval of their written plans for housing crew safely on the vessels, based on the ways other ships had successfully managed crew and passenger operations throughout the pandemic. But less than a week before the first crew member arrived, PHMC denied crew residential permission.  As stated in the paragraph above, in late April PHMC announced that Niagara would not be sailing and falsely claimed FNL had agreed to that in March (even though Site Administrator Jim Hall was at the FNL board meeting in March when the FNL board voted to approve paying for Niagara to go to shipyard in spring, and chose to say nothing, implying tacit consent). There was zero “approach developed by PHMC and FNL in early April,” as Lowery claimed. There was just PHMC withholding information, making last minute denials of permission, and false accusations. That’s not even an approach developed by PHMC alone. It’s PHMC flying by the seat of their pants and desperately flailing for control.

In the letter, Lowery states PHMC is “currently working with FNL to schedule the removal of the cover.”
Ha! She also claims, “PHMC and FNL will be working together to ensure the Coast Guard inspection is scheduled as soon as possible.” 
As the general public has been able to see for themselves, since PHMC took over Niagara’s care January 1, 2024 all their promises for timely action in hiring a captain and getting Niagara to shipyard have taken much longer than they anticipated. “As soon as possible” for PHMC does not the same thing as it does for the average person. PHMC did not give their permission to have the cover removed from Niagara until September 2021 (five months after FNL originally thought they had permission to remove it) and Niagara was not able to leave for shipyard until October 13, 2021.

Later in the “Shipwrecked…” blog post, Ginny describes the role volunteers played in getting Niagara to and from shipyard in fall 2021, with the return voyage on December 14th. Please recall that in her May 19, 2021 letter to Lt. Governor Fetterman, PHMC Executive Director Andrea Lowery said PHMC was “currently working with FNL to schedule the removal of the cover,” and that “PHMC and FNL will be working together to ensure the Coast Guard inspection is scheduled as soon as possible.” But as we see, PHMC’s version of “as soon as possible” meant Niagara had to travel at a time when there was a real concern of ice formation on the lake, and there was a danger of Niagara missing the weather window and being trapped in Cleveland all winter. The crew was exhausted after weeks at shipyard, the office had been slammed with PHMC’s reimbursement process for the shipyard work and a PHMC-ordered state audit of three years worth of FNL’s finances, and it was 10 days till the Christmas holiday (and recall that the previous one was the Covid Christmas where many families were forced to celebrate via zoom). Niagara’s winter cover and the final Coast Guard inspection that would allow tours on her deck could not occur until after the New Year, in Jan 2022. Is this “as soon as possible?” Is this what PHMC stewardship looks like?

PHMC Executive Director Andrea Lowery’s 2021 letter to the Lt. Governor is filled with inaccuracies and misdirection. Clearly, Lowery was either incredibly misinformed about what her own organization was doing, or she was purposefully blowing smoke at the legislators. The letter looks so reasonable on the surface, but when you analyze each statement you can see what a false picture PHMC’s Executive Director painted for Lt. Governor Fetterman, Sen. Laughlin, and Rep. Bizzarro.  

Additional Documents:

Documents that provide context for why the volunteers and legislators were so concerned that Niagara might not sail in 2022.

From the Post: “At the beginning of 2021 local state legislators started to become concerned about Niagara having a sailing season. On 1/7/22 State Senator Dan Laughlin sent a letter to Nancy Moses (PHMC Board Chair) from the Erie County Legislative Delegation requesting a public forum if an agreement wasn’t in place between PHMC and FNL. The lack of an agreement was holding up FNL’s ability to prepare the ship for the coming season.” (see attachment)

Context and Comments:

After no sailing season in 2021, the ship’s ability to sail in 2022 is again thrown into doubt and chaos due to PHMC double-talk, denials, and games, requiring legislators to step in yet again. As this very detailed letter from FNL Executive Director Billy Sabatini to PHMC Executive Director Andrea Lowery shows, PHMC, and Site Administrator Jim Hall in particular, has been a bad partner consistently negotiating and meeting in bad faith. (Dec 8, 2021 Sabatini letter to Lowery; response PHMC sent to FNL; PHMC’s internal conversation) It’s hard to understand why PHMC’s staff could have gotten so mad about this. PHMC did crummy things to FNL, and FNL stood up for themselves and called PHMC out with lots of supporting details. Are just upset about getting caught? That someone would have the audacity to suggest these are unacceptable business practices to use on someone who’s supposedly a partner? That FNL asked them to do their job and behave in an above-board and trustworthy fashion?

Document:

The Museum’s Volunteer Curator Linda Bolla forwards an email to the PHMC chain of command showing that the volunteers are mounting a letter writing campaign.

From the Post: “A letter-writing campaign was organized and volunteers were encouraged to document their interactions and concerns involving Hall.  On 2/1/22 one of the museum volunteers, Linda Bolla, forwarded the call for letters to Amy Fox (Museum Educator/Bureau of Historic Sites and Museums (BHMS), PHMC) who then forwarded it to Charles (Charlie) Fox (Western Division Chief/BHMS, PHMC), who then forwarded it to Melissa Mann (Director of BHSM, PHMC), Andrea Lowery (PHMC Executive Director), and Howard Pollman (PHMC Director of External Affairs).”  (see emails)

Context and Comments:

When you read these emails, you will notice that everyone from PHMC sounds very tame and reasonable, and the volunteer email in question sounds bananas. Sadly, everything stated by that volunteer is true. The Maritime Museum’s Site Administrator did publicly say he would prefer the ship to remain dockside at all times and never sail (more than once). He disparaged Tall Ships Erie at a Visit Erie meeting, as well as other venues. The museum is still struggling to get all the docent coverage they need. And he wandered around insinuating that FNL inappropriately handled funds that PHMC provided for the ship. (Funds that FNL provided an accounting of every year. But apparently this crazy man decided to roll in-kind provisions into his total – things like space in the building, utility payments for the space, etc. He thinks you can embezzle that? Seriously? It’s not cash! And of course, he never made these complaints to any person who could actually correct him and answer his question. How do you work with someone like this?) The volunteer’s language is causal and folksy, versus the business style of the PHMC representatives. But please remember what all the other emails from PHMC have looked like. We’ve seen in this very blog post that they speak with forked tongue, blow smoke at legislators, present information in polite but vague ways that allow them to renege later and claim they never meant that. They regularly get away with saying inaccurate, misleading, and sometimes coercive things because they always say it in such a polite manner. They stab you with a smile.

In the “Shipwrecked…” blog post, Ginny notes “Andrea Lowery contacted the FNL Board President at the time, Scott Nick, calling the NVC and other volunteers a ‘strong contingent that is bent on disrupting improving relations between our two organizations.  I am not sure how we will bring the groups together successfully if this kind of undermining of our shared intent continues.’”  I’m not sure what “shared intent” she is referring to. “Shared intent” that includes months and months of FNL asking to negotiate on the Associate’s Agreement and PHMC refusing to negotiate at all? In early 2021 PHMC delivered a new Associate’s Agreement to FNL that gave the new Site Administrator Jim Hall ultimate decision authority over many things relating to the ship, including her maintenance, her programs, her safety, and all hiring/firing. There were other elements in the agreement that FNL wanted to negotiate, but that was the absolute authority of someone with no maritime experience was the primary difficulty. PHMC specifically stated in their advertisement for the Site Administrator that maritime experience was not required because it was provided by the associate group (FNL). But the agreement was specifically placing the power of those decisions in this person’s hands, and provided no method for FNL to dispute decisions that endanger the safety of the vessel, the crew, the trainees, or the general tour-going public. For example, if the Site Administrator makes a decision for financial reasons or internal staffing resource limitations, but that endangers the vessel’s ability to meet Coast Guard requirements and she loses her COI, to whom can FNL appeal that decision? Everyone is inside of the PHMC chain of command and we’ve already seen how they operate. The ship’s Captain is the one ultimately responsible for the vessel and crew. If PHMC ties their hands and something breaks at sea due to PHMC’s choices, the Captain is the one who could be fined by the Coast Guard, lose their license, or in some cases even face jail time, not the PHMC executives and administrators who forced the decision. The Coast Guard believes the master of the vessel (the Captain) has the ultimate responsibility. PHMC’s associate agreement attempts to garner authority over the vessel without accepting the responsibilities that go with it. This creates the potential for a very serious conflict for Niagara’s Captain to deal with, where the Captain may have to choose between a risk to the ship and crew or a risk to their own job by standing up to PHMC and refusing to follow orders. PHMC’s agreement does not remove the Coast Guard’s authority, but it does create a power differential where the Captain could have to regularly choose between risk/harm to themselves or risk/harm to the vessel. This is a relationship that needs to be built on mutual trust and respect. But we haven’t seen those behaviors demonstrated by anyone in PHMC’s leadership.

Document:

Melissa Mann Director of PHMC’s Bureau of Historic Sites and Museums sends an email to FNL Board President Mike Martin requesting that FNL disband the Niagara Volunteer Council

From the Post: “Melissa Mann emailed Mike Martin (the FNL Board President at that time) and requested that FNL disband the NVC, stating that “PHMC always welcomes input from volunteers and wants them to be fully engaged…” and “Current continued support for the NVC is hindering the volunteer program and providing a platform for the ongoing narrative that PHMC and FNL are at odds… The sooner we can eliminate this distraction the sooner our staffs can work together to create a great volunteer experience and volunteers can adjust to the new program model.”  (see attachment)

Context and Comments:

For two years, PHMC has said over and over that all volunteers are their volunteers. Yet they still expect FNL to do their dirty work for them? The Maritime Museum’s Site Administrator Jim Hall and Museum Educator Chuck Johnson regularly meet with the volunteers and appear to sanction their activities, but they don’t have the guts to say to these volunteers’ faces that they don’t like it and it needs to stop?

In the email chain I discussed right before this one, earlier in the same year PHMC Executive Director Andrea Lowery asked the FNL Board President to stifle the voices of the volunteers who were expressing their concerns.

A later document in the “Shipwrecked…” blog post shows PHMC shirking difficult conversations for a third time. Instead of correcting the volunteer’s misunderstanding himself, the PHMC Educator sent screenshots of a volunteer’s private Facebook post to the rest of the PHMC chain of command (an act the volunteer felt was an invasion of privacy; it appears that no redactions were used prior to sharing either). The volunteer mistakenly said a meeting was public (instead of volunteers-only) and involved Niagara’s ability to sail. No one from PHMC ever contacted the volunteer about the post being incorrect.  PHMC handed that to FNL Executive Director Billy Sabatini to take care of in August 2022, just like Andrea Lowery did in March 2022 and Melissa Mann did in November 2022.

PHMC has repeatedly stated that they are in charge of volunteers.  But apparently no one at PHMC is willing to have tough conversations or feels empowered to handle things themselves, in the moment. I repeat my question: Is this what PHMC leadership looks like? Is this how they demonstrate accountability and transparency with their volunteers? Is this how they build personal relationships and trust? Or, is this why they want layers of bureaucracy in their volunteer program – so that no PHMC staff ever has to deliver the tough news themselves and they always have someone further down the chain of command to do the hard and dirty work on the decisions they’ve made themselves?

Document:

Hall falsely complains that he wasn’t told about USCG Coast Guard Inspection

From the post: Museum Educator Chuck Johnson was on a year-long navy reserves deployment, and Site Administrator Jim Hall told the Niagara Volunteer Council “he didn’t have time to ‘get into the weeds’ of coordinating the volunteers.“ “No one seemed to be handling the volunteer paperwork and there was no volunteer recruitment event.  There had been no volunteer appreciation or awards event for two years.  The NVC, seeing the need for information to be shared between volunteers, created their own email list and sent out updates to those who wanted to be informed…  This email was about Niagara’s Coast Guard Inspection and volunteers were needed as several of the crew had become ill.  Hall, again, sent this email along to the gang at PHMC:  Melissa Mann and Charlie Fox, complaining that he didn’t know about the inspection.” (see attachment)

Context and Comments:

Hall’s claim that he was not informed of the Coast Guard inspection is patently false. He may not have been reminded that “this is happening tomorrow” but this is the sort of thing FNL alerted the Site Administrator of well in advance. But this is a man who regularly misremembers things, states things as fact when it’s purely the way he remembers it, seems to refuse to reference written documents and instead chooses to reference things off the top of his head, and regularly gets caught in situations where he ignores emails, disregards emails, or skims them and misses most of the content. In Steven’s recent post “Will Niagara Attend the 250th Anniversary of the US Navy?” Jim Hall is at a meeting where Niagara’s attendance at the Philadelphia event is discusses but he and the rest of PHMC claim they were never told. There have been multiple occasions where staff trying to secure key fob access in order to do their job duties have waited weeks or even months to gain the access needed to do their jobs. I recall one particular incident where FNL’s Administrative Assistant purposefully tracked Hall down to force him to provide the necessary items. Hall told her he never received the email, she held up her phone showing him the email and said it was sent to you one month ago, he told her to send it to him again, so she did it on her phone immediately, while he was there watching, and informed him it was resent. The Coast Guard inspections are arranged at least 30 days in advance. This one was happening in a very narrow window between Niagara returning to EMM and departing again for a program. If Hall had any maritime knowledge whatsoever, or even bothered to apply common sense from what he had seen and heard over the past year and a half as the Museum’s Site Administrator, he should have expected it even if he couldn’t remember being told. He regularly blusters around the building appearing frazzled, and doesn’t strike me as someone who has a robust organizational system with detailed calendar reminders. During my time in the facility, regularly exhibited a state of urgency. He often seemed overwhelmed and like the job was too much for him. Jim Hall forgetting something he had already been told multiple times was not unusual.

Document:

Hall complains that volunteer Ginny is “poaching” from the docent pool during Tall Ships Erie

From the post: “Tall Ships Erie was held from 8/25-8/28/22…  At one point, Ginny (that’s me) contacted a museum docent asking if there were any docents who might be interested in helping with deck tours of Niagara since the crew was shorthanded and docents do deck tours as part of the museum experience.  That email was forwarded….  Hall, instead of seeing an opportunity to support the education of the public about Niagara’s history, or letting museum docents decide for themselves to help out, complained that ‘Ginny is trying to ‘poach’ museum docents…completely inappropriate on multiple levels.  Didn’t contact Sean.’  He goes on to complain that the ship isn’t berthed at the EMM and all he can see from the EMM is “a single Baby Duck floating in the EMM berthing area…” (see attachment)

Context and Comments:

Discussed above, we covered the December 2021 email chain between FNL Executive Director Sabatini and PHMC Executive Director Lowery regarding Tall Ships Erie (the one that triggered the state legislators to request a public forum). As seen in that email chain, Erie Maritime Museum Site Administrator Jim Hall was withholding permission for Niagara to have a sailing season or participate in Tall Ships Erie. Until surprisingly close to the event he was refusing to allow the museum to participate at all. At a Visit Erie meeting in fall 2021, in front of many members of the Erie business community who can verify the situation, Hall claimed no one had told him about Tall Ships Erie, he hadn’t approved it, and that Niagara would not be participating. In a recorded zoom meeting for the Tall Ships Erie planning committee in late January 2022, Hall again said he had no answer on whether Niagara would be participating and claimed he had not received word yet from Harrisburg about it. He said that he felt he could confirm that at the very least she would be available to participate as an “interpretive display” but beyond that was a decision for those above him. It makes a very big deal to sponsors whether Niagara is headlining the event or sitting this one out. Not having sponsors lined up slows everything down – you can’t make decisions on what to spend or make commitments until you know you have the funds secured. These Tall Ships Erie decisions are also tied up in the difficulties of the contract that PHMC had been refusing to negotiate with FNL since February 2021.

Regarding Hall’s specific comments in this email:

Just because a docent is already working a museum shift doesn’t mean they wouldn’t love to do a deck tour as well. Maybe a museum docent is only available during museum shifts that are already full, but they could help do Niagara tours during that time. This was not a mutually exclusive proposition. It would be inefficient to have an opportunity and need for volunteers on the ship, and not open that opportunity up to people who are qualified to do the job. Did Hall fear people would drop their museum shift because the Niagara opportunity was somehow inherently better? Does he think so little of the integrity of the people who volunteer for him? (That they could be “poached” after already making a promise?)

As for his claims that the only thing at the Museum was a floating baby duck, EMM was right in the center of the family-friendly kids zone and food festival. Local partners like PA SeaGrant were hosting tables on the museum’s plaza. Anyone moving between the ships and the kids zone/food vendors would walk right through the Museum property. There was an amazing and incredible scientific research vessel berthed there on Friday, with enormous cranes and scientists on board ready to discuss the real-life data collection and equipment they were using to monitor climate change effects in the lake and investigate harmful algal blooms. And although Hall might not think much of the duck, surprisingly, it is one of the biggest draws of the festival and people go nuts about having their photo taken with the ducks and purchasing duckie shirts. I don’t think Hall would have been happy if anything less than Niagara had been berthed at the museum for the weekend. Niagara is one of the biggest draws of the festival, and she deserves to be positioned as a centerpiece. Having Niagara berthed at the Maritime Museum while tens of thousands of people come through the festival would create bottlenecks and traffic difficulties leading to a poor attendee experience, so there are major logistical reasons why Niagara was located at Dobbins Landing. But specific to Hall’s assertions that nothing was happening at EMM, there was plenty of activity and incentives located at and around the Museum to draw foot traffic. He just chose not to see it. If the museum failed to capture all that foot traffic, it wasn’t the fault of the festival.

Conclusion:

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably figured out that the entire leadership chain of PHMC hasn’t been the best sort of partner to work with. You probably also have a sense that Erie Maritime Museum’s Site Administrator Jim Hall hasn’t been demonstrating the type of behaviors you might hope to see in a state museum’s leader. Jim Hall is such a challenging person to describe that we don’t even have enough space in this companion piece to discuss notes from Niagara Volunteer Council President Ryan Cook’s 2022 meeting with EMM Site Administrator Jim Hall that mentioned in the “Shipwrecked…” blog. They are extensive enough that they require their own post.

Those of us posting here on the Protect Brig Niagara blog are looking for transparency and accountability from this state agency. For several years we have seen PHMC behave in ways that make us doubt their ability to care for the ship, as well as doubt their intentions towards the Erie community and the volunteers who have dedicated themselves towards the U.S. Brig Niagara and all she stands for. We would like to be treated with respect and common decency. If PHMC wants to manage the vessel themselves, then they need to demonstrate a significant change in their operations for us to feel comfortable supporting that work. They need to make decisions in a timely manner. They need to be transparent. They need to care about safety more than their own prestige. They need to entertain the notion that the volunteers trying to care for the boat are not simply “agitators” trying to undermine their authority and that we may have legitimate interests. But they also need to understand that when you behave in ways that demonstrate your incompetence, we’re going to ask questions. If that makes them defensive, then perhaps they should ask themselves why they feel so threatened? Everyone here wants Niagara to succeed. We ask questions because we care.

We’re not seeking to hold them any more or less accountable than we would a for-profit business or a nonprofit. We expect to see the ship sailing. We expect that to be done safely, efficiently, and without excessive and unnecessary costs or delays. When you say you are going to do something, we expect you to do it. If you consistently fail to deliver on your promises, we will cease to believe and trust you. We ask for transparency and accountability. Since all of their funding comes from the state budget (manna from heaven?), instead of from ticket sales or donations as any business is required to do, PHMC misinterprets who they are serving. The people are the arbiters of their success, and our government should answer to us. PHMC lacks the pressures that would force them to evolve and adapt to timelines, expectations, and behaviors that any other organization must either achieve or perish. There is currently no mechanism to enforce their transparency or ensure they are held accountable for missed deadlines, excessive expenditures, or mediocre delivery of their mission.

We desire excellence for the museum AND the ship. Why can’t we have both?

You May Also Like…

0 Comments

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Spread the word!

Share this post with your friends!

Discover more from Protect Brig Niagara

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading