Sutter County Museum temporarily closes due to short staffing, grant deadlines

YUBA CITY – You might think a grant of hundreds of thousands of dollars might be a good thing for a community museum in Sutter County, but that money is now partly to blame for its closure for nearly the rest of this month.

Budget cuts shut down the Sutter County Museum an extra two days per week. Now, the doors are going to be shut altogether over the next few weeks.

"The people who come here on a regular basis. Yeah they're going to feel it," said Yuba City resident Jason Alexander.

Alexander lives next door to the Sutter County Museum. He says it's strange to not see any cars in the parking lot.

"Because a lot of people are interested in the local history. Yuba City, Sutter County, [and] Yuba County have a lot of local history, especially in the gold miner days," he said.

And it's those gold mining days the museum wants to showcase permanently thanks to a nearly $400,000 grant from the California Natural Resources Agency. But in order to meet deadlines, they can't run the museum at the same time, due to short staffing and budget cuts.

"Sutter County has the second-fewest employees per capita of all of the comparable counties in the state of California. And so we are very thinly staffed. So the difference of one person can be the difference of if we can open or not," said Sutter County Museum director and curator Molly Bloom.

Bloom is the only full-time staff member right now and she's working with two part-timers to bring new exhibits to life with the grant money. A Yuba-Sutter Black History Exhibit is expected to open by the end of the year. By springtime next year, permanent exhibits for the gold rush, Yuba-Sutter flood history and the Nisenan people will be on display.

"This will just allow our limited staff to take a step back and be able to focus on meeting those upcoming deadlines so that we can stay on track to bring these new exciting exhibits to the community," said Bloom.

"If you learn the past, then it's good for your future," said Yuba City resident David Lynskey.

The county museum provides more than just a look into the past. They have community programs, a rental facility and a garden.

People are noticing the closure. Bloom says the phone has been ringing off the hook.

"I want people to know that we're OK. This isn't the beginning of the end or anything like that. This is just a little blip. Hopefully, we'll have even more amazing things that people will enjoy for years to come by taking a step back for a few weeks," she said.

"I'm just glad they're not closing it for good. I'm glad it's opening up later on," said Lynskey.

The museum is expected to open back up on Oct. 29, but it still will only be operating four days per week instead of its usual six.