The city of St. Louis is looking to unload its veterans’ memorial:
City officials and civic leaders have begun talking with private donors and area museum leaders about taking over the maintenance, financing — and perhaps operations — of the city-owned Soldiers Memorial Military Museum downtown, including its archives of war letters, weapons, uniforms, medals and other artifacts.
The museum’s collection has been neglected for years, leading some city officials to call it embarrassing. The building needs more than $6 million in upgrades and repairs, according to city files. And the city has tried multiple times, always unsuccessfully, to find it another caretaker.
The annual budget is apparently $150,000 including two staffers.
Compare and contrast this, gentle reader, in your mind with the money that the city regularly throws away in tax incentives to land developers, to sports teams for new ballparks, and even to film makers who might spend a day or two in town with rolling cameras not to mention the one-offs for feasibility studies for current fads and harebrained schemes.
Which are cool things. Remembering history and the sacrifices that unimaginable others made and would make for the American way of life? That’s hard, man.
