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RUIDOSO DOWNS – Nearly $200,000 in Hubbard Museum of the American West budget cuts, almost exclusively in payroll expenses, are projected to move the museum owned by the city of Ruidoso Downs into the black.
The City Council this week approved an 11th-hour plan offered by Hubbard Museum Director Jim Kofakis that will eliminate two full-time positions, end one part-time position, slash the director’s salary by 25 percent, lower other senior staff salaries by 12.5 percent, and end a clothing allowance for museum employees.
“The problem with the museum as I see it, and with the finances, I’ve always said payroll is the issue,” Kofakis told city councilors.
Ruidoso Downs Race Track owner R.D. Hubbard donated the museum to the city in 2005. Kofakis said under the city’s first year of ownership the facility had an end-of-year surplus of $258,000.
“The second year is probably the year that the first yellow flag should have been thrown because the museum ended the year with a deficit of $25,000, including a transfer from the (city’s) general fund of $100,000. The third year we ended up with a surplus again of $118,000 which included a $100,000 transfer from the general fund. The real red flag alarm and whistles should have occurred in year four. With a deficit of almost $94,000 everybody should have been saying, ‘What happened? What do we do here?’And then it got worse every year after that.”
Noting the museum has had almost $600,000 in red ink over the past two years, Williams said the situation had turned extreme.
Kofakis said when he became the museum’s director he immediately looked at revenues and expenditures.
When R.D. Hubbard gave the museum to the city he also provided $1.5 million for the operation of the facility.
Kofakis said he has cut earlier budgets in half and made additional cuts, but said, “There’s no way out of this unless we cut payroll.”
— This article appeared on page B1 of the Albuquerque Journal
