Museum bylaws, procedures updates near completion

After two years of work, a committee has presented draft documents to the H. Earl Clack Museum Board that would revise and update the bylaws, procedures and forms of the county museum.

“You guys know we’ve put lots of work into them … ,” Bylaw Committee Chair Raela Hulett told the other board members Monday. “We talked about what we wanted them to say, and then when we met the next time we talked about if they sounded like what we meant, and we did a lot of revisions.”

Hulett asked the board to review the draft, proofread it and make suggestions on any changes members would like to see.

The board approved reviewing the documents and discussing them at its December meeting, then voting on the proposal in January.

Hulett said the committee drafted 14 separate documents, including a job description for the museum manager position and 11 separate forms in addition to the bylaws and policies and procedures document.

The draft documents are available for review online here.

The other members of the committee are board members Eli Salapich and Chris Bond and board chair Judi Dritshulas. Board member Val Hickman of the Vande Bogart Library at Montana State University-Northern advised the committee on collection policies and forms, and Wahkpa Chu’gn Buffalo Jump Manager Anna Brumley formatted the header used on the documents.

The museum, named in honor of prominent Havre residents H. Earl and Margaret Turner Clack, was created as a county agency in 1965 to house the Havre collections and to oversee operations of the Wahkpa Chu’gn archaeological site.

Its bylaws were updated in 2002. The committee that drafted the new documents was created and tasked with revising and updating the bylaws, policies and procedures manual and forms used by the museum to ensure they were current and consistent.