Citizen voices at Clarion city council

For years, the tagline for both the City of Clarion and for the Clarion Chamber and Development was “The birthplace of the 4-H emblem.” Gazebo Park is the site of the old schoolhouse building where the emblem was developed, and is a small museum dedicated to the history of 4-H. However, the building is unstaffed and rarely open to the public.

Recently, there’s been some local interest in moving the building to land owned by the Heartland Museum. The Museum board, for their part, is very interested in having it.

“We would then put electricity to it, we would update the displays which are kind of outdated, and it would be open whenever the museum would be open,” said Mary Tesdahl, co-president of the Heartland Museum Board at the Clarion city council meeting Monday night.

However, Tesdahl was concerned that more of the cost for moving the schoolhouse would fall to the Museum than they could handle. She asked the council if the City was willing to fund any part of the move. City staff had already considered it.

“The money would come from the Hotel/Motel tax, and we could justify up to $18,000 of expenses,” Dustin Rief, city administrator, told the group of Museum volunteers who attended the meeting.

The actual cost of moving the building remains to be seen, but with the support and interest of the city and the community, it is very possible that the schoolhouse may become part of the Heartland Museum in the future.

For more city council news, see the July 20 edition of the Monitor.