{"id":440364,"date":"2026-08-22T10:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T10:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/440364\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T10:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T10:42:09","slug":"detroit-museums-to-ask-wayne-oakland-voters-to-back-10-year-millage-the-oakland-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/440364\/","title":{"rendered":"Detroit museums to ask Wayne, Oakland voters to back 10-year millage \u2013 The Oakland Press"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published<\/a> by Bridge Detroit, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. Sign up for a free newsletter here (link: https:\/\/bridgemi.com\/signup\/<\/p>\n

By Micah Walker, Bridge Detroit<\/p>\n

After years of financial hardship and stalled efforts, two longstanding Detroit cultural institutions are uniting to ask voters in Wayne and Oakland counties to support a joint operating millage in the Nov. 3 election.<\/p>\n

The Detroit Historical Society and Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History on Tuesday launched the \u201cYes to Our Story\u201d campaign, a proposal seeking a 10-year, 0.2 mill levy in Wayne and Oakland counties. The tax would amount to $30 per year for the owner of a home with an average value of $300,000,\u00a0 Historical Society President and CEO Elana Rugh and Wright Museum President and CEO Neil Barclay said at a news conference.<\/p>\n

In return, residents of both counties would receive free admission to the Wright Museum and the Historical Society, which operates the Detroit Historical Museum in Midtown and the Dossin Great Lakes Museum on Belle Isle. Currently, only small children and museum members receive free admission.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the millage would cover free transportation for students and seniors, new curriculum and training for teachers and the publicly-owned collections for both museums would be permanently protected. Specific details on who would provide transportation are still being discussed, Rugh and Barclay said.<\/p>\n

Rugh said the Yes to Our Story proposal would bring financial stability to both museums while allowing the institutions to focus on what they do best\u2013preserving local and Black history while ensuring everyone can experience it.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t get that feeling from a screen,\u201d Rugh said. \u201cYou get it by standing in the place where history becomes real. And that\u2019s why these museums aren\u2019t just amenities; they\u2019re classrooms. They are repositories of memory, and they belong to all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Founded in 1965, the Wright Museum is the second largest African American museum in the country following the Smithsonian\u2019s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, the Historical Society was founded in 1921, with the Historical Museum founded in 1928 to preserve the people, places and events that shape metro Detroit. The two institutions collectively\u00a0 hold more than 300,000 artifacts.<\/p>\n

Barclay stressed that the millage will allow the Wright Museum and the Historical Society to have a more prosperous and unified future. Both museums have been preserving the region\u2019s history for decades on budgets that were never stable, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis measure changes that,\u201d Barclay said. \u201cIt keeps our doors open and free. And it puts our programs in front of more students, more teachers in every community from Detroit to Redford to Pontiac, Birmingham and countless others, on average of about $30 a year, less than $3 per month. No family in Wayne or Oakland County will ever be priced out of knowing and celebrating their own history.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BridgeBridge Detroit<\/p>\n

If the millage doesn\u2019t pass, the museums aren\u2019t sure what operations will look like moving forward, Rugh told BridgeDetroit, saying that there will be \u201ctough decisions to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThings would change for sure,\u201d she said. \u201cWe can\u2019t keep going the way that we are. Both institutions are running a deficit budget right now, so we don\u2019t have reserves to support it for much longer.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Rugh and Barclay are staying positive. The museums plan to spend the next three months promoting the millage by using social media, billboards, and canvassing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is going to be a quick and furious campaign to get us across the finish line,\u201d Rugh said. \u201cWe are optimistic that folks will come out and support this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Revenue Challenges<\/p>\n

The Yes to Our Story campaign comes two years after the state House passed legislation allowing the Historical Society and Wright Museum to establish operating millage rates. House Bill 4177, or the History Museum Authorities Act, would have allowed counties to establish historical museum authorities to provide funding support for historical museums owned by the city of Detroit, including the Wright and the Detroit Historical Society. The bill also passed the state Senate, but was stuck in limbo after a clerical error kept it from reaching the governor\u2019s desk. But efforts to sign the bill into law ended last month when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoed it and eight other long-stalled bills.<\/p>\n

Last month, the Oakland County Board of Commissioners and the Wayne County Commission created a joint public authority called the Southeast Michigan Public Historical Museum Authority to put a millage on the ballot without approval from the state Legislature.<\/p>\n

The Historical Society and Wright Museum have struggled for years to keep up with basic operating costs and have been\u00a0advocating since 2019\u00a0for a joint millage.<\/p>\n

During a\u00a0Detroit City Council budget hearing in March,\u00a0revenue remained a challenge for the Historical Society, as it currently operates with a \u201csmall\u201d budget deficit. The museum received a\u00a0 $2 million budget allocation for the 2026 fiscal year and\u00a0received the same amount for 2027.<\/p>\n

However, $350,000 in grants were clawed back as federal funding priorities have shifted away from arts and culture. Some of the funding was restored through state allocations.<\/p>\n

Funding is still needed for capital improvements between the three Detroit-owned facilities it operates, including improving the electricity supply and repairing the design studio inside the 175-year-old Carriage House, which is where many exhibits are built, maintained, and stored.<\/p>\n

But the Historical Society\u2019s revenue is growing. The institution saw a 26% increase in revenue over the last three years due in part to paid memberships,\u00a0which reached an all-time high this year with about 5,000 members.<\/p>\n

For the Wright Museum, instability in state funding priorities led to the museum using lines of credit and its operating reserves to maintain programs that were under contract. In addition, the Trump administration\u2019s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives means that that museum cannot pursue grants geared toward the Black community specifically.<\/p>\n

However, the Wright Museum\u2019s budget allocation from the City of Detroit is $3.3 million in the fiscal year that began July 1, an increase from the $2.6 million directed toward its budget in the prior fiscal year. The museum is also seeing a boost in attendance thanks to its viral social media videos.<\/p>\n

An effort to preserve local history<\/p>\n

The millage is also receiving support from Alisha Bell, D-Detroit, who chairs the Wayne County Commission. When she was a child, her mother often took her to the Wright Museum\u2019s\u00a0former location on Frederick Street.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis museum and the Historical Museum are the two wonderful things that we have not only in Detroit and Wayne County, but in this state,\u201d she said at the news conference. \u201cThis initiative is important because we have to preserve our history. The importance of cultural institutions is the importance of a region.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite voters recently turning down\u00a0public safety\u00a0and\u00a0education millages\u00a0in Oakland and Wayne counties during the August primary, Rugh and Barclay are optimistic about the proposal. Rugh pointed out that Metro Detroit communities previously supported millages for other institutions like the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Detroit Zoo. That\u2019s why the museums decided to set the proposal at 0.2 mills because they felt it was the most affordable, Rugh said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a modest ask,\u201d Barclay said. \u201cIt\u2019s also an important time in both the history of this city and of the region to have these institutions preserved. It will send a message not just in Southeast Michigan, but nationally and internationally about how important this region believes its contributions to history, particularly to American history is, and that we recognize that and we support that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was originally published by Bridge Detroit, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. Sign up for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[204,181,23,795,100,143,904,145,144,13,796],"class_list":["post-440364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-election","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-michigan","tag-news","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-county","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-politics","tag-wayne-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}