Audit: History Museum Trustees Bought Land For Over $800,000

ST. LOUIS, MO (KTVI)– Critics of the Missouri History Museum still aren’t satisfied with a new agreement that was supposed to re-assure the public as to how taxpayer dollars are being spent.

The museum has been under fire for several months since the Zoo-Museum District Board discovered museum trustees purchased contaminated land on Delmar for more than $800,000.

“Everything else we have found at the history museum. The culture of secrecy and no transparency pervades and it still pervades today even with this so-called papering together of the trustees and the commissioners,” said Zoo-Museum District Commissioner Jerome Glick.

“You’ve got to give this a chance to get going. All praise to the ZMD for doing its study and detecting or noting the problems of the past but now we’re looking to the future,” said Zoo-Museum District Commissioner Ben Uchitelle.

More than half the history museum’s budget comes from property tax levied in St. Louis city and county.