The Arizona Board of Regents approved new fees for the Arizona State Museum on Thursday, Nov. 16 at their UA campus meeting.

The regents approved new hourly service rates for employees now ranges from $38 to $125 per hour depending on the position. 

The regents also approved new curation fees of $613 for the curation of one half cubic-foot box of artifacts, along with $66.50 for the curation of one linear inch of documents, less than what the museum originally proposed.

The museum originally proposed fees of $1,502 for the curation of one half cubic-foot box of artifacts, and $214.75 for the curation of one linear inch of documents. These rates were decreased after public comment. 

“ASM has tried, and I think succeeded, in doing outreach that went beyond what was required by law,” said Patrick Elias, director of the museum. “And we’ve also made changes to the proposal based on the comments that we received.” 

The museum held three different stakeholder summits last year, which reached a lot of people. There have been concerns about the structure expressed from the Arizona tribal communities.

“We’d like to reassure our tribal partners that at ASM we believe that we have a special relationship with and a responsibility to tribal communities,” Elias said. 

ASM did not need to consult tribal communities for this project as the fees do not concern this area. 

“ABOR tribal consultation policy does not apply to this particular situation as the policy is not intended to address such matters such as tuition setting or other general issues that affect tribal members and the community to the extent of the general public,” Elias said. 

The new fees and rates are intended to recover the costs for service provision associated with the work they do. The museum however could not fully recover the costs to provide services associated with programs mandated by state and federal law. 

Rates for employees were based on the estimated time and effort it would take to work on a project as opposed to hours to execute the task. Cost of in-perpetuity storage were not included in previous fees. 

The new fees will be implemented in July of 2018.

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