Same Small Millage. Same Big Impact

“History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.” 

- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

 For many Saginaw County residents a visit to the Castle Museum is more than an afternoon spent exploring exhibits. It's a chance to discover the people, places, and events that shaped the community they call home.

Whether it's a family stopping in for a free weekend outing, a classroom traveling through time with a hands-on history lesson, or a local researcher uncovering stories hidden in the archives, the Castle Museum serves as a gateway to the region's collective memory. And for more than two decades, a small countywide millage has helped make those experiences possible. 

On August 4, Saginaw County voters will decide whether to renew the museum's existing .1997 mill levy—a funding source that has remained unchanged since 2000 and continues to be the smallest countywide millage in the county. 

The proposal is a renewal, not a new tax. Yet its impact extends far beyond the museum's walls.

Last year alone, the Castle Museum reached 86,789 people through museum visits, educational programs, tours, special events, and outreach activities across Saginaw County. From downtown Saginaw to communities throughout the county, the museum's mission centers on making local history accessible, engaging, and relevant.

One of the museum's most visible educational initiatives is the Time Machine: Mobile Museum Experience, a program that brings local history directly into schools. Offered at no cost to educators, the program provides interactive lessons designed to help students connect classroom learning with the history of the communities around them.

In 2025 alone, nearly 6,500 students and school staff participated in Time Machine programs throughout Saginaw County. For many children, the lessons offer a first introduction to the region's rich cultural and industrial heritage, transforming history from distant textbook material into stories that happened in their own neighborhoods.

Education is only one part of the museum's role.

Behind the scenes, the Castle Museum serves as the steward of one of the region's largest historical collections. The institution houses more than 150,000 artifacts documenting the history of Saginaw County and the Great Lakes Bay Region. The collection ranges from photographs and documents to everyday objects that help tell the story of generations of residents.

Preserving such a collection requires ongoing care, expertise, and resources. Museum staff catalog artifacts and develop exhibits that bring these pieces of history to life for modern audiences. Their work ensures that future generations will be able to explore and understand the events, industries, and individuals that shaped the area.

The museum's influence also extends well beyond its downtown Saginaw location. Millage funding helps support a network of partner museums throughout the county, including organizations in Bridgeport, Chesaning, Frankenmuth, and St. Charles. Together, these institutions preserve local heritage, host community events, provide educational opportunities, and celebrate the unique stories of their respective communities. The Castle itself is also home to the Saginaw County Sports Hall of Fame, another distinct museum.

This collaborative approach allows residents throughout Saginaw County to benefit from historical programming close to home while strengthening connections between communities that share a common regional history.

For many residents, one of the most tangible benefits of millage support is free admission. Because of the existing funding structure, Saginaw County residents can visit the Castle Museum without paying an admission fee. Most museum programs and events are also offered at no cost, removing financial barriers that might otherwise prevent families from participating.

That accessibility has become an important part of the museum's identity. At a time when many cultural institutions face rising operating costs, maintaining free access allows the museum to continue serving residents of all ages and backgrounds. Families can explore exhibits together, students can participate in educational programming, and community members can engage with local history regardless of income.

The museum's campaign theme for the August ballot proposal—"Same Small Millage. Same Big Impact."—reflects that emphasis on continuity.

The renewal would keep the tax rate at its current level of .1997 mills, the same rate voters approved more than 25 years ago. For the median homeowner, the cost amounts to approximately $14.64 per year, or about $1.22 per month.

Supporters of the renewal point to the broad range of services made possible through that investment: free admission for county residents, educational programming for local schools, preservation of more than 150,000 historical artifacts, community outreach efforts, and support for partner museums throughout the county.

Taken together, those programs reach tens of thousands of people every year.

Museums often serve as keepers of a community's past, but institutions like the Castle Museum also play an important role in shaping civic identity. By preserving local stories and making them accessible to the public, they help residents better understand where they came from and how their communities have evolved.

As Saginaw County voters prepare to head to the polls on August 4, the question before them is not whether to create a new program or establish a new tax. Instead, it is whether to continue supporting a resource that has spent decades connecting residents with the history, culture, and stories that define their community.

For nearly 87,000 people last year, that connection made a difference. The upcoming vote will determine whether the same small millage can continue delivering that same big impact for years to come.

Protecting Our Historic Heritage, Sustaining Our Cultural Legacy • A Conversation with Castle Museum President & CEO       Jonathan Webb

Since first assuming the reins as the President & CEO of The Castle Museum of Saginaw County History back in January 2017, Jonathan Webb has managed to not only oversee and protect a priceless piece of architecture, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but also protect and augment an impressive collection of over 150,000 artifacts dating back as far as 2000 years that chronicle the depth and dimension of our cultural history. 

First built and dedicated on July 3, 1898, the Castle Museum originally served as the city's U.S. Post Office. Designed by architect William Martin Aiken, this striking building features a French Renaissance Revival style meant to honor the early French voyageurs and fur traders of the Saginaw Valley. Threatened with demolition twice in the 20th century, it was saved, expanded, eventually repurposed, and opened to the public as a museum in 1979. 

Recently The REVIEW sat down with Jonathan to discuss not only the importance of the Museum in terms of illuminating the depth and scope of our cultural identity for the posterity of future generations, but also the significance and singularity of Saginaw County’s historic achievements and accomplishments that inform our purpose and fuel our imagination for creating inspirational possibilities for our ever-evolving future.

REVIEW: The last time the Castle Museum millage was on the ballot was in 2020 and usually these millages run in 10-year cycles, so can you tell our readers why it is now up for a vote? 

Jonathan:  The millage was originally passed in 1990 and was successful again in 2000 and 2010.  We went on the ballot two years early in 2018, asking for a very small increase.  We narrowly lost that 2018 vote for the small increase but read the Saginaw County voters loud and clear, and in 2020 we stuck with the same small millage rate renewal, figuring out how to provide more service to our community with the same amount of money. 

We passed that 2020 renewal vote by the largest margin ever, 71% to 29%, but the caveat imposed by the County Services Committee was that it was only a six-year renewal instead of a ten-year, which brings us to where we are today. For this upcoming election the duration will go back to ten years once again, and we are simply seeking to renew it – meaning it will be no additional tax burden on the county residents.

\REVIEW: Your budget from the millage is approximately $1.3 million dollars, so how much of that money would you say goes into overhead and simple maintenance of the building itself, which I know recently had some renovations. And then you also have exhibition costs and do lots of ancillary programming, which I know has successfully increased attendance at the Museum over the past decade.

Jonathan Webb: It honestly depends each year on what challenges we face with the building, and programming expenses are spread across a lot of areas. The building was originally constructed in 1898 and had a major expansion and renovation in 1936, which changed the exterior shape of the building and added areas with flat roofs, which I would never recommend doing for a long-term project.  Any time you connect different construction eras together, you get structural seams, and you always run into water issues. That is our biggest maintenance challenge with this building. 

In addition to the Castle Museum building, we have another large structure across the street, the Annex Building, which was formerly Jacobson’s Department Store, where we maintain almost all of our collection in a carefully climate-controlled environment. Everything not on display here at the Museum is stored across the street, so that carries its own challenges as well. Part of our agreement with Saginaw County is that we have an obligation to maintain the Castle building.  Since it’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places, we spend a considerable amount of money repairing and maintaining it on an annual basis.  Simple things like utilities can run as much as $10,000 per month during the winter.  With our programming and exhibits, we often bring in fascinating traveling exhibits from around the US, including Smithsonian Traveling Exhibitions.  In addition, we develop and fabricate our own exhibits in house and provide programming in most of the schools throughout the county, at no expense to those school districts.  And of course, a portion of the millage dollars go to the museums in Bridgeport, Chesaning, Frankenmuth and St. Charles to fund their historical museums.

REVIEW: Given this inflationary climate and the fact it only costs the median homeowner $1.22 a month to sustain this architectural and cultural treasure, it’s impressive that you’ve been able to not only maintain everything but also significantly increase engagement throughout the community and beyond over the past ten years. 

Jonathan Webb: That’s not a reflection on my predecessors, as they did a fine job with this organization, but we started off by analyzing everything that we do and seeing if we could do it more efficiently. Believe it or not, COVID helped us figure out new and better ways to communicate with and reach people.  A common concept in museums is that if we do exhibitions people will come to see them, and that works to a certain extent. But we found if we go out into the community, whether in person or through digital means, it gives them a taste of what we offer, and that in turn brings more people back, because they’ve seen what we are doing or hear about the programs and want to see or learn more about them.  Our newly created Outreach Department has been a huge benefit for us.

REVIEW: Let’s talk about how important the resources and artifacts that you maintain and house here are to the community. What is the oldest piece that you have here? 

Jonathan Webb: We have artifacts going back to when Fort Saginaw was first built in the early 1800’s, but we actually have items 2000 years older than that. We have an archaeologist on our staff who has discovered and identified many buried treasures.  In fact, we’re a federally recognized repository for Native American artifacts, largely because of our Archaeology Department, headed by Jeff Sommer.  He’s been here for almost 30 years, and we are lucky to have him on staff, plus we have volunteers who assist in that department. They are out in the field all summer long and spend the winter cleaning, analyzing, inventorying, and cataloging all these items that have been recovered from various dig sites around the county.

In terms of overall items, not every artifact we have here at the Castle Museum of Saginaw County History has been entered into our database system but based upon what we have entered and what we estimate is left, it is well over 150,000 items.  That figure doesn’t even include the thousands of individual articles and clippings we have from The Saginaw News, organized into 25+ file cabinets.  And that’s one of the things we talk about in terms of what happens if this millage does not pass-- those artifacts will go away, scattered to the winds, lost locally, never to be recovered. 

Every day we take in other interesting items.  One item recently acquired is an original print from a Currier & Ives lithograph, of a horse race held in 1874 in East Saginaw.  Though long forgotten by most, that event was huge at the time and attracted over 8,000 people. Sandy Schwan has worked for us forever in our Collections Department and is taking on a new role as Community & Collections Engagement Curator, going out into our local communities, scanning personal photos and collecting stories. We add digital photos to our collection, return the originals to the owners with digital copies, and provide instructions on how to care for the old photos. Our photographic collection is growing exponentially through this new program Sandy has initiated known as Chronicling Our Past.

REVIEW: Another thing I wanted to discuss is your programming, because you’ve been doing a lot with the ‘Lunch and Learn’ speaker series and a lot of other collaborative events with other organizations like the Saginaw Choral Society.

Jonathan Webb: That’s another thing we focused on during the Covid crisis. We want to give people different reasons to experience the Castle Museum. They might not necessarily feel they’re interested in a particular exhibit, but if they come here for a special event or speaker, they usually tend to find something else that draws their eye and their attention. 

That’s the same process behind hosting the Saginaw County Sports Hall of Fame, which is a separate entity with their own Board of Directors and their own collection. Lots of people are fascinated with Saginaw sports, but may not consider themselves “history lovers,” yet once they enter the building, they find themselves fascinated with the myriad of objects and stories on display throughout.  It’s easy for them to get hooked on all the history we have on display.

REVIEW: So, what for you right now is the most challenging thing you are dealing with here at the Castle Museum?

Jonathan Webb: What’s challenging is that we can only control our own environment and not some of the things around us, such as the general state of the economy.  We are simply making every effort to provide as much service as we can to the residents of Saginaw County to demonstrate our value. Basically, a large percentage of our support comes in the form of this millage that must be re-approved every ten years.  When the last millage was approved back in 2020, it passed by more than 70%, which was the highest margin we’ve ever passed by in the history of the Museum. I told the entire staff the day after that election how much I appreciated all their hard work every day serving our community, because that’s what truly matters.  And then we agreed that everything we do from that day in 2020 until the next vote in 2026 will be focused on instilling a sense within Saginaw County residents that maintaining this community resource is worth it when they next walk into the voting booth.

REVIEW: There is so much of our history that is either being erased on social media or being re-written that I would think the importance of this millage would be obvious to most voters, especially when it only costs the average taxpayer a little over a dollar a month.

Jonathan Webb: I always say it’s hard to make educated decisions about where you’re going if you don’t understand where you’ve been.  We are the keepers of that historical roadmap here in Saginaw County.

REVIEW: That’s a very good way to put it, and a fitting point to end upon.