GREELEY — If JoAnna Luth Stull had to pick her favorite object at the Greeley History Museum, where she worked for almost three decades, it would have to be the letters sent to Nathan Meeker in 1869 by Easterners hoping to snag a spot in his community out West.
That place, advertised as a temperance and agrarian utopia in the New York Tribune, would later become Greeley.
But Stull is also pretty fond of the first American flag flown over the fledgling town in July 1870. Oh, and the ledgers of Oliver Toussaint Jackson, the founder of Dearfield. Those are very special. But maybe it’s the artwork of Allen Dean, a prolific Western artist.
“And then, of course, there’s Rattlesnake Kate, you’ve heard about Rattlesnake Kate,” Stull said. “My hero, killing 140 nasty rattlesnakes.” The museum houses her boots, dropped off by a distant nephew, and her famous rattlesnake-skin dress. “Being able to have that rattlesnake dress is a huge amount of fun. Though I have got a phobia of snakes,” she said.
Talking with Stull is almost as good as a visit. She’s an encyclopedia of Weld County history and enthusiastic storyteller. Stull took a voluntary separation agreement in June and retired after 28 years as museum registrar, “sadly and reluctantly,” she said.
A dress, necklace, shoes and headband made from rattlesnake skins and rattles by “Rattlesnake Kate” Slaughterback are displayed at the Greeley History Museum on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, in Greeley. Slaughterback designed, constructed and wore the ensemble, which dates to about 1925, using skins from rattlesnakes she killed. (Cheney Orr, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)
The voluntary separation agreements are one of the tools the city of Greeley has used to shore up a projected $18.1 million budget hole in the city’s general fund. So far, 52 employees across the city’s 21 departments have taken the buyouts. Another handful have resigned, not wanting to wait around to see if they have a job next year. Ultimately 68 full-time positions need to be eliminated by the end of this year.
And that’s just the personnel. Every cost-cutting measure is on the table, from reducing homeless shelter capacity to ripping out the flowerbeds in front of City Hall.
The city’s museum staff and supporters have been particularly outspoken about the process, clashing with Diana Frick, director of the culture, parks and recreation department, over the $3.7 million that the department was tasked with cutting for 2027.
The Greeley museums are composed of the downtown History Museum in the former Greeley Tribune building, which houses a collection of objects dating back to the late 1800s. The department also runs the Centennial Village historic site and the Meeker Home, as well as a number of community events like Baby Animal Days, History Fest and Homesteader’s Holiday.
Their turmoil has exposed a crack in how a city values qualitative offerings when they show up on a spreadsheet. When city leaders were asked to rank the different department programs by priority, museums showed up near the bottom. But when the proposed cuts to museums were presented, they were met with one of the loudest public responses.
“When you’ve got people who are only looking at the bottom line and they’re not looking at the qualitative work that you’re doing, you can’t have those discussions,” said Chris Bowles, the former museum manager who resigned in August. “You’re beating your head against a brick wall.”
How did we get here
The budget shortfall is an issue in Greeley, but it’s not just a Greeley issue.
More than one-third of the 108 respondents to an annual Colorado Municipal League survey said their overall economies are somewhat or much worse than they were during the previous fiscal year. That’s the second-highest level over the past 10 years, second only to 2020, when about half of surveyed cities felt their economies were floundering.
When broken down by population, the group that Greeley falls into reported the highest levels of concern about worsening conditions — 42% of cities with more than 25,000 people said their overall economy was somewhat or much worse than it was in 2025. Another 42% said conditions were about the same.
A dental X-ray machine dating to the 1920s is stored inside the Greeley History Museum’s collections storage, where artifacts are preserved and cared for outside public view on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, in Greeley. Proposed city budget cuts could affect staffing and other museum operations. (Cheney Orr, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)
Nathan Mosley, director of budget and policy, said that before he was hired by Greeley in August 2025, he was having the same budget conversations in Broomfield, where he worked as a budget manager.
He knew that he was being hired to sort out a big budget shortfall, he said, “but I don’t think I understood the full extent until I got here and started looking at the numbers. I realized we couldn’t kick the can any further.”
The reason for the shortfall isn’t tied to one department or a handful of programs. Slowing sales tax revenue and building and development fees didn’t hit the 2025 projections, leaving the city with about $8 million less than expected. Staff that ran grant-funded programs stayed on after that money had dried up. And, with an influx of revenue back in 2022, the city grew its government positions beyond what was sustainable.
“Once upon a time it was felt that the city was understaffed relative to the size of the city, and we hired a consultant that told us that we were understaffed,” Mayor Dale Hall said during a city budget retreat Sept. 11. “We didn’t really critique it because they’re the professional, they’re the guy.”
LEFT: Shelves hold objects in the Greeley History Museum’s collections storage, where artifacts are preserved and cared for outside public view . RIGHT: Shelves hold objects in the Greeley History Museum’s collections storage. Proposed city budget cuts could affect staffing and other museum operations. (Cheney Orr, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)
In January, Mosley told city leaders that they would be switching to target-based budgeting, moving away from incremental budgeting that many cities use.
With incremental budgeting, a city takes the previous year’s budget as its baseline and adds or subtracts from there. Target-based budgeting starts with the next year’s projected revenue and then works backward, fitting departments expenses into the revenue box. Instead of asking each department what they felt they could cut, Mosley provided “targets” to shoot for.
“If I had just gone to all the departments and said, hey, we have an $18 million deficit, tell me what you can contribute. You would get varying levels of contributions,” Mosley said. “Some people would probably give more than they actually have to. Some people would slow roll it or give you things that aren’t really meaningful. So the target based approach, in my mind, helped everybody by giving them the answer. Here is the answer, now tell me how you will achieve this or why you can’t.”
Holding on to history
To determine these target numbers, city leaders ranked each department by priority. From that survey three tiers emerged.
The police and fire departments were unanimously ranked as the highest priority, so would be asked to make the smallest cuts, around 4% of their budget. A middle group of departments — which includes municipal courts, housing solutions, public works, and the culture, parks and recreation department, which oversees the city’s museums — would be tasked with a 17% reduction target. The rest would be asked to make a 25% cut.
Each department leader then had to figure out how to achieve that number. That’s where the culture, parks and recreation department started to fray.
Frick, director of Culture, Parks and Recreation, submitted a proposal that many thought loaded the museums with disproportionate cuts, eliminating six full-time positions, three part-time interpreter positions and all seasonal staffing. The cuts amounted to about 25% of the museum budgets, compared with smaller cuts from the parks and recreation to balance out to 17%.
A Native American headdress rests on a shelf in the Greeley History Museum’s collections storage, where artifacts are preserved and cared for outside public view on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, in Greeley. Proposed city budget cuts could affect staffing and other museum operations. (Cheney Orr, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)
Still, the department fell short of its target by about $800,000. One of four proposed solutions to filling that gap included handing the museums over to a third-party operator, like a history nonprofit. That suggestion spooked the museum staff and supporters.
Bowles, the museum manager, worked with museum staff to submit an alternative proposal with fewer staff cuts and reworked program offerings to meet the target. He presented this proposal in late March. A week later, Bowles said he received an email that his position would be eliminated at the end of the summer, and that he had the option to take a voluntary separation agreement. He started looking for a new job.
According to Marcus Embry, chair of the Museum Advisory Board, a nine-member board appointed by City Council to advise on museum planning, Frick also removed the alternative proposal from the council’s agenda packet for the Aug. 20 meeting. That same meeting, the board passed a resolution, expressing a vote of no confidence in Frick and Culture, Parks and Recreation leadership.
By then, Bowles had resigned and taken a job at the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space museum in Denver.
Stull is trying to get used to her retirement. She still uses “we” when she talks about the museums, and is working on a book about her family’s history. She joined the Friends of the Greeley Museums, a nonprofit that provides support and volunteers to the museums, “the day after I retired,” she said.
After nine months of proposals and pushback, Mosley thinks that the budget they’ll present at a first reading Oct. 20 is about the best they could do. “Perfect? No,” he said. But he thinks that some of the impacts are being overestimated, and if they do notice unanticipated impacts the city will be in a better position to respond.
“I don’t want anybody to feel attacked or targeted, but I want them to realize that everybody contributed. They should advocate for the areas that they love, but also come with alternatives to fix it,” Mosley said. “I think overall it worked out about as well as I could have expected, given the challenge that we faced.”
The budget public hearing and first reading take place Oct. 20, and a second public hearing and adoption is scheduled for mid-November.
Type of Story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.