The Cultural and Environmental Land Conservation Advisory Board voted unanimously to approve a collections management policy that lays out accessioning, loans, deaccessioning and registrar responsibilities for the Mound House museum collection. The board moved to send the policy to the Fort Myers Beach town council for final consideration.

The policy, prepared in collaboration with staff and outside reviewers, establishes who signs for acquisitions, how the advisory board will participate in accession and deaccession decisions and best practices for preserving fragile materials. "We are held in the public trust, which means we are legally responsible for these artifacts and these historical documents," said Brianna Vaquero, the museum registrar and new collections manager, who introduced the cataloging work she has begun since joining the Mound House staff in July 2024. Vaquero described challenges cataloging older field bags whose labels have become brittle and said some original excavation catalogs — vital for provenance — are not yet available.

Board members asked for small clarifications and typographical corrections to conflict-of-interest language and discussed creating a smaller accession/deaccession selection committee. One member recommended a three-person committee to streamline decisions. The board also agreed to continue requiring non-staking solutions (sandbag weights) for temporary event tents on the archaeological site to prevent damage to subsurface deposits.

The board heard that the Friends of the Mound House recently authorized several funding allocations to support the museum’s operations and public programming: $25,200 for public relations (including a $7,200 match for arts-and-attraction funds), $5,000 for general promotion, $5,000 for merchandise for resale, $3,000 for education supplies, $2,000 for web services, $2,500 for training and $500 for printing and binding. Those donations were described as resources the museum can draw on as it implements the new policy.

Vaquero said she is cataloging materials with the documentation currently available and is pursuing recovery of original field catalogs that staff say may be the subject of legal efforts. "Without those original documents it's very difficult for me to even place a timeline when these excavations took place," she told the board.

The board’s approval was voice-recorded as unanimous. The policy will be forwarded to the town council by staff for final adoption and any further ministerial edits.