County Council should vote against ill-considered zoo bond

Although a majority of the Salt Lake County Council was prepared last week to vote down the bond, pressure from Hogle Zoo officials has delayed the final vote until Tuesday, Aug. 14. With the myriad problems attending the zoo's proposal, the County Council should refuse to place the zoo's bond on the ballot.

There are a host of reasons to oppose the zoo's $65 million bond. Nearly twice the size of the Real Salt Lake stadium subsidy, it suffers from the all the faults of that ill-considered proposal. Unfortunately, it suffers from even further defects.

The zoo has already proved itself a poor steward of the public's money. A 2002 report from the Office of the Legislative Auditor General faulted it for a dangerous moat around the elephant exhibit; auditors worried the animals might accidentally push each other in. The zoo's response was to build a costly and expensive elephant swimming channel, where, they say, elephants "can completely submerge and swim from one end to the other." In practice, no elephants have swum in this channel, because elephants only do so if trained from infancy to do so. None of the zoo's elephants have been so trained.

The zoo's parking presents another problem. The 2002 audit found that the zoo has woefully inadequate parking. To accommodate the 1 million-plus annual visitors the zoo is aiming for, the audit estimates the zoo will need at least 2,000 parking spaces. While the zoo does plan to use $12.5 million of the proposed bond for additional parking, officials are determined to build just 375 parking spaces in the main lot and 430 spaces in the south lot. And anyone who's had to dodge zoogoers on Sunnyside Avenue knows who's right.

To hit its target of 1 million-plus visitors without additional parking, the zoo plans to spend part of its $65 million adding Christmas lights. While those lights would surely be beautiful, it's hard to imagine Salt Lake County residents paying to see the zoo's lights, when the lights at Temple Square (and in numerous neighborhoods throughout the valley) are free.

Apparently the zoo feels the Living Planet Aquarium and Cabela's freshwater aquarium aren't up to snuff, because the zoo wants to spend $15 million of this bond on its own aquarium. This poor judgment may be a function of the zoo board's geographic isolation. While the zoo wants residents of the entire county to pay for this bond — the zoo itself won't pay a nickel — nearly all of its board members come from the east side of the Salt Lake valley.