Say you had a chance to design Toronto's municipal government from scratch, determining which services it needs to deliver to meet its basic obligations to city residents. Would running a zoo be one of them?
When the city began the most thorough review of its operations ever taken, it called the process the core-services review. The idea was to determine which services were really fundamental – must-haves as opposed to nice-to-haves, as Mayor Rob Ford put it.
Things like policing, firefighting, emergency services, garbage collection and public health obviously qualify, though it is certainly possible to perform all of them more efficiently. Zoos are another question.
Running the zoo costs the city around $12-million a year. KPMG consultants identified this as discretionary spending – in other words, a nice-to-have. Attendance was down last year to about 1.3 million, though zoo officials blame that on the recession and predict it will bounce back.
More than three decades after opening, the zoo is showing its age and its directors have discussed launching a 10-year, $250-million campaign to bring it up to snuff. That seems unlikely to happen as long as a cash-strapped city, struggling just to provide basic transit and other services, is in charge.
Politics have hampered the zoo's progress. Two city councillors resigned from the zoo board in anger in 2008 over the way it was being run and the zoo cut its ties to an underperforming volunteer fundraising foundation.
The KPMG consultants suggest selling the zoo, giving it to the federal government or turning it over to a non-profit group. "The creation of an independent non-profit corporation to operate the zoo would broaden its potential funding base, and give it the independence to apply entrepreneurship to improving its financial performance," said KPMG.
City manager Joe Pennachetti agrees. On Monday, he revealed he has asked for the authority to search for private companies or other parties who might "purchase, lease or operate" the zoo. "The current city-agency model," he says, "has not allowed the Toronto Zoo to raise sufficient funds from other sources to become financially self-sustaining."
It is at least worth exploring. Many other big-city zoos, like London's, are operated by independent zoological societies. In Chicago, the Shedd Aquarium, Brookfield Zoo and Lincoln Park Zoo are all run by private societies, though they sit on government land. New ownership or management at Toronto's zoo might help give the place a shake, freeing it from unimaginative city leadership.
Dallas, Denver and San Diego all have privately operated zoos. Los Angeles city council voted last month to ask private companies and non-profit groups to submit proposals to manage its zoo.
There are plenty of real and legitimate questions about Mr. Ford's cost-cutting campaign. He promised no cuts, "guaranteed," yet now the city is considering dozens, from cutting the number of subsidized daycare spaces to reducing snow-clearing and grass-cutting standards.
As decision time approaches, the proposed cuts seem much less radical than many critics had feared. Getting rid of windrow clearing (opening up driveways blocked by snowplowing) hardly seems the end of the world – and seniors would continue to have the service. Nor does ending Community Environment Days, eliminating the practice of giving out four free garbage tags a year to residents or ending a service that picked up pets from owners who wanted to hand them over to shelters.
In all, the proposed cuts would save about $100-million – incidentally, the same amount that Mr. Ford gave up in city revenues when he killed the car-registration tax and froze property taxes for a year. Where the rest of the money will come from to close the city's $774-million budget shortfall is far from clear.
But the process has at least provided the city with a chance to look at practices and agencies that cry out for change. The zoo is one.
Marcus Gee