Article published February 24, 2006
It's Detroit politics that's the real zoo
DETROIT - There are times when the news gets so bizarre that you know it has to be real, since nobody could make this stuff up.
Last week was one of those times - and a time when any sane person from Detroit might have wanted to walk around with a bag over his head.
Motown boosters basking in the glow of a successful Super Bowl had to hope the nation's eyes were elsewhere.
What else can you say when the city council, in a spasm of hostility toward the mayor and the suburbs, voted to close the Detroit Zoo, one of the area's most popular cultural attractions, rather than turn it over to an entity that could pay for it?
For months it had been clear that the cash-strapped city could no longer afford to run the zoo, which is actually in the nearby northern suburbs of Huntington Woods and Royal Oak.
The zoo, founded in 1928, actually has been a major success story in recent years, drawing more than a million visitors a year, the vast majority of whom are not from Detroit proper. Director Ron Kagan has won widespread praise for revitalizing the zoo, modernizing its exhibits, and improving the habitat for the animals.The city has contributed about a quarter of the zoo's operating budget in recent years, but it has been clear to all that it can no longer afford to do so. For months Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick had been working on a plan to transfer operations to the Detroit Zoological Society.
State officials, who regard the zoo as one of Michigan's cultural resources, offered a $4 million aid package to ease the transition, provided that the deal was final by last Sunday night.
The average zoo visitor, whether from the city or the suburbs, would have noticed no difference. The city, which has a deficit of about $300 million, would save $5 million a year.
Last week, the mayor presented the plan to the city council - which shocked everyone by voting 7-2 instead to reject the plan, which meant that the city would have to close the zoo.
Some of the council members, especially Barbara-Rose Collins, seemed to justify their vote on openly racist grounds. She made it clear that she would rather have no zoo than one that was run by whites.
"This is not a plantation," said Ms. Collins, who was once a congressman until she held a fund-raiser in a strip club and lost an election to Mayor Kilpatrick's mother. "Black folks aren't owned by white folks any more," she said, in justifying her vote.
The situation was not helped by L. Brooks Patterson, the loud-mouthed executive of Oakland County, where the zoo is located. "I would rather own a '48 Buick than own Barbara-Rose Collins," he shot back, adding that the city council members themselves belonged in the zoo.
Not all the council members were primarily motivated by race, Some of the naysayers were mostly irritated with Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who dropped his zoo plan in council's lap at 4:45 p.m. Friday, Feb. 17 - and then left to join his mother, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks-Kilpatrick, on a congressional junket to Africa.
What was totally unclear is why the mayor thought it was necessary or appropriate to go on the junket to Africa - or why he didn't come back immediately when the zoo crisis exploded.
There was a moment of comic relief when six of the naysaying councilmen held a press conference. Monica Conyers, a newly elected council member who is the wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D., Detroit), managed to leave everyone speechless.
She suggested that Detroit's major corporations give the city money to help it run the zoo, and suggested that "GM could pay for the elephants."
After an embarrassed pause, reporters explained to her that the zoo has no elephants.
Last year, in a story that drew major national media attention, the elephants were sent to a wildlife sanctuary in California after the zoo director decided they didn't have enough space or an adequate climate to live decent lives in Detroit.
This was clearly news to the councilwoman, who has kept a largely low profile since soon after her election, when she made headlines after becoming involved in a fist fight at a Detroit tavern.
At week's end, angry citizens were picketing and demanding that their zoo be saved, and city and state officials were frantically scrambling to put a deal back together to save the zoo.
The odds seemed good that some kind of an agreement would be worked out, after some cosmetic, face-saving changes were inserted into the deal to mollify city council.
After that, Detroit Zoological Society officials said they might seek to solve the zoo's long-term funding problems by asking for a small regional tax that would be levied on three to seven surrounding counties that are the heaviest users of the zoo.
That would be enough, experts said, to solve the zoo's funding needs for the foreseeable future.
Repairing the damage done to Detroit's image by its leaders' latest antics, however, may not be as simple.
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