PARKS | Rachel Wells
When Rainier, a wolverine born last spring, sees a visitor to Henson Robinson Zoo rounding the corner to see her, she scampers to the front of her exhibit, ready to follow the new face from one end to the other before darting back to track the next.
The lively Rainier, one of the creatures that makes a winter trip to the zoo worthwhile, is bigger and more huggable-looking than the ferrets that belong in her biological family. Her exhibit, funded primarily by the Springfield Zoological Society, hosts a waterfall at the back, twisted tree stumps up front and sculpted cliffs throughout. Rainier’s surroundings look pleasant and comfortable.
A few dozen feet down the pathway, though, is a murky pond in need of dredging and an old exhibit so fortified with cold concrete that a new prison seems a better fit for the playful otters, Tyler and Harriet, who live there. Besides a few aging exhibits, the zoo hosts deteriorating fences, a mangled bridge and leaves – mostly but not all freshly fallen – that cake up against any surface where guests haven’t stepped.
Such are the observations of at least one zoo volunteer, Larry Estep, who this past spring became a docent, a volunteer with additional training that allows him to handle the animals. The Springfield Park District and zoo staff, from top to bottom, have let the place go, Estep says. He adds that some of the problems became more apparent after the zoo last spring cut its full-time staff by nearly half as its solution to park district budget cuts. “The quality of the facility has gone down considerably since the layoffs,” he says. “With only one maintenance person, it became immediately obvious that they were fighting a losing battle.”
Since Estep took his concerns to Springfield Park District administrators, who are the ultimate overseers of the zoo, things have changed some, but until recently zookeepers never locked the holding building (where the spare alligators are kept), zoo administrators never required them to do so, and the maintenance crew just couldn’t keep up with larger tasks including tree trimming and fence repair.
Behind the scenes, morale among zoo staff members is low, but, then again, about half of the zoo’s full-time staff members, many of them long-term employees, were laid off in April. Many of them were rehired to do the same work but as part-time seasonal employees with fewer hours, no benefits and about onethird less pay. Still, laid-off zookeepers complain that internal politics have always been an issue, and administrators themselves admit communication has been lacking for years.
Boiling point
Property tax revenues for the Springfield Park District this year are about $120,000 lower than last year, part of the reason the park district chose to change its budgeting policies to provide a more accurate picture of what it costs to run each of its facilities and departments, including Henson Robinson Zoo.
Until this year, the park district’s administrative budget shouldered the burden of each park’s utility and health insurance costs. This year, the park district charged individual facilities for such costs.
For the zoo, the policy shift meant squeezing nearly $140,000 of new expenses into its budget, which last year stood at about $711,000. This year, the park district approved for the zoo a $700,500 budget, a little more than $10,000 less than last year, despite the additional costs.