Fund will help city’s zoo fix lack of accreditation

The city’s quest to regain accreditation for the Honolulu Zoo received a big boost this week when Oahu voters approved an amendment to the City Charter that requires 0.5 percent of estimated property tax revenue each year to be dropped into an account set up to exclusively fund the 42-acre facility.

Both Zoo Director Baird Fleming and City Council Chairman Ernie Martin, who pressed for Charter Amendment Proposal 9, said they viewed the question as a referendum on the future of the zoo.

They said the amendment’s passage signals that a majority of Oahu voters want to take the steps necessary for the zoo to regain accreditation from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which stripped Honolulu of its seal of approval in March.

The charter amendment’s passage “makes a very clear showing that the community wants to have a well-funded, AZA-accredited zoo,” Fleming said Thursday. “That really kind of bolsters the confidence (of) elected officials to let them know that we’re doing the right thing. The community wants to have a successful zoo.”

“If it hadn’t passed, we would have had to move in a different direction,” Martin said Thursday.

The amendment passed with 154,035 “yes” votes, or about 57 percent. There were 115,552 “nos,” or about 43 percent.

AZA officials cited the lack of steady and consistent funding as a key reason for its decision to deny the zoo reaccreditation.

AZA officials pointed out that zoo funding seemed to get a boost only in the period prior to AZA review but would go back down again after reaccreditation, Fleming said. “Their complaint regarding the financials was that, historically speaking, they felt that the budget, or the financials, for this institution have kind of fluctuated depending on their adjacency to the accreditation inspection. They want to see consistent, stable or increased funding over a period of time.”

Establishing a mandatory funding stream also takes the politics out of how much the zoo should be funded annually, Martin said. Regardless of the political whims of either the mayor or the City Council, the zoo will continue to get a set share of revenue, he said.

One-half of 1 percent of annual property tax revenue comes out to between $6.5 million and $8 million annually, which is not far off from the amount taxpayers currently subsidize the zoo, which cannot sustain itself financially through ticket sales, other revenue and donations, Martin said.

Martin introduced the bill that established a dedicated zoo fund earlier this year, clearing the way for the set-aside to begin on July 1, 2017. The fund would be repealed after six years if the zoo does not regain accreditation.

A key argument against establishing the funding source is the flip side of Martin’s argument about taking the politics out of the situation. Community advocate Natalie Iwasa, a certified public accountant, has always opposed special funds dedicated to specific purposes.

“Special funds such as this are bad fiscal policy because they erode the base of city revenues and remove flexibility,” Iwasa said in a recent essay posted online at the Hawai‘i Advocates for Consumer Rights website. The city would not be able to use money parked in the fund to handle crises should they arise, she said.

THE AMENDMENT states that money from the fund can be used only for “the operation, repair, maintenance and improvement of the Honolulu Zoo.” That would include paying zoo workers, acquiring zoo animals, and debt service owed for capital improvements.

Any money remaining in the fund at the end of the fiscal year would not lapse, but would carry over to the following year, the amendment states.

Martin said the city should continue to explore other ways of adding to the zoo’s revenue stream, including partnerships with private entities and new partnership projects with the Honolulu Zoological Society, which is tasked with supporting the zoo.

Fleming said the loss of accreditation has not led to any hiccups in relations with the AZA or its accredited zoos. The relationship is critical because neither the AZA nor its zoos typically send animals to or accept animals from facilities that are not accredited. There were early concerns that Honolulu would lose some of the animals it has on loan from elsewhere.

That has not happened, he said. “The institutions understand that (the loss of accreditation) was not an animal issue,” he said.

The Caldwell administration wants to apply for accreditation in either 2018 or 2019, Fleming said. AZA officials advised that the city should have “its ducks in line” before approaching the association, he said.

Many of the improvements that AZA sought already had been underway when the loss of accreditation was announced in March. Some began when he first became director in 2015, Fleming said.

“All of last year we had multiple projects going on, to the degree where it really affected our attendance,” Fleming said. “At one point we had 14 construction projects going on all at the same time.”

THE CITY EXPECTS to undertake another 10 projects in the next year, “but they’re much smaller in scope,” Fleming said. Most involve improvements of existing facilities such as rust mitigation in several exhibits.

Also on tap in the next year is bringing back into public viewing the zoo’s two sun bears, which lost their exhibit space to the elephant exhibit several years ago, Fleming said. The sun bears will be located next to the reptile and amphibian complex that’s scheduled to open by spring.

Fleming, who became zoo director in February 2015 and has been with the zoo for four years, said a new Hawaii exhibit should get underway in 2018 that will feature native plants and animals. It will be near the zoo’s front entrance, he said.