"Happy Faces" Save Lehigh Valley Zoo

It was a packed house at the Lehigh County meeting room last night. Aside from the hundred or so zoo supporters, reporters were everywhere. The Morning Call's Darryl Isherwood, The Express Times' Tony Nauroth, Channel 69's Bo Koltnow and the East Penn Press were all on hand. The only commissioner missing was conservative Glenn Eckhart, who was probably out somewhere eating bison burgers. The fate of the nearly bankrupt Lehigh Valley Zoo was on the line, but by the time the smoke had cleared, Lehigh County Commissioners had breathed new life into the facility.

Commissioners agreed, 7 to 1, to pump $525,000 this year to keep the zoo open, with another $325,000 over each of the next four years. This is the solution that Lehigh County Executive Don Cunningham had proposed. He had previously argued it would cost just as much to close the place down. Only Dean Browning was opposed. He preferred giving the zoo $200,000 to meet its obligations now while commissioners and zoo officials work out a business plan, which is already partially developed.

Before things got started, Chairman Percy Dougherty asked the audience, "How many are here to support the zoo?" Nearly every hand went up. He then asked how many oppose the zoo. Not one hand one up. That includes Dougherty's potential Republican rival for commissioner this year, Marc Prinzinger.

Here in Blogistan, we were already firing up the barbeques and preparing for a feast of prairie dogs and penguins. But zoo supporters had a secret weapon last night that quickly destroyed all zoo opposition.

Kids.

Cute little girls got up to save the animals. A ten-year old girl, Ashley, presented Commissioners with a petition signed by her her classmates at McKinley Elementary. She was followed by eleven-year old Amanda Jones, a Shoemaker Elementary student and future veterinarian, who told Commissioners, "I have no animals at home, only a hamster and a fish. At the zoo, I got to watch a lot of happy faces. If someone closes the zoo, it will make me very sad."

Game over. How the hell do you argue with that?

After the kids had made the sale, I thought a bison had entered the room. It was Carol Loomis, whose name pops up everytime the zoo is mentioned. She wasn't really there to oppose public funding, but wanted Commissioners to know about the "suppression of information about what is done to the animals." She's quite the eloquent speaker. According to Loomis, 35 prairie dogs became road kill on Rte. 309 after making an escape, seven kangaroos suddenly became just three and Zorro the Skunk has disappeared. I was waiting for her to reveal the location of a secret lab where animal experiments are conducted.

Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it?

But as I learned from zoo officials after the meeting, Loomis is looney. The prairie dogs caper did occur, but under previous tenants. Zorro did decide to move to a new zoo and who the hell is going to stop a skunk? The kangaroos were split up to different zoos because they are siblings and if they mate, we'll have three headed kangaroos who shit bison burgers. One 'roo did die of cancer.

I was impressed, as always, by the way commissioners treated each other as well as the public. In fact, so were several of the spectators, who complimented this classy set of leaders. So what did they say?

Dougherty: "I am a big supporter of the zoo. ... This is an important part of the quality of life. To close the zoo would be a great travesty."

Browning: "We're putting the cart before the horse. ... I'm not willing to commit to $325,000 in the out years when we are not sure what we are undertaking."

Andy Roman: "I'd like to send out zoo fliers with the tax bills."

Bill Leiner: "The administration has done an extremely good job. We did not give enough oversight to the zoo."

Dan McCarthy: "We're talking about a second last chance here tonight, but I'm not so sure there will be a third last chance."

Gloria Hamm: "I've heard a lot of words. Let's get on with it." [Audience applauds]

David Jones: "If saving the zoo is the end game, then we should put forth the right numbers. Eventually the third strike will come. We're trying to avoid that."

My hero, Sterling Raber, nodded and smiled, but said nothing. He's a wise man.

As the meeting winded down, there was none of the acrimony I see in Northampton County. Conservative Browning joked about providing a copy of The Daily Worker to Democrat Bill Leiner, and he responded "Thank you, comrade."

This is the finest group of municipal legislators in the Lehigh Valley. I feel sorry for Darryl Isherwood, who regularly covers this group. I'll ask Ron Angle to attend their next meeting.

Afternoon Update: This blog is experiencing a Trollvilla attack. Inflammatory, irrelevant and off-topic messages are being posted to evoke outrage and disrupt the usually informative, on-topic discussion. I refuse to enable comment moderation, which I suspect is the goal here. I will delete the comments that appear, and ask that you ignore the childish and petty behavior. I realize that is hard to do, but it seems to work better than anything else.