Concerns about Angela's hunt

Angela Hunt needs to raise her sights. Instead of worrying about whether Jenny, an African elephant now housed in the Dallas zoo should spend her final days in Mexico or in Tennessee, she should be examining policy that enables City of Dallas to be in a business that it might not belong in and probably is not that good at.

Dallas has a council-manager form of government. Essentially that means that an elected city council sets overall governing policy for the city, but it’s left up to the city staff, headed by the city manager, to take care of the day-to-day operations of the city. Former Mayor Laura Miller tried to change this model to give the mayor more say-so over daily operations of the city, but her plan was decisively rejected by voters.

Briefly, here’s the deal. Elephants, so I’ve been told, are much like Bud Abbott or Oliver Hardy – they really need a companion to get through life. Jenny’s companion at the Dallas Zoo, an elephant named Keke, died in early May and since then Jenny hasn’t been doing so hot. Instead of trying to obtain a new companion here, zoo officials looked for a place to move Jenny where she could have proper care as well as the companionship of other pachyderms. They found such a place in Africam Safari Park, a forested wildlife park located 80 miles southeast of Mexico City in the state of Puebla.

Immediately, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals leaped into the discussion. PETA, you see, opposes the idea of zoos, circuses and such, and since the Africam Safari Park is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums is must therefore be a zoo. PETA would rather send Jenny to Guantanamo than anything accredited by the AZA. PETA rallied its local supporters who obviously felt they had an ally in Ms. Hunt, the closest resemblance we’ve had to Don Quixote on the city council since, well, perhaps Max Goldblatt. The self-proclaimed protectors of animals were correct: Ms. Hunt galloped down to Mexico where she took some incriminating videos at the Africam Safari Park of elephants swaying (I am told that, unlike yours truly when I’m listening to the Rolling Stones sing “Brown Sugar,” elephants are not supposed to sway). Then she went to what she wants us to believe is the closest thing to elephant paradise in the western hemisphere, a place called The Elephant Sanctuary near Hohenwald, Tenn., which is about 80 miles southwest of Nashville.

Now, I’m not going to get into an argument here about whether Jenny should be spending the rest of her life in Mexico or in Tennessee, but neither should Ms. Hunt. That is not part of her job description. Those are operational decisions made by the city’s staff, just like the city charter mandates. In this case the decision was made, or at least approved, by Gregg Hudson, the executive director of the Dallas Zoo and also of the Aquarium at Fair Park.

Does Angela Hunt have a role in this at all? Yes, she does and it is a far more important one than becoming the Dian Fossey of the local elephant set. As one of 15 individuals elected to set establish city policy, perhaps Ms. Hunt should be devoting her time and energies into studying the question of whether the City of Dallas should even be in the business of operating a zoo. I have maintained for years the city should not be in this business. The city isn’t good at it. In fact, I had a one-on-one discussion on this very subject late one night with former City Manager Teodoro (Ted) Benavides when he was facing a budget crisis similar to one the city is facing today. Now I’m not an expert on zoos, but I have been on numerous occasions to the San Diego Zoo and the Bronx Zoo and, to my untrained eye, those are fine zoos. The San Antonio Zoo, when I lasted visited it 20 or so years ago, while not in a class with San Diego or the Bronx Zoo, seemed to me to be a worthwhile visit. The Dallas Zoo? Not so much. It seems to exist solely because someone decided many years ago that the city needed a zoo – any zoo will do – so we got this one.

Fort Worth, on the other hand, has a much better zoo. I would like Ms. Hunt and the other members of the Dallas City Council to examine the following question: Why shouldn’t Dallas just get rid of it’s zoo and join Fort Worth in marketing that city’s zoo as a regional attraction?

I would rather see the tax money that currently goes into running the Dallas Zoo be used to maintain and upgrade other park facilities around the city that are showing signs of neglect. Now that’s a policy matter and one that I would like to see members of the city council seriously consider. That is their proper role, not second-guessing or overruling the operational decisions of the city’s staff.

I sided with Ms. Hunt on her fight to keep a high-speed roadway out of a city park. I broke ranks with her on her opposition to a Dallas Convention Center Hotel because the preponderance of evidence shows it could be a financial boom for the city (and I was concerned that she was showing too much allegiance to officials from Crow Holdings who have the most to lose, financially, from the construction of such a hotel and thus should never be positioned as objective sources). But her trips to Mexico and Tennessee during the council’s July recess period come across like grandstanding of the highest order. Call me a cynic, but she seems to be playing re-election politics at the expense of a lonely elephant when there are a lot more important policy decisions she should be concerned about.