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Overhaul Zoo's Board, But Don't Toss It To Wolves

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 23, 2008

Beating up on the Lowry Park Zoo board has been easy in recent weeks.

A startling lack of oversight became apparent during a series of revelations about how zoo President-CEO Lex Salisbury mixed up the zoo in his private business affairs.

The board requested and received Salisbury's resignation last week at a closed meeting where deputies were hired to keep the public and the media away. This generated further unfavorable publicity.

There is no question the board policies and procedures require an overhaul. And its public status must be emphasized.

The city of Tampa owns the animals and land, but it is important to remember that board members volunteer their time and contribute thousands, even millions, of dollars to the zoo. The board's job is to help raise money and make sure the zoo is run efficiently, and in that respect the zoo has been a great success.

During Salisbury's tenure, the zoo was transformed from one of the worst in the nation into one of the best.

It attracted a record number of visitors and yet had one of the smallest subsidies of any public zoo in the nation, about 6 percent, thanks to its robust fundraising and rigorous cost controls.

So the board, as well as city and county officials, had cause to think all was well.

It has now become clear, through the reporting of the Tribune's Baird Helgeson and a city audit, that Salisbury was allowed to engage in dubious transactions, buying from and selling animals to the zoo and using zoo animals, equipment and supplies for Safari Wild, a private, for-profit attraction he's developing in Polk County.

The audit found other questionable expenditures.

The board, of course, should have been more attentive. The lack of a strong ethics policy could have prevented the unwise decisions that ultimately cost Salisbury his job.

But all that is easy to say in retrospect. What board members saw was a facility that enjoyed impressive and improving numbers and a president who could speak with authority on every aspect of the zoo's operation.

So for critics to act as if the board sat on its hands while Salisbury ran the zoo into the ground is ridiculous.

Sure, the board made mistakes as the affair began to unfold. Members should have listened to former Gov. Bob Martinez's concerns about conflicts earlier.

But it was precisely because Salisbury ran such a successful operation that the board became too trusting.

What's important now is to build a strong board that has sufficient oversight and is accountable to the public. Already some reforms have been made, including placing representatives of the city, county and school board on the executive committee.

Mayor Pam Iorio rightly wants to develop ethics and accountability policies that would apply to all private nonprofits that receive city funds. Also important is a policy for appointing members that ensures objectivity. Salisbury essentially determined the executive board to which he reported.

Public board meetings, too, are a must. It's understandable that members didn't want a crowd while discussing the fate of its long-time leader. But the members are going to have to learn to operate in the public if they expect citizens' support and government funding.

As the board looks for new leadership, a priority should be finding an administrator accustomed to working in the public and who understands the importance of transparency.

Because of the damaging revelations, that leader will have a lot of work to do to restore the public's confidence. But that leader also will take over an efficiently run, nationally renowned zoo - something that should be kept in mind before critics pillory the civic-minded individuals serving on its board.

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