news-record.com

Even though the North Carolina Zoo needs more help from taxpayers to grow, next year isn't the time to request more state funding, a legislative committee decided Tuesday.

Zoo officials and legislators who represent Randolph County said the zoo needs to be able to put more of its ticket receipts toward repairing its exhibits and building new ones.

Dedicating 70 percent of sales to such capitol items would let the park open a third continent of animal exhibits.

In order to make that change, taxpayers would need to pick up more of the park's operating costs, to the tune of about $4 million annually.

With the economy in recession and tax dollars hard to come by, committee members said the shift any shift that would require more tax dollars to pay for the park's everyday operations needs to be put off.

"Our timing couldn't be worse right now," said Rep. Cullie Tarleton, a Democrat from the western North Carolina counties of Ashe and Watauga.

Still Tarleton and Rep. Harold Brubaker, a Randolph County Republican, said they would keep the idea alive and pitch it in a future session, maybe during the General Assembly's 2010 meetings.

The North Carolina Zoological Park Funding and Organization Study Committee did make several requests for changes in laws related to the zoo. They include:

* exempting the zoo from state laws that prohibit state agencies from carrying out commercial activities. This would allow the zoo to participate in things like the development of hotels.

* allowing the zoo to consider the over-all value of a contract rather than just the purchase price when dealing with vendors like food distributors. This would allow the zoo to count things like advertising given in-kind when deciding whether to go with a particular vendor.

* permanently establish the zoo committee to continue restructuring and overseeing the zoo.

Those recommendations will go to the General Assembly when it reconvenes in January.