Approves an increase in certain admission and facility rental fees at the Denver Zoo (XC40345).
A question. Go right ahead, president. So Council Bill 698 approves an increase in certain admission and fees at the Denver Zoo. So if a representative from the Denver. Zoo would come up. Would appreciate it. If you could introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Shannon. I'm president and CEO of the Denver Zoo. I want to thank you, council president and the council members for being here today. It's an honor. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Shannon, when you came to committee to talk. About. Your proposal to. Increase. Fees. Your r your. Presentation was very compelling as to why there is a need to increase the fees. Could you go over that? Especially because. People love the zoo. And this. Is a good opportunity. To talk about why you need that increase? Sure. So at a high level, there's several different areas and one of them is the increase in food costs we're seeing. I told you about Billy, our elephant who eats over £100 of hay and produce each each day. And the cost of hay, for example, has gone up 77%. Frozen food up 27%. Dry food up 18%. Groceries 16%. In addition, we are fortunate enough to have an animal hospital on site, but our veterinarian costs of caring for the animals has gone up. And I told you about Mr. Orangutan that has daily nebulizer treatments. When we look at our vet operation budget, it's up 51%, vaccinations up 100%, medications up 150%. Diagnostic testing up 108% since we last came in front of you. Also, our maintenance, we have over 100 and city building. Over 100 city buildings were over 118 years old. We have 85 acres and we've seen a 39% increase in our maintenance since the last time we were here. And that being said, I don't take price increases lightly. We are the public zoo. It's all about access and affordability. So we talked about this before, but I just want to remind council that 69% of our admission is free or discounted. Absolutely free admission. So you're not paying a penny to come to the zoo. That's over 350,000 people a year. It's valued at over $5 million. We have over nine free days scheduled for the next year. And then for anyone that's listening, if you're like, I really want to come to the zoo, but, you know, I don't have a car or I needed to find a meal tonight or something like that . How am I going to have access to the zoo? Well, we have something called a Red Apples scholarship fund where we've given over $1.5 million. And if you do Google, you can Google Denver Zoo and Red Apple to get access to those funds to come to the zoo for absolutely free. And families can use it. Teachers can use it. It's available to everyone in our community. And if you submit a request, we get back to within 48 hours. When we look at everyone that comes to the zoo overall over a over a year's time, I know one of the questions I get is, is it affordable? Is our zoo still affordable? Our average ticket price, when you kind of look at it all together and take an average, is $5.31. So I feel that we're still very assessable to the community, but it's something that I think about often and I don't take lightly. When when we were having our conversation in committee, there was a program. That. You had talked about working with. Other cultural. And Denver Parks Recreation. Do you have any news on that proposed program? Yeah, thank you. So I didn't mention that too. So two very wonderful programs, five by five. So five cultural arts by the time kids are five years old, is a program. And then the My Denver Card, which is also a fabulous program. And the zoo is involved in both of those, but it's much bigger than the zoo. It involves swimming pools, a museum of nature and science in several different areas. So. So you are going to be involved in the. Absolutely. Absolutely. So in the five by five program, currently 40% of the program redemptions come to the zoo. And we're going to continue to be involved and support those important community programs. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Monteiro. Councilman Brooks. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank, Shannon. Welcome. Congratulations on your new position. So I think Councilwoman Monteiro and you just answer most of my questions, but just a baseline question. I don't think we covered what's the increase, what's the cost now and what's the increase you're asking for? Yeah. So the increase in high season is $2 and in low season it's $1. And so if you look at I mean, there's only so many zoo comparables, but if you look at us compared to like Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. It's still cheaper, even though we're twice the acreage, many more animals, much more attendance. So so how much does it cost today. To go to. Right. So it's going to go from $15 to $17 in high season and $12 to $13 in the low season. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Brooks. Any other questions or comments? All right. That was not called out. So we will go to the SEC. Go to the next one, which is bills for final consideration, which I believe, Madam Secretary. The first one was 620, caught out by Councilwoman Fox.