At this point in time, you indicated that you weren’t directly in charge at some point in your San Francisco job for the day to day of the keepers, but did you become responsible when the zoo society took over or never?… Read More
Well, it was eventually evolved. It was put into the contract that they would have to do it. The city would have to supply them with the uniforms. The city would have to clean the uniforms. The city would have to give them so many changes of uniforms. It eventually… Read More
How was that ultimately resolved?… Read More
I thought it was better for me personally, especially in terms of the managers and the retire. Here I am, I have tenure or 10, 15, 18 years, whatever years of service already with the zoo and into the city’s retirement system, I thought I was better off staying there,… Read More
Was your job gonna be in jeopardy or you just felt it was better for you personally?… Read More
Was there any danger in keeping with the city?… Read More
Oh, you’re responsible for transporting animals in and out of the zoo. You move animals internationally. Oh, transportation, bus driver. That’s the closest one, you should be in the bus driver’s union. Viola, I became a member of the bus driver’s union, which was a very strong union and everyone… Read More
What are your duties?… Read More
I wasn’t initially in a union, but then they made some rule of saying that everyone had to be in a union. So then civil service in their brilliance, started going through all these different classifications that weren’t in unions and started, they had assigned them to unions. So the… Read More
And, and I don’t know who on the zoo side, if Saul was involved when they were separate entities with their contract and in terms of the city contract, that was part of the city master contract. I mean, there were people that sat in from the recreation park department,… Read More
Well, first of all, the general curator came, though initially I was the only curator. Then there were multiple curators. I wasn’t general curator in charge of animal, whole department officially until 2010, when they’ve created the society, created the position that there will be, it was a department, the… Read More
Did you personally, as the general curator have to deal with the unions and how did that affect the zoo?… Read More
We always had the basics to run the zoo. And I forgot the point that I was trying to make. Well, when you were talking about the zoo society, you said were talking about unions. Read More
I think it’s fortunately, I never took budget seriously in the end. I have no experience with budgeting Lincoln Park, but at Evansville and one of my first introductions as a management was a budget issue. But over the years I saw that it didn’t matter, you may not be… Read More
The city had many more holidays than the zoological society. There was talk about the zoological society, I believe. And their initial contract wouldn’t allow employees to take vacation in the summer because that’s the busiest season. Well that wasn’t in the city’s contract, all of this caused a lot… Read More
Same union, there were Teamsters, but a different contract and the city had its own contract and there were different pay rates and there were different benefits. People could be working next to each other, and they have basically the same job description, totally different pay scale, benefits. That made… Read More
Of course there were difficulties. Let’s first talk about the employees, when the city and the society came up with an agreement, and I think it is a 99 year contract with there’s an option every five years, it’s either five years or 10 years, to renew or to make… Read More
Any difficulties?… Read More
Can you talk about the general transition from a public zoo to a society operated zoo?… Read More
You mentioned the zoo did ultimately go private. Read More