Well, the society was advocating, I mean their ability to raise money. they could go to the private sector and Lord knows, San Francisco bay area is a very rich area. There was a lot of money, a lot of philanthropic money in the area. They said, people were hesitant. Read More
What was the minuses of this changeover?… Read More
Many times when this changeover occurs in various zoos, but in San Francisco, when it’s changed over from public to private or run by the zoo society, in your opinion, what was the pluses?… Read More
The senior keepers managed were the day to day supervisors and would do the appraisals of the keepers in their section. Initially, probably, the zoo was very bad and the personnel department didn’t enforce it. Early on, evaluations were rarely done, but the senior keepers would be managing X amount… Read More
How did you manage the animal keepers though in the beginning, if you didn’t have direct authority to manage them?… Read More
No, ultimately like about in 2010, I became the department head for animal management and it was the largest department in the zoo. And I had myself and my staff of curators, man, managing the animal management department separate. And it was separate from the veterinary departments and it’s an… Read More
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