Brookfield: Don't bite hand that feeds you
In trying to understand why the Village of Brookfield, after decades of peaceful co-existence, wants to stick Brookfield Zoo with a big new tax on admissions, we're reminded of what Willie Sutton said about why he robbed banks:
"That's where the money is."
The Village of Brookfield, like pretty much every suburb and Chicago, is hurting for money and desperate to find ways to increase revenues without hiking property taxes. If you're the City of Chicago, you resort to half-baked solutions like privatizing parking meters. If you're the Village of Brookfield, you go after the zoo, slapping a 25-cent amusement tax on every admission ticket, hoping to pull in up to $500,000 a year.
This is a bad idea for the zoo, for other tourist attractions on public land in Illinois that shudder at the precedent, for zoo-goers who already pay a stiff admission fee — as much as $25 — and for the law, which appears to prohibit such a tax.
If the tax is not illegal under state law, we trust it soon will be. The General Assembly is likely to push through a bill in January that would prohibit the village from imposing the amusement tax on the zoo. We urge them to do so.
In the long run, the tax might be bad even for the Village of Brookfield, souring its relationship with its single biggest employer and tourist attraction. A more productive approach would be to look for smart ways to capitalize on the zoo's presence, developing new restaurants, shops, gas stations and the like that might draw some of the zoo's 2.2 million visitors.
The heart of the village's complaint is that the zoo is a financial burden, but the village makes little effort to prove the point. As best we can tell, the zoo is far more an asset. The zoo operates its own police force and ambulance service, gets most of its water from a main line that runs largely through Riverside — not Brookfield — and pays Brookfield a water infrastructure fee of $105,000 a year. The zoo does not have its own firefighting equipment, but rarely requests help and can call on other suburban fire departments. About 85 percent of all visitors to the zoo use state and county roads.
Rather than prove the point that the zoo is a financial drain, Brookfield village officials have chosen to emphasize that they're going through tough times, even laying off employees, while executives at the zoo are being paid big salaries. Zoo officials, while making no apologies for what they say are competitive salaries, point out that the zoo also has been forced to cut back, laying off workers and closing several outdoor animal enclosures, called yards.
Further eroding the village's argument is the state law, which more than 80 years ago established the zoo on Cook County Forest Preserve District land, to be operated by the non-profit Chicago Zoological Society. That law is widely read in Springfield as requiring that the zoo's full price of admission be used to run the zoo — and for nothing else. State law also prohibits one government — in this case, the village — from imposing a tax on another government — in this case, the forest preserve district.
The Village of Brookfield would have you believe it is being forced to prop up this enormous and bothersome menagerie. What's the village get out of this except elephant calls in the night?
But that's a hard case to make when your own home-page crows: "Home to the world famous Brookfield Zoo."
