Saint John zoo facing budget crunch

Saint John is trying to decide how to run the city with ten percent less money from the province. That's how much the province is trimming from municipal grants.

Cherry Brook Zoo is one of many organizations which rely on financial help from the city.

The Zoo is nationally recognized and accredited but it's suffered through budget cuts regularly since 1993.

Director of Zoo Development Linda Collrin says the cuts amount to nearly $300,000.

Where do you draw the line. What we're dealing with are living entities that require a certain standard of care and when we come to a point where we feel the animals are not going to receive the quality care, that's when we have to start thinking 'what are we doing here'?

The zoo's budget is $280,000 a year. The Moncton Zoo has a budget in excess of $700,000.

The comparison frustrates Collrin. She has struggled to come up with a $35,000 deficit this year and wonders where the decreasing grants will lead.

I guess the question I have to ask when I look around the city is, are we going to close this city down? Is that what's going to happen?

Councillor Chris Titus says reducing the grants to these organizations won't be enough. He says fire and police are the city's two biggest budget items.

If we were just bold faced to make $2.1 million cut right across the board -- if we didn't touch fire and police, quite frankly, I don't think we could come up with it from all the small groups that appear before us. It just couldn't be done. We have to seriously look at fire and police. And nobody wants to do that.

The zoo's board chairman has threatened to resign and turn it over to the city if it doesn't get more money.