The St. Louis Zoo is a regional and national treasure. Consistently voted one of the best in the nation, it annually attracts upwards of 3 million visitors.
Where does the zoo obtain its basic funding? Since 1972 an annual property tax levied against residents of St. Louis and St. Louis County. That generates $21 million a year and is essential to its operations. Of the $21M, a whopping 80 percent is footed by St. Louis County residents and properties. All revenues are carefully supervised by the independent Zoo Museum District (the ZMD).
Yet now the zoo has put on the St. Louis County November 6 ballot Proposition Z, a one-eighth percent sales tax that would be in addition to its existing property tax. This is unfair in the extreme for many reasons.
The proposed sales tax would be imposed only in St. Louis County, not St. Louis, not St. Charles, not other ring counties. This on top of the 80 percent of the property taxes St. Louis County already is paying. Now the zoo wants the county to pay all of the sales tax!
The sales tax is highly regressive. It would apply to every taxable sale in St. Louis County including food and other necessities. It would cause overall sales taxes to come close or in many places exceed 10 percent.
There would be no supervision of the sales tax funds by the independent ZMD. All moneys would go directly to the zoo, and it would have the sole discretion on how it spends the funds.
There is no sunset provision. So, if approved, the tax would go on forever without any outside supervision.
Granted, the zoo needs more funds. A far fairer way to raise more money would be a small admission fee charged to non-city or non-county visitors. This is particularly equable since annually more than 55 percent of zoo visitors are neither city nor county residents! The fee would raise millions of dollars annually from the more than 1.5 million non-city and non-county zoo visitors. The Missouri Botanical Garden does that right now.
Would non-city and non-county visitors support an admission charge? The answer is yes, as demonstrated in a recent survey which showed a high majority of the residents of St. Charles County who visited the Zoo would support an admission charge.
Rather than approve a tax that is unfair in all respects, we should support the zoo in seeking approval of an admission fee for non-city and non-county visitors.
Ben Uchitelle is a former Clayton mayor and former chair of the Metropolitan Zoo Museum District.
