Mayor Tim Johnston says the Thompson Zoo is "not financially sustainable" without support the city and its taxpayers, which is one of the reasons he wants council to move forward slowly when it comes to the wolf park Spirit Way would like to see created near the Thompson Zoo and the future home of the new University College of the North (UCN) campus.
Volker Beckmann, volunteer project co-ordinator; Marion Morberg, president of Spirit Way Inc.; and Tom O'Brien, owner of Arctic Radio CHTM-610 and prominent in Rotary club circles, who is listed as independently supporting the wolf park venture; were all at council May 3 to ask for $20,000 to support the project.
"There is not $20,000 in the budget to support this project," Johnston told the Spirit Way group point blank. He did, however, discuss the option that there might be funding available for the project in a lesser amount - perhaps $10,000, which he says the city usually contributes to such ventures.
A letter dated April 26 addressed to Johnston and council signed by Morberg, Beckmann and O'Brien, as well as Dr. Ken Bingham of the Thompson Veterinary Clinic, and independent Penny Byer, says that the construction of the wolf park "must commence in June 2010 to be completed by spring 2011." It goes on to say that this way, time-sensitive funding the group has won via grants will not be lost. The timeline would allow for the introduction of three new wolf pups in 2011."
Johnston said during the meeting that the Thompson Zoo was a big "elephant in the room" when it came to considering the wolf park and all it would entail.
"We are challenged with the current situation at the Thompson Zoo we know that the current situation is not acceptable," he says. Thompson is one of only two municipalities in Manitoba that funds community zoos, and the mayor says that to keep it going or improve it, the city might have to look to the public via a tax increase.
The other hot issue surrounding the wolf park debate that Johnston mentioned was his concern with what a wolf park might mean to the new UCN campus, which is to be built adjacent to where the Thompson Zoo already exists and where the wolf park is being proposed to go.
UCN has stated that the campus has plans for expansion that go further than what they're working on right now, and Johnston, as he has many times before, pointed out that the new UCN campus is his number one priority for that land, regardless of what other projects or initiatives may come up.
