City Council to meet on Zoo admission

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - The Albuquerque City Council will take a look at rolling back the admission increase to the various Bio Park facilities at Monday night's meeting. The proposal from City Councilors will still see an increase in ticket prices, just not as much as the ones put into place last week. The bill sponsored by Councilors Ken Sanchez and Debbie O'Malley will scale back last weeks increase from a $10 admission for adults to $8 dollars.

The initial jump went from $7 to $10 without any input from the council, something that had them in an uproar. The biggest complaint is that raising the rates in a tough economy would cause the number of people going to the zoo to drop off.

A number of other fees for the various bio park exhibits will also be adjusted and addressed at tonights City Council meeting.

Meanwhile, zoo officials say the increase is needed to go to badly needed upgrades to the facility. They also say they haven't had a price hike in the last ten years, still city councilors say last weeks prices were too much. City Councilor Ken Sanchez also told News 13 that the discussion of raising rates went before the council last year, but was shut down at that time.

"The staff told me they were going to probably lose 10 percent in attendance because of these increases," said City Councilor Ken Sanchez. "That's close to 100,000 people in our city that will no longer be able to go to the Bio Park, the zoo or the botanic gardens."

The council will also decide if the money from the rate increase will stay with the zoo or somewhere else.