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Monday, August 23, 2010

VOODOO ECONOMICS IS ALIVE & WELL IN SALISBURY

Would you believe that the City Zoo supports (whatever that means) 102 local jobs?

Well, how about $14.5 Million in "Zoo-related tourism" (whatever that means)?

Click on images to enlarge.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Higher education huh.

Anonymous said...

Anyone actual believe 350K people visit the Salisbury Zoo? Nearly a thousand visitors a day(958)? Suuuuure.

Anonymous said...

And that each of them pumps about $40 into local businesses each time they go the the Zoo. Where did that man Deriker get his degrees?

Anonymous said...

Memo Deriker strikes (out) again!

This is BS -- that special computer program is crap or they don't know how to use it ("garbage in -- garbage out".)

Anonymous said...

Memo Deriker is the exact same person who said that the local factory closings - (loss of manufacturing) - was not going to have a signficant impact on our local economy. He was quoted in The Daily Times during their interview.

I've got news for Memo - YOU WERE DEAD WRONG THEN, AND, NOW!!!

Anonymous said...

That new dean of the Perdue Business School should clean house ASAP. This analysis is really ridiculous.

Sounds like Obama's hype for stimulus and his "Obamacare" BS

Anonymous said...

What would they do if that computer program told them the sky was falling?

Anonymous said...

Sure would like to see an itemized detail of how they got these figures. Maybe the Washington D.C. Zoo has those figures , but certainly not Salisbury. I'm retired and frequent the zoo , during the week I see maybe 5 or 10 people there. Must be a mistake and added too many 00's.

J.Albero said...

It should be noted that while some of you may believe there's a ton of people in the Zoo all the time, 8 months out of the year there's next to no one there at all. They throw these figures out while your mind is remembering tons of traffic during the summer days.

Nothing against Joel but everyone knows these numbers are bogus, hence using an OUTSIDE source to compile them.

They're fluffing the numbers because they want the State of Maryland Taxpayers to foot all of, (or at least the majority) money into remodeling the Zoo.

If the Salisbury Zoo ever told the TRUTH with ANY of their numbers they would be shut down immediately.

Politicians LIE and Boards LIE. These people want to feel important and in many cases they should. However, LYING to us taxpayers to suck more money out of us during such difficult times is out of line.

I WANT TO SEE MORE POLICE OFFICER, CARS, EQUIPMENT!!!!! Not more BS at the Salisbury Zoo.

Contact your Mayor and City council and tell them you're NOT going to buy any more of their BS any more.

Anonymous said...

Joe:

Although BEACON's analysis is based on "junk Science" (as it always is) it does suggest that the Zoo could charge a moderate entrance fee that would generate significant revenue and thereby reduce the public funding by the City of Salisbury.

Anonymous said...

I was shocked to see that 350,000 people visit the zoo. I'm not sure which days that happens, but I can tell you that there need to be 2,000 people days to make up for each one where I visited. And this doesn't even include the fact that they are not open 365 days a year. Do you really think 2,000 people even visit the zoo in a week?

But since 1,000 people visit a day, I propose that we charge each of them $2. That will give them $700,000 in operating revenue to do their work with. It's additional revenue with no tax increases or sacrifices, and those who use the zoo are the ones who are funding its operations.

The other shocking thing that I see - despite how many thousands we pump into the zoo, it only puts $24,000 in taxes back to the general fund. How sad a rate of return is that?

Anonymous said...

It should be closed.

Anonymous said...

At 53 I have lived here my whole life. Never having had any affiliation with the zoo or its operation whatsoever I still find it a wonderful addition to the city. Whilst it will always need subsidizing the attraction will, in my opinion, be worth it. This all coming from a fiscally conservative republican.

Anonymous said...

Night of the Living Zoo attracts thousands of people at one time. Critter Christmas. Earth Day. Surely, these programs inflate the per day visitation figures.