The Mesker Park Zoo & Botanic Garden Advisory Board held its monthly meeting on May 12, 2026, at 6:15 PM. The board unanimously approved April meeting minutes, received a comprehensive update from Director Beck on attendance, revenue, staffing, animal collection, and upcoming events, and approved four new business items related to capital improvements and pricing.
Good afternoon. Welcome to the May meeting of the Mesker Park Zoom Botanic Garden Advisory Board. I have to call the meeting to order. First up is the minutes from the April meeting. Excuse me. Do we have any additions, edits, changes to those minutes? All those in favor of accepting the minutes as is, say aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Minutes are hereby accepted. Moving along to the report by Director Beck. Good afternoon. It is springtime, so a lot happening, a lot to update on. First on the attendance and revenue report. You can see I think we have is April on here too. Yeah, April's on here too. So 25,371 people in April, which is uh real close to a record April for us. On this sheet, March was a record March. So we're already at 60,000 visitors for the year. Um so it's been a really strong spring so far. Um revenue on the revenue side. Uh this is just uh our gross revenue through the city. Uh so $235,000 for the month of April and 476,000 uh so far here to date. Um so again, a strong, strong start to the spring. Uh gift shop is still uh going really well. We did $54,000 in sales in April. Uh looks like our record was way back in 2023 of $61,000. So it was better than the last year, but kind of almost on track of where we were in 2024. If you remember, last year was kind of a dip for us as far as attendance and revenue. So it is good to see it back on track, so to speak. And then our uh concessionaire venue works. Uh, they report um their gross sales, which is lagging a little bit behind. So their most recent report I guess is February. Uh so we'll get those from them sooner than later. Um, some staffing updates. Uh we are still in dire need of an animal curator. We've been looking for one for better part of oh boy, four or five months. Um, and we're still have a vacancy right now, so we're kind of uh re-looking at our strategy. We've had it posted kind of all over and um just not having any luck getting it filled. Um, other staffing news, we do have summer camp counselors and education part-timers, which are year-round that are currently open and on the city website for applications. So if you know anyone in the education field looking for year-round part-time work or summer camp work, a lot of school teachers uh come and work for us in the summertime to do summer camps, so still trying to fill those roles. Um as far as animal updates, uh spring, like I said, has been a busy time. So the budgies have been out for a little bit now. It got finally got warm enough for them to go out. We've changed their feeding strategy this year. Thank you to Stephanie Sanderson, and uh they're doing really well on the new food. Uh African tortoises are Sulcata tortoises are getting ready to go out, I think this week. Um the giants will probably wait a little bit longer. They're not as easy to move if we get a cold snap for a night or two. So we wait till usually around Memorial Day weekend to put the big ones out or the bigger ones.