Daily News from New York, New York • 45

"UnniimffiirfiiMiiiii jc, -v m' liiMti vi liirniwai 'd idm' 'fii Ttit lYiiiMr'iifflr srtftiir i Trti in rr i i 1 irtfr I'm iff a 1 "4 oeey tor bears or people By BELLA ENGLISH mOM HIS THIRD-FLOOR OFFICE, Gordon Davis has a lovely view of the Central Park Zoo. Lovely, that is, if he could stand to look "When you spend $27 million on animals instead of people, there is something seriously wrong with people's priorities." Odyssey, a nonprofit organization that provides and services for abused youths, gets about "$200,000 a year from the city. "I don't begrudge the zoo anything. I like animals, too," Elahi says. "But spending that much money on zoos when President Reagan, Gov.

Carey and Koch say we can't afford this and that, I think it's a luxury. When all the social services programs are struggling to stay alive, it's an indulgence to spend that much money on zoos right now." Robert Hayes, counsel to the Coaliffon for the Homeless, believes he could put $27 million to a more humane use. "We could take 70 of the homeless people sitting in armories and flophouses and put them into smaller residences and, within a year, we would start saving the city $15 million a year by getting the homeless people on their federal benefits, which they would use to pay board." David Rothenberg, executive director of the Fortune Society, which works with ex-convicts and juvenile delinquents, is a self -described animal lover. But when it comes to $27 million for zoos, his response is: "The prison cells are probably not as big as the cages the animals get I'm crazy about the zoos, but do you know that the entire state budget for adult literacy is $5 million? Maybe we should all become coyotes so we can get some money." fore isn't taking away from such vital services as police and firemen. And once the zoos begin operating under the Zoological Society by 1986, he said, the city's share of operating costs will be cut in half by profits from bookstores and concessions and poss-.

ibly by admission fees, which may be levied for the first time at the Central Park Zoo, Flushing Meadow Zoo and Prospect Park Zoo, the three city zoos. (At the Bronx Zoo, admission is $2.50 for adults and 75 cents for children.) WITH a world-renowned 250-acre Bronx Zoo, a showcase of 1,560 different animals, why bother spending the money on a piddling six acres in Central Park and even fewer at the other two facilities? Even some animal advocates can't understand it "They should simply close those other facilities and send the animals to the Bronx Zoo," argues Alice Herrington, president of Friends of Animals. "The city should review its priorities. I don't think it can justify spending that money in today's economy." The ranking member of the State Senate's finance committee, Donald Halperin (D-Brooklyn), is ambiva-ient about spending money on the zoos: "Maybe it's wrong to do it now, when the city's deficit will be more than $800 million next year," he says. "But I think people who pay taxes, the middle class, deserve for some of the money to be spent on them." As Davis puts it: "The quality of life in New York is not just cops and firemen.

Zoos make the urban experience more civilized, more bearable. They provide an education for our children." out the window. In his own words, this is what the city's parks and recreation commissioner sees when he ventures a glance: "I see a polar bear and a brown bear confined in inadequate cages. I see a solitary elephant confined in a small space when he should be with other animals. I see Patty Cake, the gorilla, in isolation when gorillas are social animals.

I see a zoo that is at best a series of cages and at worst a Rikers Island for animals. I see a zoo that simply is not a zoo." The atrocities at the city's three zoos Central Park, Flushing Meadow in Queens and Prospect Park in Brooklyn are legend. From dirt and disease to vandalism and neglect, the animals and the zoos' reputations have suffered mightily. But under an agreement with the city, the New York Zoological Society, which runs the stellar Bronx Zoo, will take over the management of the three zoos at a capital cost of $27 million in city funds, along with private donations. At the Central Park Zoo, bars will be banned except for a snack bar and replaced by three natural habitats: tropical, temperate and arctic.

There will be a big pool for the polar bears, a snow-blower for the penguins, streams for fish and trees for monkeys. Classrooms and auditoriums will be added for visitors. UT FOR GORDON DAVIS and other zoo 1EW WOULD ARGUE that the zoos are in supporters, zoos are right up there with motherhood, apple pie and Old Glory. abysmal shape, but there are those who believe "But if we can't first take care of the children," that, in an era of increasing fiscal austerity, $27 "Our zoos are by far the most visited cultural institutions in the city," Davis says, adding that some 600,000 people visited the Central Park Zoo last year. It is often said that New York's parks are its safety valves, green refuges in an asphalt jungle that allow people breathing room and space to let out urban-life tension.

Davis believes that the park zoos are an replies Jean Elahi of Odyssey House, "we won't have any to go to the zoos." Whether you agree with the city or not, the fact, remains that it has decided to keep its three controversial zoos open. And since it's going to stay in the business, it must finally make the zoos fit for. million could better be spent on the suffering human species. Subways are crumbling, clinics are closing, thousands of homeless people live on the streets, -school repairs and supplies are on the back burner, prisons are jam-packed. The list 6eems endless, and growing as the budget ax continues to swing.

Over at Odyssey House, for example, Jean Elahi, a Important part of the quality of life of New Yorkers. animalsUnder the $27 million plan, at long last, the-, toos will be a playground, not a prison, for im picsiueuL, ueueves uiti wiuu vruiuuu oca-Si, out bis window is nothing compared with what she On the more practical side, Davis is quick to point jees closer up. "We see sexual abuse, physical abuse, out that the money for the zoos comes from the city's neglect, alcoholism and depression," she says, capital budget, not the operating budget, and there- Bella English covers city affairs from The News' City HaU bureau..