Metro Detroiters pull together to support zoo

The Detroit Zoo has dodged the bullet that seemed to have dead-on aim just two years ago.

Actually, the zoo didn’t so much dodge a bullet as run a football field’s length away from one. The voters in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties yesterday overwhelmingly passed a zoo millage proposal that will provide it with up to $15 million a year for the next 10 years, more than half the zoo’s annual $26 million budget.

In Wayne and Oakland counties, voters rallied to the zoo 3-1. In Macomb, the ratio of support was 2-1. Those are the kinds of margins needed to silence the shortsighted cranks who want the zoo and all it brings to struggling southeastern Michigan but who want someone else to pay for it.

The overwhelming support for the Detroit Zoo gives the lie to those who say the suburbs and the city — always code in this area for white folks and black folks, actual demographics be damned — can’t pull together.

The fight over the zoo’s funding source erupted after the Super Bowl in 2006, shattering the feeling of regional pride that emerged from that successful event. That’s when the city, facing steep budget cuts, abruptly eliminated its subsidy for the zoo and turned its operations over to the Detroit Zoological Society, the nonprofit organization that raises money for the zoo.

The Detroit Zoo is located in Royal Oak, just a couple of miles outside Detroit’s city limits. But it’s a beacon for the entire area, bringing 1 million visitors a year. At a time when metro Detroiters have less and less disposable income, the zoo remains an affordable family outing: year-long passes for a family of four will set you back just $68.

The 0.1 millage will cost the owner of a $100,000 home about $5 a year. Fortunately, voters decided saving the zoo seemed worth the price of a sandwich.