Again i just a quick dashboard here on the last three years, head count, and while attendance goes up we can employ more people and need to employ more people so for the last three years its gone from 214 to 243 persons. Also with that we can promote more folks. We went from five promotions to 12, and we were able to last year to fill 128 positions because you see how were holding there throughout the recession and lastly you know that our zoo keepers are members of the Teamsters Union and thanks to the work of the hr team the Union Grievances have stayed relatively the same, one a year. We will work on getting that down and the last dashboard i have is also again as revenues increase we can invest in our animals. Last year we had 1600 animals and this year we have 1744 animals and i just wanted to point out some of the new animals and species that came to the zoo this last year, the wof wean and pandas and lemurs and we have eight species of lemurs at our exhibit and speaking of anima
Lily wong right now they have been around for over a decade in some places closer to two and Merced Heights and no one has been here in a super long time and so some of those are functional still. You can still play on them, but the trends and in design and whennure compare the quality of those play structures to Mission Playground on valencia street its a dramatic before and after so we can certainly talk about what i think a replacement cycle should look like. I think the department has learned a lot over the past decade about how to improve the durablity of the playgrounds that we build and also the ease of maintenance. We made a number of policy decisions over the past 10 years. For example a decade ago we were ordering playgrounds from germany and fancy things from other places and we discovered the replacement time when you break it there is a lag time to order a replacement part from a high end designer in germany when the yard is here in San Francisco and it broke last week and
At bo decker for example at lily wong right now they have been around for over a decade in some places closer to two and Merced Heights and no one has been here in a super long time and so some of those are functional still. You can still play on them, but the trends and in design and whennure compare the quality of those play structures to Mission Playground on valencia street its a dramatic before and after so we can certainly talk about what i think a replacement cycle should look like. I think the department has learned a lot over the past decade about how to improve the durablity of the playgrounds that we build and also the ease of maintenance. We made a number of policy decisions over the past 10 years. For example a decade ago we were ordering playgrounds from germany and fancy things from other places and we discovered the replacement time when you break it there is a lag time to order a replacement part from a high end designer in germany when the yard is here in San Francisc
Reiterate or under score that dawn did mention. First the staff. I would agree with dawn having participated in a number of these process and ones that had the passion and commitment to parks and open space that could potentially be therefore very contentious and this was not for a number of reasons. The first of which in my mind was the incredible Staff Support and analysis that went into preparation that dawn referenced so again thank you to dawn and the entire team, and then secondly the masterful facilitation skills of steve his last name . Cansian. Was just phenomenal in guiding the process and ensuring that Task Force Member as well as Community Members felt their voice was being heard and options and issues of importance were being considered so really, really fantastic, and then in addition to the members of the task task force each brought commitment and intelligent and passion around the issues i want to under score. How valuable it was to have community in the room and again
Attendance goes up we can employ more people and need to employ more people so for the last three years its gone from 214 to 243 persons. Also with that we can promote more folks. We went from five promotions to 12, and we were able to last year to fill 128 positions because you see how were holding there throughout the recession and lastly you know that our zoo keepers are members of the Teamsters Union and thanks to the work of the hr team the Union Grievances have stayed relatively the same, one a year. We will work on getting that down and the last dashboard i have is also again as revenues increase we can invest in our animals. Last year we had 1600 animals and this year we have 1744 animals and i just wanted to point out some of the new animals and species that came to the zoo this last year the wof wean and pandas and lemurs and we have eight species of lemurs at our exhibit and speaking of animals as i announced last month we had a new [inaudible] langer and its a he and staff