The Emporia Gazette

May 27, 2012

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David Traylor Zoo Director Steve Trebilcock had no comment on his resignation, which he delivered Wednesday to City Manager Matt Zimmerman.

Reached Wednesday night, Trebilcock said he wasn’t at liberty to discuss the factors that went into his decision to resign.

“And that’s going to be my answer to pretty much every question you have,” he said. “Yeah, I apologize for that, but that’s the way things are.”

Asked if he had any reflection on his time running the zoo, Trebilcock said, “I really appreciate the city of Emporia.”

Zimmerman said after Wednesday night’s city commission meeting that Trebilcock indicated he wanted to pursue other opportunities. Trebilcock declined comment on what those might be.

“I don’t know if I would say (it was) a surprise so much as, I know that there are lots of things you like to do, (that) when you’re a small zoo, you can’t always do,” Zimmerman said. “So I think that it was a good opportunity for him to go ahead and pursue things that were interesting to him and focus on his skills, and it will be a good chance for the city to go ahead and move forward with the zoo.”

Zoo Foreman Lisa Keith will serve as interim zoo director, Zimmerman said. He said he needed some time to think about the process of hiring Trebilcock’s replacement.

“But I think that we’ll probably put out — like we did two years ago — put out ads in the professional journals and those kinds of things,” he said. “We’ll probably work with (Emporia Friends of the Zoo), as we did last time, and while they always respect that the city has to manage one of its assets, they’re very interested, very anxious for what’s best for the zoo.”

Zimmerman said he didn’t think Trebilcock’s resignation would have any effect on the city’s attempts to reach a governance agreement with the Emporia Recreation Commission.

“Because the rec commission has always told us that they don’t want to be involved in supervising the zoo, because that’s an area way ... outside what they work on,” he said. “Now, that has been an issue between the city and the rec commission, because whatever we’re gonna do, we’d like to keep all the recreation stuff separate. But I don’t think it’ll end up having that much difference in the end.”