Riordan, Ferraro Call for Changes at L.A. Zoo : Remodeling: Proposed management team would oversee improvement of exhibits. The action may defuse a feud between employees and director.

Mayor Richard Riordan and City Council President John Ferraro have called for management and planning changes at the Los Angeles Zoo to refocus attention on the animal collection and defuse a bitter feud between employees and the zoo’s director.

In a letter Monday, they proposed the redrawing of a remodeling plan that critics say focuses too much on a few grandiose projects rather than overall improvements in animal exhibits.

Likely to be put on hold by the recommendations are a large off-site veterinary hospital, a remodeled front entrance/educational center, and a multilevel polar bear and penguin exhibit, all of which had been proposed by zoo management.

The mayor and council president also proposed that an outside zoo expert be brought in to help manage the zoo and improve the relationship between Director Mark Goldstein and dissident employees. The volunteer consultant would help run the zoo in a management team with Goldstein and Chief Curator Les Schobert.

The recommendations were based on a consultant’s report and were directed to the city’s Recreation and Parks Commission, which oversees zoo operations.

Riordan asked for the changes because of flaws in the zoo management’s plan for spending $25 million in bond money approved by voters in 1992, said his adviser on the issue, Karen Rotschafer.

“It was a set of grandiose changes, and it wasn’t fair to the animals to make those changes that didn’t address the immediate safety and comfort of the animals,” said Rotschafer, Riordan’s legal counsel.

Rotschafer said that delayed maintenance at the 28-year-old zoo has made mundane repairs--such as new drainage systems and filtration for animal pools--a priority.

The mayor’s office would also like to see some of the bond money go to expand and improve the chimpanzee exhibit, now an austere and cramped rock holding area, Rotschafer said.

Riordan and Ferraro called on the Recreation and Parks Commission to establish a task force to draw a new list of priorities for improvements at the zoo.

Heading the task force, and directing other zoo operations, would be the team of Goldstein, Schobert and a volunteer chair.

The elected officials said they believe that improvements at the zoo have been bogged down in disagreements between Goldstein and some of his staff.

In recommending the hiring of an outside consultant, Riordan and Ferraro wrote: “We cannot tolerate the current attention on individual successes and failures. . . . Unfortunately there has been a critical breakdown in communication and trust.”

The mayor and council president are expected within a month to recommend a retired zoo official to work with Goldstein and zoo employees.

Despite the call for outside intervention, Goldstein said he is pleased with the recommendations.

“I think it clears the air and gives us some definitive direction to go in,” said Goldstein, who was hired two years ago.

Zoo employees who had asked for a reordering of spending priorities said they supported the recommendations. “It seems like they are trying to right some wrongs,” said animal keeper Marci Hawkins, “and trying to give the money to (help) the animals in the zoo, instead of to some project that we don’t need.”