EVERETT — Little children this summer will again get to mingle with the goats, chickens, rabbits and all the other friends they encounter at the Forest Park Animal Farm petting zoo.
The interactive experience will go for seven weeks from June to August, like it has for decades, after the city was able to find money in its budget to keep it going. Parks staff said the free petting zoo will operate like usual, but they did make an effort to see if a group such as a 4-H club would operate it. Nobody applied by a Dec. 16 deadline.
The petting zoo is a regional draw for Everett and part of what makes it unique: It sees a steady average of 30,000 to 35,000 visitors annually, parks staff said. The number of visitors has not really gone up or down the last several years, parks department director Lori
Cummings said.
With its piglets and pony rides, the farm gets regularly listed in go-to parent guides for the region, but the city does not track how far away visitors come from. It might start doing that this year, Cummings said.
It’s not clear when the petting zoo began at Forest Park, but it’s become a seasonal tradition that the city estimates dates back to the 1970s.
The parks department budgeted $77,860 for the program this year.
“We would have been happy if someone would have stepped up with the (request for proposals) at a lower price,” parks assistant director Kimberly Shelton said during an interview.
The petting zoo’s future is so far secure just for this summer. Conversations for the 2020 budget have not started, and Cummings did not want to speculate whether it could be at risk again in the budget.
The petting zoo program faced being cut in the budget last fall. The parks department has to budget for park rangers and cultural arts events and general upkeep of the city’s 44 parks. The department reversed the cut through some rearranging, including by
instead scaling back its weekly summertime concert events.
Many City Council members said during budget discussions that they wanted to keep the petting zoo because it offers free family fun.
Other petting zoos nearby are a seasonal one at Remlinger Farms in Carnation as part of its amusement park, and a free year-round one at the Maltby Produce Market on Broadway Avenue in Snohomish, according to “ParentMap” magazine. Everett’s Animal Farm is one of the few that let children roam among with the animals. For a different experience, there is The Outback Kangaroo Farm in Arlington off of state Route 530.
