Last Friday, Zoo New York Executive Director Larry Sorel closed the entrance gate to the public. Financial issues abound, he has no idea if they will ever reopen.

“Other than some animal deaths I've experienced, it was the worst day of my professional life,” Sorel said.

Sorel’s career has spanned nearly 50 years, including 20 of them leading the Seneca Park Zoo in Rochester. So when he came to Watertown five years ago, he did so because he believed this place was special.

“We can be a tremendous place to just visit and have fun. We can accomplish our education mission all by with energy, enthusiasm, and joy,” Sorel said, adding that the zoo has an extra 12 acres of land and master plans that would allow the zoo to grow, and become more interactive and educational for guests.

But also in that time, he says, he realized just how dire these finances, some of the worst he's ever seen, are.

“So much effort is being put into simply survival that we can't do, we don't have the time, the bandwidth, to do all the things that is the vision for this place,” Sorel said.

And Sorel said the problem with just staying afloat is that eventually you drown.

“We don't have money, let's cut this. We don't have money, let's cut that,” Sorel said of the zoo’s recent decisions.

The brick he’s tied to, he says, is funding.

While he is very appreciative of everything that the city of Watertown and Jefferson County provides on an annual basis, he said it's just different than similar sized cities such as Utica and Binghamton, where he says they get a much larger percentage of the operating budget.

And some, he says, even have annual angel investors.

“We need to make sure people understand we are a nonprofit, that zoos across the country don't support themselves completely, that we have value beyond simply being a tourist attraction,” he said, adding that you can’t put zoos in a one-size-fits-all categories.

That statement alone gives him hope that the city of Watertown and Jefferson County will agree to sit down, talk and be open to all ideas. Maybe then he says that gate can reopen.

Representatives of both the city and county say they are always going to be open to financially smart and responsible ideas and plans.

Several people plan to attend the Nov. 6 City Council meeting to voice their opinions of the zoo.

In the meantime, the zoo said it does have the budget to keep the animals where they are and ensure their everyday needs — food, shelter and medical — are met.