Rosamond Gifford Zoo Director Chuck Doyle has taken the state’s early retirement incentive package but remains in the top post at the Burnet Park facility as a temporary, part-time worker. Speaking at a ceremony Wednesday during which she and Doyle helped introduce Ruth, the zoo’s new baby sloth, Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney brought up Doyle’s retirement. She thanked...
Rosamond Gifford Zoo Director Chuck Doyle is photographed with Siri the elephant in 2008. Doyle has retired, but will stay on in a part-time capacity into 2011.Rosamond Gifford Zoo Director Chuck Doyle has taken the state’s early retirement incentive package but remains in the top post at the Burnet Park facility as a temporary, part-time worker.
Speaking at a ceremony Wednesday during which she and Doyle helped introduce Ruth, the zoo’s new baby sloth, Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney brought up Doyle’s retirement. She thanked him for assuring a smooth transition to a new zoo administration by delaying his departure.
Doyle said he is staying into 2011, long enough for the zoo’s new elephant facility to be completed and in operation.
Doyle, 61, joined the zoo staff in 1976, three years before oversight of the facility passed from the city of Syracuse to Onondaga County. He became director in 2006 after serving 13 years as general curator.
About 316 county workers took the incentive and about 90 of them, like Doyle, are staying on temporarily after retirement to give administrators time to adjust to their leaving, said Marty Skahen, speaking for Mahoney. Among the state’s conditions was that workers had to retire by Sept. 10, a little more than two months after the county legislature OK’d the county’s participation in the cost-reduction program.
The new retirees are limited to how much they can make as temps under New York State and Local Retirement System rules. System retirees under age 65 risk having their pensions reduced or suspended if they go to work for any public employer in New York and get paid more than $30,000 in a calendar year.
That means Doyle cannot make more than $30,000 with the county for the rest of this year. He also cannot earn more than that for all of next year.
Doyle retired from a director job that paid $72,250 a year.