Zoo director: The city is in a financial crisis and must reduce its spending.
Conclusion
Cutting the City Zoo's funding in half is false economy. (i.e. doesn't make fiscal sense)
Evidence
Yes, we need to reduce spending in this city, but the zoo's budget is less than 1% of the city's deficit, so cutting that in half hardly cracks a dent in the city's financial peril.
Meanwhile, the zoo would have to close if we cut its funding in half, so that means a loss of tourists and tax dollars coming into the city.
Finally, the zoo adds to the cultural climate of the city and encourages businesses to locate here.
Evaluate
Whenever we're reading Main Conclusion or Role arguments, we remind ourselves of their heavy predisposition towards putting the main conclusion earlier than the evidence.
In particular, we look for the main conclusion to be - the very first sentence - rebutting some idea (usually after a pivot word)
The first sentence of this paragraph sounded like it could be the conclusion! It sounded like an opinion coming from the author. If she went on to support or defend the idea that the city needs to reduce spending, we would have called that first sentence the conclusion.
But instead of supporting it, she pivoted away from it (nevertheless) and then rebutted some idea.
Often, the idea the author is rebutting hasn't been attributed to any specific person. It's more like that viewpoint was said "offscreen" and the author is alluding to it like we've heard this idea before.
i.e.
I've never heard the expression "False Economy" before, but in context it seems to mean .
The author defends this idea with all the remaining sentences. She basically says that the zoo's funding is small to begin with, so cutting half of it isn't saving a ton of money. Meanwhile, it's costing the city a lot of money in tourists and businesses who won't come to the city if the zoo is closed.
Goal
On Main Conclusion, the hard part is finding the conclusion. Now that we have, we just have to find an answer that matches the meaning of the 2nd sentence.
... ... etc.