By David Fortier
The Bristol Veterans Council wants to set the record straight. They did not raise the issue of eradicating the geese from Memorial Boulevard; the issue was brought to them by the mayor.
“What I would like to see is just the whole community to come together and for everyone to realize the Bristol Veterans Council did not initiate this proposal, said Rick Carello, chair of the Bristol Veterans Council, “it was brought to us by DEEP through the mayor’s office and we had a discussion, and we had a vote, and the vote was just to move the proposal forward.”
Carello is a U.S. Army veteran, serving with both the Army and the National Guard through 1997. A Bristol native, who attended St. Anthony grammar School and Bristol Central High School, class of 1973, he said he recalls seeing the geese on the boulevard ever since he can remember.
As chair of the Bristol Veterans Council, Carello presides over an organization that advocates for veterans and their families here in Bristol, working along with the American Legion Posts here in Bristol and Veterans Strong.
He was one of several veterans who spoke at the April 17 meeting before the Board of Park Commissioner which brought out hundreds of people, both in person and via Zoom, to discuss a proposal for managing geese.
While the proposal, from the State Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), had a broad variety of options for dealing with the geese, the most drastic measure was a goose roundup, that ends with the euthanization of geese by a hired contractor.
The veterans from the council who spoke and took the position that they would like to see the boulevard cleaned up of goose droppings for health reasons, appear to be the taking the brunt of the criticism not only for their position, but for promoting the roundup, which did not and do not.
“The Bristol Veterans Council is being vilified,” said Carello. “We are getting veiled threats, not so veiled threats, outright threats. We are being called murderers. We are perpetrating a goose holocaust.”
As an example of how extreme things have gotten, he said, one person on the Facebook group Bristol Talks said that the city should keep the geese and gas the veterans.
“And there is no call for that,” he said. “In a civilized world, you should be able to have a dialogue and reach a consensus.”
And consensus is what the veterans are looking for, Carello said.
“The impression out there is that the Bristol Veterans Council initiated this proposal,” he said. Carello then outlined how events unfolded.
In early February, Mayor Jeffrey Caggiano called Rick’s brother Dave, who was the former chair of the veterans council, and said that the DEEP contacted him with a proposal to mitigate the geese population in the city, not just the Memorial Boulevard but other park areas, too.
Mayor Caggiano attended the next meeting of the veterans council on February 7, where the mayor laid out the proposal that the DEEP had provided him. The proposal included a number of options, the most drastic of which would be a goose roundup. At that meeting, the members of the veterans council discussed the proposal, and voted, Carello said.
“The discussion we had was probably almost as contentious at the public participation meeting. Some of the council members said, ‘Yeah, let’s just get rid of them outright.’ A lot of us said, ‘No, we can’t do that.”
Carello stated that the Veterans Council were aware that many cities in Connecticut have problems with their goose population, but none had gone down the road of turning to roundups.
“All we did, is we had a discussion, we said, okay, this proposal was brought to us by the mayor, through the DEEP, so we voted unanimously to send the proposal forward to the Bristol Parks, Recreation, Youth and Community Services board, to abide by whatever the decision was going to be made. Whatever side they came down on the veterans council would abide by,” he said.
Chair of the Bristol Veterans Council Rick Carello stating that the council does not want to see the geese eradicated. | Laura Bailey
Carello then attended the next park board meeting, prior to the April 17 meeting, where, as it turned out, he was the sole speaker. He expressed the concerns of the veterans.
The veterans did research to prepare for the meeting, he said, himself included, focusing on issues with goose droppings which inundate the grassy area around the monuments on the boulevard.
“Goose droppings,” he said, “contain salmonella, E.coli, giardia and three or four other really dangerous organisms. What happens is the geese defecate, eventually the droppings dry out and if you step on them, they have the potential to become airborne.”
“Airborne organisms have the potential to cause some of these serious bacteria to be ingested, so our proposal was, look, we will do whatever we can to help alleviate this problem.”
The park board then discussed the proposal, a discussion which Carello characterized as contentious.
“The vote was four to two to advance the proposal,” he said, to bring the issue to the public. Nothing was decided.
“I think people just were under the impression that it was the veterans council that put this proposal forward, to have them (the geese) just eradicated,” he said.
The veterans were among the first to speak at the Park Board meeting, on April 17. Carello conceded that he might have done a better job of clarifying the veterans position, he said.
“What I was going to say is, was ‘Look, the BVC is not unsympathetic to the plight of the geese. We are.'” he said. “‘We were approaching it from the geese being a health hazard, a sanitation hazard, a safety hazard. again because of the droppings and the potential for airborne bacteria. You walk down the boulevard and you are going to step on a lot of goose droppings.'”
During the April 17, Parks Board meeting, Mayor Caggiano reiterated that any solution would have a lethal component. The mayor has not responded to TBE about his intentions.
While, Carello said, he could not speak for the mayor, he speculated that perhaps the point the mayor was making is that something had to be done.
“The Memorial Boulevard is sacred ground for veterans,” Carello said. Memorial Boulevard is aptly named, since is it dotted with monuments to veterans of American war. On Memorial Day, a new monument commemorating POW-MIA’s will be dedicated.
Carello, who is very much of the mind of civil discourse and letting the conversation play out, said he did not understand how the veterans were and are being ridiculed for taking a stand on goose droppings and health. The droppings are a hazard.
However, the hearing was a positive experience, he said. He learned a lot from the participants, especially that there are alternatives that hadn’t been considered before, from the use of dyes to altering habitat and sweepers to clear away the droppings.
He said he is encouraged by the announcement at the BPRYCS annual fundraiser held just last weekend, “Dinner on the Diamond,” that the park commissioners are dedicating funds from the event to non-lethal methods for managing the goose population.
He talked with the mayor recently and found out that Public Works has a sweeper that might be used for cleaning the droppings. The mayor did not respond to TBE to confirm this.
“So there is a lot of passion and again, I wish I had articulated my position a little bit better, but the bottom-line is that the veterans council does not want to see the geese eradicated.”
“I would like to see this end with the community coming together, with the parks and mayor’s office, and doing whatever we can to just keep the boulevard clean and keeping the geese in place, the geese are welcome there.”
“The veterans council always knew that the most drastic option would not fly,” he said. “No pun intended.”
Carello stated that he would like to see the threats directed towards the veterans stop.
“It’s easy to have an opinion behind the keyboard but some of these threats were really violent threats. I take everything said on Bristol Talks with a grain of salt, but the way things are going these days, you never know. Gas the veterans and keep the geese, that’s pretty drastic.”
The Board of Park Commissioners meets this evening in Meeting Room 1-2 in city hall. Among the items on the agenda is a presentation of alternatives that the commissioners can take as they move ahead with their plans.
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