By David Fortier
Any further deliberations about a geese management plan were put on the back burner by Park board commissioners at their meeting last Wednesday, May 15, as they voted to move the conversation to a subcommittee to consider various non-lethal options and costs.
At the same time, board members cautioned that expectations by residents would have to be tempered since the park has other priorities and funding is limited.
Finally, cleaning Veterans Memorial Boulevard of goose droppings for this year’s Memorial Day celebrations, including the annual procession and the dedication of a new MIA/POW monument, is already on the Park Dept’s radar, as this year’s budget includes funds, already set aside as they are every year.
“We really don’t have any recommendation at this point,” vice chair of the board Bob Fiorito said, after a prolonged discussion about alternatives that have arisen after last month’s meeting which drew hundreds of participants in person and online, almost three dozen people who spoke and others who communicated their thoughts via phone calls and emails.
Taking this action would allow the board “to further flesh out the alternatives and prices where we can discuss it and refer to the full board when we have a recommendation,” Fiorito said.
The board voted unanimously to send the item to its policy committee, where alternatives might be considered anticipating that a next step would be for the finance committee to consider pricing for next year’s budget.
A geese management program that has been proposed by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and promoted by Mayor Jeffrey Caggiano that included a controversial goose roundup was raised at the April meeting of the board.
Bristol Park, Recreation, Youth and Community Services (BPRYCS) Superintendent Joshua Mederios said in the time since the meeting he has received tens of dozens of proposals from contractors who would like to work on solutions to the geese problem on the boulevard as well as several other areas where they congregate in the city.
The BPRYCS largest annual fundraise, “Dinner on the Diamond,” held earlier this month raised approximately $15,000 to be used towards non-lethal methods of dealing with the geese. Mederios said that the funds will be set aside in a Friends of the Parks account for the time when a plan is approved.
Proposals ranged from sprays that deter geese from walking on grass to landscaping that would keep geese from feeling comfortable with their surroundings to cleaning geese feces.
The original program, proposed by the State Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) would have cost the city $3,600 annually and included a geese roundup that was tied to a specific time frame. The roundup would occur when the geese are grounded in early summer as they molt, and lose feathers needed for flight. After being rounded up the geese would be killed.
Park board commissioners said they were grateful for the discussion at the previous meeting, learned more than they ever expected to know about geese management and even did more research on their own. The discussion involved moving away from lethal management plans to more human, non-lethal methods.
“I just want to thank the public for the education that they’ve provided on this issue,” said commissioner Rob Lawson.
He added a note that any solution would take time and money that has to be tied to resources available.
“We have to be fiscally responsible,” Lawson said, “and most importantly we collectively need to temper our expectations. This is not something that we are going to blink, and this issue is going to be resolved. We are in it for the long haul with the geese.”
“We are going to do the right thing and be socially responsible, which I am a proponent of,” he said. “This is going to take some time.”
As the conversation continued, it became clear that while the geese need to be managed, they were not high on the list of priorities for the board, which in a particularly tight budget year, is already reeling from budget constraints.
“The park board has been charged to come up with a geese management plan, and that’s what we need to do, to look at all the alternatives,” Fiorito said. “When I was speaking to people at the Dinner on the Diamond, I told them we can come up with all the ideas and all the great plans we want. The board of finance is going to have to give us the money.”
Accepting that the geese are going to be around for a long time and there are financial considerations, a compromise might be in order.
“If it means over time, over several years, we do some planting and we do some other things that we find out about, and we manage to keep some of the more public areas clean, then we would have accomplished what everyone wants us to,” he said.
He said the best steps would be to come up with a plan, put some numbers to it and at budget time, approach the Board of Finance.
“Just like we took over the ball fields,” he said, “they don’t want to give us enough people to take care of the ballfields, then we have to temper expectations on what’s going to happen.”
Cindy Donovan said she had reservations about spending money on the geese.
“I struggle with putting so much money into this,” said Donovan. “And people commented to me at the Dinner on the Diamond when we had the youth services come with a client and the client spoke about what benefits that we offer and how important they are for life, for human life.”
Her problem, she said, “is coming up with the money to take care of everyone and everything. I’m not sure that this is high priority personally. I definitely think we have to have a plan. However, the financial part is going to be a tough sell because there are higher priorities, frankly.”
Sandy Bogdanski said that kids have been playing on these fields for years. The soccer club fields have been particularly bad.
“I am with Cindy,” she said, “to spend time and money to cleaning up the parks especially when there are events makes sense, but to spend a lot of money to buy equipment to do this on a regular basis when we don’t have manpower to even take care of the parks as they stand right now doesn’t make sense.”
It appears that the goose roundup component of the plan is no longer under consideration, but several times in the meeting the mayor referred to the DEEP proposal, its low costs, and its time sensitive nature as if it might still be.
Geese populate different areas of the city, often moving from one area to the next, so a plan would not be limited to Veterans Memorial Boulevard, but other city parks and properties, including Pine Lake and Page Park.
Donovan and Bogdanski asked for clarification about the distribution of the funds solely for a geese management plan. Their understanding was that not all of the funds would go to the plan, a proposition that Medeiros confirmed.
Mederios also confirmed that the boulevard would be presentable for this year’s Memorial Day festivities, which include the annual American Legion Post 2 procession and the dedication of the new POW/MIA monument.
Several pieces of equipment under Public Works are now available to BPRYCS, according to the mayor, including a sidewalk sweeper and a vacuum truck.
“We clean the boulevard in preparation of Memorial Day every year” Mederios said, “so this is not going to be a change, but certainly we will leverage any better equipment that is out there. But there would be no cost.”
In other business, the commissioners heard from Bank of America about activity on their Rockwell Trusts. There is now just over $9 million dollars after a year that saw the value of the trusts increase $700,000. Annual disbursements from the funds is 5 percent which goes towards parks improvements and maintenance.
Other than that, the board voted to approve the BPRYCS strategic plan and funding for improvement of Forestville Little League fields.
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