Tick-Borne Disease Panel’s Staffer Warns

Selectmen About ‘Spin,’ ‘Inaccuracies’

By John Voket

One of the lead support staffers for Newtown’s Tick-Borne Disease Action Committee has written to the Board of Selectmen to correct what he calls “inaccuracies” being promoted or publicized in the community since the panel issued its final report to town officials last October.

Action committee staffer David Shugarts illustrated the apparent inaccuracies coming from residents, including committee members who backed minority positions, recommendations, or parts of recommendations approved by the panel. He also reaffirmed a number of votes taken by the committee prior to finalizing its report to the selectmen.

“For several weeks, you have been hearing, directly or indirectly, from representatives of the minority of the Tick-Borne Disease Action Committee [TBDAC],” Mr Shugarts wrote. “Now I think it’s appropriate to express and reiterate the majority’s recommendations, and correct some inaccuracies.”

Mr Shugarts’ letter was dated January 31, the day before the Board of Selectmen met and decided to seek the assistance of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) in developing data and ideas about how the town could mitigate and reduce incidents of tick-borne diseases.

The diseases are carried and spread by ticks that feed primarily on the region’s deer population, which the DEEP and health officials locally identify as being significantly greater than what is sustainable.

Mr Shugarts said that the committee’s intention was for Newtown to seek DEEP’s help. He said in a letter to selectmen dated January 11, committee staffer Dr Patrice Boily asserted that the committee had some kind of conditional context in mind when it recommended that the town ask for DEEP’s assistance.

“I find no basis in the record for this putative context,” Mr Shugarts stated, while providing the “actual context, expressed in a group of recommendations that were voted on August 4, 2010.”

Minutes of the committee’s meetings confirmed the record provided by Mr Shugarts:

*Newtown should include a deer population reduction program as an element of its Tick Borne Disease Management Plan (Passed: 7 yes, 4 no)

*Newtown should pursue nonlethal deer reduction measures by seeking to participate in a deer contraception study. (Failed: 5 yes, 6 no)

*Newtown should take measures to promote recreational hunting. Newtown should inform the public of the regulations regarding hunting on private property in an effort to promote such activity. (Passed: 6 yes, 5 no)

*Newtown should implement controlled hunts on town-owned property and where not prohibited by deed or transfer agreement. (Passed: 7 yes, 4 no)

*Newtown should encourage and organize controlled hunts on private property. (Passed: 7 yes, 4 no)

*Newtown should hire professional sharpshooters. (Passed: 7 yes, 4 no)

*Newtown should accept the agency’s offer to work with the town to develop, coordinate and implement a deer management plan. (Passed: 11 yes, 0 no)

During the February 1 selectmen’s meeting, Dr Michelle McLeod, the action committee’s co-chair, told selectmen that a bare majority of members favored soliciting DEEP’s technical assistance, and stated that five committee members did not support seeking the environmental agency’s assistance.

“As you can see, a majority of the committee clearly intended that various forms of lethal deer reduction be implemented, and the committee was unanimous about seeking DEEP’s help,” Mr Shugarts countered. “Dr Boily would have you revisit issues that the committee carefully examined during a long two-year process, during which he exercised ample opportunities to raise his objections.”

Mr Shugarts also clarified that there is no DEEP “plan” or “proposal” for the Town of Redding in place, although the town called on the environmental agency to provide similar data to what Newtown plans to seek

“In a letter to the editor at The Bee, Mary Gaudet-Wilson asserts that ‘Currently the town of Redding is under a plan developed by the DEEP for deer reduction.’ Dr Boily in his letter also refers to a DEEP ‘proposal.’ However, DEEP has not submitted a plan or proposal to the Town of Redding,” Mr Shugarts noted.

Mr Shugarts said he was in attendance when Dr Howard Kilpatrick presented a DEEP progress update November 30, 2011, in Redding. He further stated that he did not see other minority members of the committee at that gathering.

He said when DEEP does present its report to Redding, it will be fashioned as a list of available options that Redding may pursue as the community sees fit. Mr Shugarts said he was also concerned because First Selectman Pat Llodra asked Dr McLeod to poll its members preferences about one of three DEEP options on how Newtown wanted to proceed with the agency’s assistance.

“But, for whatever reason, this was thwarted, and the committee members have not been formally asked,” Mr Shugarts said. “However, when polled informally, at least six members favored Newtown preparing a plan simultaneously with that for the Town of New Canaan.”

In a separate e-mail to The Bee, after reading a previous report on the February 1 selectmen’s meeting, Mr Shugarts said, “The minority members of the Tick-Borne Disease Action Committee have now launched their all-out campaign against any form of lethal deer reduction.”

He said while minority members of the action committee and their supporters keep up pressure at the selectmen’s meetings and elsewhere, the opinions and recommendations from the majority of the committee, as well as the feelings of the majority of residents, are not being heard.

“So the minority ‘spin’ gets all the attention,” Mr Shugarts stated.