HOWARD – The Howard Village Board met on June 9 and approved over a dozen renewals, appeals and other board submissions, but the night's largest point of contention had to do with the deer population.
The board had previously approved a deer control committee to tackle this issue.
However, comments from the public were targeted at the board rather than the committee.
Howard Board Member Adam Lemorande mentioned this during discussion.
“There’s a committee that we set aside to have these discussions … because this committee is ultimately going to decide on something and bring it back to the board,” said Lemorande.
“I think a lot of these ideas should be brought to the (deer control) committee, because a lot of us aren't on this committee to make that initial decision.”
Village Board agendas must be released to the public 48 hours prior to the meeting, and since the June 9 agenda included the approval of deer control committee minutes, many Howard residents attended to voice their opinions on the matter.
The board informed those making public comments that the approval of minutes was unrelated to decisions made by the deer control committee, but discussion ensued regardless.
There were many differing opinions shared on the matter, but the majority of concerns expressed by Howard residents surrounded what they view to be an inhumane reduction of the deer population.
Board member Maria Lasecki suggested that a solution to this problem could be to evaluate the current members of the deer control committee to ensure that all opinions were equally represented.
Village Board President Burt McIntyre responded to this suggestion by informing Lasecki and the rest of the attendees that the deer control committee was previously approved by the village board, which raised the question as to why valuing all viewpoints was not a priority during the initial approval.
“The number of deer themselves can be a problem to the deer,” said McIntyre, making his stance on the matter clear.
“The committee hasn't made any decision on what we're going to do. In fact, we haven't even started discussing any details of what we're going to do. If somebody has an opinion, give it to the committee,” he added.
Another suggestion that was brought forward by the public was to follow the reduction strategy utilized by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR), which can be found at dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/WildlifeHabitat/deermanagement.
The following action items were unanimously approved by the board:
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