A committee to address the deer population in Jamestown has been reformed.
Jamestown City Council President Tony Dolce announced at the voting session Monday that Council member Joe Paterniti will chair the Deer Management Committee and be joined by Council members Bill Reynolds and Andrew Faulkner, “To work on this throughout the spring and into the summer, conduct public meetings as we’ve done before, go back and look at it again to see if we can come up with a plan. It’s not an easy task, as Legislator Nelson will tell you, but I think it’s worth looking at it again, bringing it forward to see if there’s another plan or a similar plan to what was originally proposed to try to look at to see if we can manage the deer.”
Dolce said the council members on the committee will decide who to add to the group from the public based on their expertise.
County Legislator and former City Council member Tom Nelson spoke at privilege of the floor, said he was glad to see interest in looking at the deer population issue.
He said he also wanted to correct the narrative that the Deer Management plan voted down by City Council in 2021 was due to several last minute changes, “The only thing we did at the last meeting before we voted we suggested that rather than do it citywide, do it in one or two of the wards and see how it worked. So, it was an effort to compromise. An effort to reach out and say, ‘Can we do this and see how it goes?’ So, I want the record to be set in that.”
The proposal voted down in 2021 would have allowed 8 bow hunters to receive licenses with the two sites for hunting limited to Jones Memorial Park and the wooded area behind the Allen Park Ice Rink.
Nelson said the former committee had worked on the issue for a year, including talking to municipalities where deer hunts have been done successfully. He said he still thinks a hunt could be done safely in Jamestown.
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