Deadline Extended For Applicants To Tick-Borne Diseases Committee

By John Voket

First Selectman Joe Borst has extended the deadline to August 13 for residents who initially expressed interest in serving on a Tick-Borne Diseases Action Committee, to provide résumés and letters of intent that are required as part of the process for the Board of Selectmen to eventually seat and charge the advisory panel.

Mr Borst and Selectman Paul Mangiafico each received correspondence from individuals who either volunteered or who are close to the issue, expressing anger, frustration, or confusion about the process of seating the committee.

The flurry of emails and calls commenced following an open selectmen’s meeting July 29, during which the only resident attending the session suggested selectmen consider skipping the committee process, and use data already generated by neighboring towns in the region, many of which already correlate a rapidly escalating deer population to a corresponding increase in Lyme disease diagnoses.

The committee’s draft charge, supplied to The Bee by Mr Borst August 5, details the need to review all health, environmental, and public safety data available which would result in a recommendation about how the town should move forward to address the findings.

But resident David Shugarts, who volunteers as Newtown’s liaison to the Fairfield County Municipal Deer Alliance, suggested the preponderance of existing data from other municipal studies combined with state health data, deer vs car accident reports, and a recent Department of Environmental Protection deer population study should be enough to justify formulating an immediate action plan to return the town’s deer population to an acceptable level.

Mr Joe Borst originally suggested Mr Shugarts serve as interim chairman of the forming committee until a permanent chair is voted upon after the panel is seated. But that recommendation was never endorsed or rejected by a full board vote.

Few Candidates Responded

Mr Borst said that while initially, more than 20 Newtown residents expressed interest in serving on such a committee, after seeking written letters of interest he only identified six residents who replied with the necessary letter and résumé indicating they were ready and willing to be interviewed for consideration.

The first selectman subsequently learned that a number of the original volunteers did not receive or respond to a written July 10 memo requesting volunteers’ documents in time for the original July 21 deadline. He said in a couple of cases volunteers had either moved to new addresses in town, or were in the process of relocating out of the community.

During the July 29 meeting, Mr Mangiafico called for the seating of the panel to be fast-tracked, possibly within the next 60 days. Mr Borst said this week that the process of seating the committee was protracted because his office is embroiled in a environmental controversy about a waste handling expansion proposal at Hawleyville’s Housatonic Railroad terminal.

“This tick-borne diseases committee is a priority, but the Hawleyville railroad situation has been taking a lot of time,” Mr Borst admitted. “I’m just asking the people involved with this [forming] committee to be cool — we will extend the deadline for them to send their paperwork and we should commence with interviews following the August 17 selectmen’s meeting.”

To be clear, the selectmen will require both a résumé and a letter specifically detailing why the candidate should be considered for the forming tick-borne diseases committee, and it should be delivered to the selectman’s office at Edmond Town Hall by 4:30 pm August 13.

The Ultimate Goal

Mr Borst believes the ultimate goal will be to qualify between nine and 13 members for the initial panel. He said once the deadline closes, he will copy and dispatch all résumés and cover letters to Mr Mangiafico and Selectman Herb Rosenthal for review, and will schedule discussion on the matter for the next selectmen’s meeting.

“The board will decide about scheduling interviews and we will form the committee after that,” Mr Borst said, adding that the members will then elect a chair, vice chair, secretary, and treasurer. “They will need a treasurer because this committee will require a budget, I’m sure,” Mr Borst said.

Mr Borst apologized to any resident who initially requested to be considered for the panel, who did not receive notification about the next steps in the process. He said he asked his assistant to call everyone on the original list of about 20 candidates who did not respond by the last deadline, and he is confident the selectmen will have at least the minimum number of qualified volunteers to get the committee seated and charged in the next few weeks.

According to the draft charge, which is subject to revision by the selectmen before seating the committee, volunteers will be expected to:

*Complete a review of all existing technical and medical data to develop a personal health procedure to be disseminated to the public.

*Complete a review of all local health data to qualify any concentrated areas of tick-borne diseases in the community — and to illustrate those clusters on a map.

*Review data from neighboring communities in the region to see if Newtown could borrow any practices that are meeting with success in reducing tick-borne diseases in other regional communities.

*Taking all findings into consideration and developing an action plan to prevent the further escalation of tick-borne diseases in Newtown.

*To approve the plan for recommendation to the selectmen by a majority vote of the advisory panel.