Along with creating a regulation prohibiting the feeding of deer, lets revoke the dogs on leash requirement– and give us a chance!

From Sipowski’s reply email:

Warning signs are not as strictly regulated as regulatory. I put the one on Huron Parkway when I’ve heard reports of deer chewing on our prairie greens on the median and crossing. I decided to do this due to higher speeds (40mph) of Huron Parkway, and relatively common events. I rejected similar requests on residential streets as drivers should be prepared to react to residential traffic events, speeds are lower, and we do not have crashes on record.

We do have one more on Dhu-Varren (35 mph).

So it sounds like we have two such signs citywide. (I didn’t include Dhu-Varren in this morning’s survey.)

Assuming those questions can be answered, it’s not obvious that the most efficient way to reduce deer-car collisions is to cull the deer herd. Looking at the map, the density of deer collisions inside the city is exactly where you might predict – along high-traffic arteries in close proximity to large natural/open areas: Plymouth, Huron Parkway, Glazier, Fuller. If our goal is to reduce deer-car accidents, then the first thing I would think to ask is: Do we have any deer-crossing signs along those corridors?

To answer that question, I took a spin this morning up Plymouth to Huron Parkway, south on Huron Parkway to Washtenaw, back up Huron Parkway to Glazier, and took Glazier and Fuller back into town. I counted one such sign – at Hubbard & Huron Parkway. That one sign was very close to the gateway sign for the University of Michigan North Campus – so I think it might actually be placed on UM property. It’s entirely possible I missed some signs – as my eyes are old, my mind tends to drift as I pedal along, and it was before morning coffee. (I spotted two yellow-diamond golf-cart crossing signs, which I initially mistook for deer-crossing signs…those clubs seemed like they could be antlers.) More seriously, it might be the case that there are warrants that have to be met before placing such signs, and it’s just not possible to place those signs within the city. (Inquiry made.)

If the council can’t manage to come up with a clear statement of what success looks like, and commit to that statement in its resolution that allocates $20,000 to develop a plan, then their action will be tantamount to saying,”Success looks like: Looking like we’re doing something.”

Success might also mean tasty venison stocking the larders at Food Gatherers.

So it’s now an “easy” vote to appropriate $20,000 to develop a plan – a plan that the resolution on Monday’s agenda indicates is supposed to be endorsed by the community. It’s an “easy” vote in favor – because: (i) it’s only the creation of a plan, which will require additional city council approval; and (ii) the plan will be community-endorsed.

That punts the actual controversy down the road – which will come when the council is asked to approve the deer management plan.

The council’s approach to this problem, while measured and stepwise, is not – in my view – informed by some basics of public policy consideration. Recall that the city council, at its December 2012 retreat, seemed really receptive to the facilitator’s general advice on public policy issues, which was to think about two key questions: (1) What is a clear statement of the problem? and (2) What does success look like?

I think it goes without saying that the deer management plan – like any kind of public policy proposal – should be “community-endorsed.” But surely having and implementing a community-endorsed deer management plan is not an adequate answer to the question: What does success look like?

The council should be directing the city staff to develop a deer management plan that is designed to achieve success. But what does that mean? It’s the city council’s job as a policy-making body to define success. But the Aug. 14 report on options does not really provide enough information to define a metric for success. I don’t think it’s a deficiency of the report, but a deficiency on the council’s part in directing the creation of the report.

Some ideas for answering that basic question can be gleaned from the report. But at this stage we should have more than just some ideas for possibilities about what kind of success a deer management program is supposed to achieve.

Before spending $20,000 on the development of a plan, the council should be able to answer the following types of questions. What is the geographic scope of our definition of success – city, county, region? Is success defined in terms of number of deer-vehicle accidents, complaints from residents about damage to gardens and landscaping, damage to public property, or simply the number of deer within the geographic scope? If success is defined in terms of the measured deer population, what is that number? [E.g., From the Aug. 14 report: "City of Jackson have a deer population density goal of 15 deer per square mile."]

The Aug. 14 report estimates the cost of a program that would take 40-50 deer at about $25,000. The Michigan DNR report cited above indicates that in 2012 there were about 6,600 deer taken in Washtenaw County. I’m somewhat skeptical increasing the local deer harvest by less than 1% is going to have a meaningful impact on some metric of success – regardless of how it is defined. But I’m certainly open to being proven dramatically wrong. That proof would, however, require a clear answer to the question: What does success look like?

The roaming habits of deer are simple to understand. Want to see deer in the City? Go to an open body of water at dawn or dusk. Why so many accidents on Whitmore Lake Road? The deer are crossing from the water on the west to bed down in the field margins on the east, at dusk. Same goes for Huron Parkway, or Green, even Barton Drive has active deer crossing in the evening, running along the river bank. It is a genetic memory at work here, a natural lifestyle we have disrupted with our development. We simply don’t value natural areas in the city, the greenbelt acquisition has been paltry, and all land “inside the ring” seems to be fair game for dense development, with no consideration given to the benefits of the natural state or agricultural value of the land. Got deer? Too bad.