DALTON: Find middle ground

Listening to an more than three-hour Zoom meeting for the city of Dalton Gardens on Dec. 1, I was incredibly disheartened by the lack of any real compassion for those of us facing a massive deer over population and a huge influx of traffic, specifically on Fourth and 15th in the last year or so.

I’ve been told several times, “If you don’t like the deer, leave.” It’s not that I don’t like the deer, but they are severely overpopulated with no real predators. We are now experiencing predators coming into town like mountain lions and coyotes, so my question for those people who consider the deer pets and are feeding them as one letter to the editor suggested we do (Dec. 6, which is against the law), when these predators along with others start killing pets and livestock, is your answer still going to be that they were here first and to do nothing as they are killing your family pet in front of you?

And even if they were here first, they were still managed through hunting at that time, so that argument makes no sense.

My hope is that our little town can come to a sensible middle ground on real wildlife and traffic management. We are always going to have wildlife and traffic, so there has to be systems in place to protect our rural way of life that I and many others cherish and love Dalton Gardens for.

RANDY GREGERSON

Dalton Gardens