New Milford Mayor Pete Bass Responds to Barstool Sports Article

I’ve been a fan of Barstool Sports since it was just Dave Portnoy covering Boston. I love it—their crew always puts out some of the funniest and most relevant content in the country.

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As a former New Milford resident, I’ve got a real appreciation for the town and its people. I always thought my love for Barstool and my former town were two totally separate things. That was until yesterday when I jumped on Barstool and saw an article about New Milford’s recent graffiti situation.

It was Kate who wrote up a piece on October 30th about the graffiti incident at the gazebo. She took a lighthearted jab at how seriously the Mayor was treating the "Luke" tag. Kate said:

Not trying to pop back on here out of the blue & get too serious and preachy, but I felt the need to speak out on this. It's a divisive time in our nation and the last thing anyone needs is a vandal attacking community property, especially on the most unifying, classic-Americana, town-square patio of them all - The Gazebo Bandstand. Sadly, a bandstand sullied with spray paint is tearing the small town of New Milford, CT apart, and the mayor is scrambling to restore order. A strong police response has been promised and there's a $1,000 reward for anyone who outs the culprit, but I'm afraid the damage is already done.

She added:

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo, not "Luke <3" !!!!! anything but that! First off, Mayor Pete has posted this no less than 3 times on his personal Insta page and in each instance he writes, "Defacing pubic property is a crime." If that's true and you saw me after the last time I attempted to shave you'd have to call the cops.

 

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And finally she offered to date the graffiti author, saying:

Anyways, shoutout to Luke. If chivalry is still alive I say you take the fall & then take whoever spray painted this out on a nice date.

When I saw the Barstool article, I called the Mayor right away and he agreed to join us on the Thursday (10/31/24) edition of the I-95 Morning Show. Here is some of our chat about the Barstool post.

Lou: It's no secret that you've been very vocal about the graffiti on the gazebo on the green in New Milford which said Luke with a heart on it. Then, out of nowhere there is an article from Barstool Sports and the general thing was that is was basically poking fun at you for making a big deal out of this graffiti. What do you think about that? 

Mayor: "Yeah for those who don't live in New Milford or haven't been here much, the bandstand represents New Milford. It's an iconic structure, people come here from all over to take pictures here on our bandstand, it means a lot to us and to have someone to decide to mark the bandstand, graffiti it, we had a lot of the public that was outraged about that, that someone would think about doing that and we just wanted to raise awareness and attention that, that is not going to be tolerated here. The good news is we caught the person, there are some other people that may be involved so our New Milford Police Department is going to continue with that investigation and then when that is completed we're going to go ahead and talk more about that. I want to thank Steve Looney, the private citizen that raised the $1,000 for the reward for this. We will not tolerate someone coming out and graffitiing those iconic structures whether they be the bandstand or monuments. Those should be respected and we're going to do everything we can to make sure that we take care of that. "

Check out the rest of our discussion about the gazebo graffiti below. You'll find out whether this crime had anything to do with "The Gilmore Girls."

This is how I picture Mayor Bass and Chief Cerruto when anything remotely bad happens in New Milford.

It's worth noting I was a juvenile delinquent growing up so I'm 100% talking out of both sides of my giant face but I have a show to do.

Check out the Ethan, Lou & Large Dave Podcast on Apple and Spotify

P.S. During our interview Mayor Bass addressed the sad state of his beloved New York Jets franchise.