Council wants ‘action plan’ for rat problem
For the second time in five months, Niagara Falls city council has asked for a staff report to come back on the status of the rat problem in the municipality, and how officials plan to deal with it.
Local politicians have said they’ve heard complaints from residents about rat infestations across Niagara, including in Niagara Falls.
In September, Mayor Jim Diodati told regional public health committee members rats are showing up “in nice areas” of the city, “at barbecues while people are eating, and where children are playing.”
He said rats have been seen in school yards and daycare centres, and it’s hard to determine where they’re coming from.
At council’s Aug. 22 meeting, councillors passed a motion brought forward by Coun. Wayne Thomson asking the public health department to take an “active and engaged” role in dealing with not just inside, but outside rat infestation problems, and to co-operate with local bylaw enforcement officials.
“There’s still a fairly serious problem with a couple of areas and individuals,” said Thomson during this week’s meeting.
“As a matter of fact, I live in the north end in a nice townhouse project and looking out in the backyard in the middle of the afternoon my wife said to me, ‘look at that,’ and there was a rat running across the backyard — never seen one before. I put out traps, and in two days caught three rats.”
Thomson said when a similar issue took place “many years ago,” an exterminator was hired and went into private properties to “try to get it under control, and we did that for several years.”
“We had a budget item in the operational budget, and we got it all under control. I think that we still have a serious problem. I know they’ve been baiting the sewers.”
This week, council approved a motion brought forward by Thomson asking staff to report back on the number of complaints in the city, and “to determine if we’re at the position where we should (set aside money in the budget) to respond to situations like this because it’s continuing on.”
“I would ask that we have a report back so we can make some decisions with respect to the rodent population in the city.”
Thomson’s motion was approved.
Coun. Kim Craitor said he has received a number of calls about rats, and contacted a couple exterminators to learn more about the problem.
He said he thought rats wouldn’t be a problem in the winter.
“They were saying it’s one of the worst years that we’ve had and they were telling me that because you see rats now then you can expect next year it’s going to be even worse than we’ve had this year. We actually need to have an action plan.”
Craitor said the current plan is to go out and deal with individual cases, which is “hit or miss.”
“They’re suggesting that you actually have a plan in place so that you map the areas out when you get the calls and you know where they’re coming from, you look at the areas adjacent to them, see what’s happening — in other words you have something throughout the city where you can follow what you need to do and what can resolve the problem.”
He suggested the city have one provider, “so that it’s done by one (and) there’s records kept.”
Thomson said he would like to see the city call for proposals on the cost of doing that.