THAT’S THE PEST WE CAN DO?!
Blas rat ‘weapon’: Don’t feed ’em
Well, duh. Mayor de Blasio is re a l ly bringing out the big guns in the war on rats — stationing agents around parks to ask fo l ks not to leave food around.
Please don’t play with the rats! Mayor de Blasio’s latest attempt to curb the city’s rat population involves telling New Yorkers what they already know — don’t feed the rodents.
The city has begun stationing an army of workers in 30 parks in Manhattan, Brooklyn and The Bronx to warn people that it “has experienced problems with rats” and make sure they know that “rats are a health hazard, especially to children and seniors,” according to internal Parks Department e-mails and sources.
But some residents say the move only shows that City Hall is a Mickey Mouse operation.
“You know what would be more useful? If de Blasio had them empty the trash more often,” said Rob Wooster, in Tompkins Square Park in the East Village Sunday.
Chelsea Casey, 28, who was at the park with her three kids last week, added, “I don’t know what warning people about rats in New York City will achieve.”
Union members with the Parks Department said workers with both the agency’s Parks Enforcement Patrol and Urban Park Rangers divisions were first dispatched last week. The union said the move is sapping valuable manpower that is meant to police the city’s 30,000 acres of park land.
“How are they supposed to actually be keeping people safe in the parks if they are spending time telling people about rats?” said Marlena Giga, treasurer for District Council 37 Local 983, which represents PEP officers. “That’s not what they were hired to do.”
About 14 officers spent roughly two hours a day last week making their rounds — though the patrols sometimes took longer because they had to drive between parks, union sources said.
PEP officers’ starting salaries are about $47,000 annually, according to a city job posting, suggesting that the rat-patrol workers are making at least $22 an hour to tell people there are rodents in New York City.
“PEP officers are executing core responsibilities by educating New Yorkers on Parks’ littering rules and rat-related issues,” said Mike Dockett, assistant commissioner for the Urban Park Service.
The targeted parks include Manhattan’s Columbus Square in Little Italy and Tompkins Square Park, Brooklyn’s Marcy Playground and Macombs Dam Park in The Bronx.
Many of the locations already have signs telling people not to feed rats or litter. Twenty of the 30 parks also have new, supposedly rat-proof trash cans. The administration last year announced a $32 million plan to battle rats that included buying 336 of the trash-compacting litter bins for $7,000 a pop.
The city would not respond to questions about whether the cans have been effective.
The furry invaders left Hizzoner red-faced during a press conference last month in which he touted rat-killing dry ice at a NYCHA development, only to have one of the wily rodents escape while city workers were supposed to be demonstrating how effective the measure was.
Lorraine Hansen, who was at Sara D. Roosevelt Park on the Lower East Side, had a better idea for the mayor.
“I would prefer devoting more energy to keeping the rats out, even if that means having to temporarily close some parks to clean them out,’’ she said.