By Forum Staff
Mayor Eric Adams and Citywide Director of Rodent Mitigation Kathy Corradi on Sunday launched the NYC Rat Pack.
“We’re really proud of the City’s efforts of going after public enemy number one, and those are those pesky rodents that are seen far too often,” Adams said at a Rat Pack event in Brooklyn. “Now we’re doing something new. We’re recruiting an entirely new generation of the Rat Pack. As was sung when I walked up, you don’t have to be Frank Sinatra in the crew. It’s just a different type of leader to fight the rats, and we want you to join up and become a member of our Rat Pack. You don’t need to sing.
“All you have to do to become a member, to be an official New York City Rat Pack member, and get the swag, the hat, the T-shirt to prove it, and the confidence to go after those pesky critters. You will have to attend a two-hour New York City Department of Health Rat Academy session that will give you real instructions on how to deal with rodents. Two, participate in New York City Service rat mitigation events. New York City Service is a real partner throughout the city. A lot of our corporate and community groups come together and go after those basic services in the city, and volunteerism is a real win. Three, go out on a rat walk, hosted by our city’s own rat czar, Kathy Corradi.
“Those three items will allow you to join and become a member of our Rat Pack, and you can be proud to lead your community to a rat-free environment. This is how we get it done, how to shut them down, and we want to keep it from happening again with rodents taking over the streets of our city. From cutting our rats’ food supplies to closing down rat havens, Rat Pack members will be able to defend their communities from rodents, and achieve our goal of making New York City the least rat-friendly city in America.”
According to Hizzoner, “Rat sightings, due to the work of the Department of Sanitation and what our rat czar has carried out in a very real, on-the-ground way have gone down 12 of the last 13 months, and our massive trash revolution strategy is getting millions of pounds of rat-attracting trash off our streets. In November, we will have a 70 percent containerization of our garbage, so those all-you-can-eat buffets are going to be off the streets that rats enjoy so much.”
Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar (D-Woodhaven) echoed, “Of course, it’s the trash revolution, so we are implementing full trash containerization across this city. Other cities around the world do it, Barcelona does it, Paris does it, Buenos Aires. If they can do it, we can do it. Gone are the days when the trash bags are sitting on the curb. It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet for the rats, but those days are over. We also have the Queens composting program that took the food scraps off the streets and that lowered the rat sightings by 55 percent. We are on the road to progress, and we are all here to say, as one united rat pack, that this is our city and this city does not belong to the rats.”
