Councilor Flynn again calls for city ‘rat czar’ at special hearing on rodents

Amid persistent reports of rodent sightings throughout the city, District 2 Councilor Ed Flynn again pointed to the urgent need for a ‘rat czar’ during a special City Council City Services hybrid hearing held Oct. 22 at City Hall, as well as virtually.

“We need to get this right, so people stay in the city – it’s that serious,” he said. “Pest control is critical to our quality of life as rats and rodents are not only a nuisance but also affect public health.”

Councilor Flynn, who, together with City Council President Liz Breadon sponsored the matter, which was then referred to the Committee on Sept. 23, recommended that the city establish a stand-alone department to deal exclusively with pest control.

The hearing followed the 2024 release of the Boston Rodent Action Plan (BRAP), authored by renowned rodent urbanologist, Dr. Bobby Corrigan. (Like Councilor Flynn, Dr. Corrigan has also recommended that the City of Boston designate a ‘rat czar.’)

The City of Boston also hosted the second National Urban Rat Summit on Sept. 23 and 24, bringing together leading 100 experts, academics, researchers, public health professionals, and municipal officials from 30 cities and towns across the U.S. to discuss rodent-prevention strategies.

At the hearing, Councilor Flynn suggested the city to launch a comprehensive public awareness campaign in multiple languages to educate the public on pest prevention. He also pointed to the need for more city inspections to help further address the issue.

Noting that Boston was recently named among the Top 10 most rat-infested cities in the U.S., Councilor Flynn related how a South Boston man said a rat hopped into a stroller, with the man’s toddler inside, while they were out for a recent walk around that neighborhood.

Meanwhile, a constant refrain heard from City Councilors and the public during the hearing was that poor trash containerization accounts for much of the recent rise in rodent activity. Some residents are leaving their trash out on the street in plastic kitchen trash bags, or just in paper bags, they said, and apparently the city is doing little in the way of enforcement to discourage this aberrant behavior.

District 8 City Councilor Sharon Durkan urged the city to explore better trash-containerization options, along with implementing same-day trash pickups, in an effort to curb rodent infestations.

“I think it’s really important that we have standard trash bag we can use [if not a standard for containerization],” said Councilor Durkan. “I think we as a City Council could unite around containerization. I know it’s expensive.”

Lydia Lowe, of the Chinatown Community Land Trust, said many small rowhouses in that neighborhood have no common space to store trash containers, so residents simply leave their garbage bags out on street instead.

“If tenants don’t have a trash bin because there’s no place in there building for their landlord to have it, they’re going to continue to leave bags on the street,” she said via Zoom.

Back Bay resident Ali Foley suggested that the city launch a pilot program in her neighborhood whereby all curbside trash would be placed into black contractor bags, and then the city could measure its impact within two or three blocks.

Foley estimates that trash can sit on the street for up to a “net of 22 hours” sometimes, due to the rotation of pickup times. She suggested if same-day trash pickup isn’t an option, perhaps the city could instead move the time for Back Bay residents to leave their trash out for collection to 8 p.m. the night before, instead of the current time of the night before at 5 p.m.

In offering his concluding remarks, Councilor Flynn expressed his continuing frustration with the city’s current approach to rodent prevention.

“There was a major disconnect between what residents have expressed today and what the administration has expressed,” he said. “The issue is not getting better, in fact, it’s getting worse.”