Mayor Eric Adams again decried the mob of rodents having the run of the city’s streets — as he defended failing to tackle an infestation so close to home it was literally in his Brooklyn building and resulted in a hefty fine.
“Upper East Side, Upper West Side, rats are everywhere,” Adams told reporters, when asked if the rat czar City Hall is seeking to hire might pay a visit to his four-building brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
“I hate rats as you know, I’m scared of them and when I see one I think about it all day. So, I am fixated on killing rats”
Adams made the remarks just a day after he called in to a city administrative court to defend his management of the Bedford-Stuyvesant brownstone after the Department of Health hit the Lafayette Avenue address with a summons for a rodent infestation.
The city inspector found “fresh rat droppings” near the building’s meters and a staircase, sufficient evidence of “active rat signs” during an inspection on May 10.
The maximum fine for the offense is $600.
Adams has made cracking down on rats a hallmark of the early days of his administration.
So far, City Hall has rolled out a pilot program in Times Square and Brooklyn Heights to experiment with bins to hold trash bags that would otherwise sit on the streets; announced an overhaul the pickup schedule to cut the amount of time that trash bags spend on the street; and said it plans to hire a new ‘czar’ to coordinate agency efforts to battle infestations.
