Members of the Somerville Board of Alderman joined with members of the Rodent Taskforce to examine plans and procedures that will be put into effect to try to stem the tide of rat infestation in the city. — Photo by Douglas Yu

By Douglas Yu

“If you have rat problems in your property, call 311 Somerville.”

This is a call from the City of Somerville to residents to address the mounting frustration over rodent infestation. 311 Somerville, part of the Mayor’s Office, provides constituent services that allow residents to obtain valuable information about the city.

In 2008 and 2009 alone, rodent calls from the city were about 200 in total. In 2012, the calls rose to more than 600. The creatures, which often eat pigeon’s droppings, are increasingly found in residents’ backyards, dumpsters or even in their kitchens, chewing leftovers and trash barrels.

This week, the Board of Alderman joined the Rodent Taskforce to host a public hearing at City Hall about rodent issues. Public members were invited to testify about how rodents affect their neighborhoods.

Paulette Renault-Caragianes, Director of Health Department of the city, addressed the current efforts that the Taskforce has made. “We have a residential rodent control assistance program; a new uniform residential trash cart program, comprehensive dumpster inspection, registration, and enforcement,” she said.

Besides these efforts, Renault-Caragianes also mentioned that they were going to continue public education about ways of avoiding infestation, even in those neighborhoods where rodent issues are less prominent.

People who try to file complaints about rats need to follow a certain application process through 311, according to Steve Craig, director of 311.

“We ask questions like ‘is that property occupied?’ ‘How many units are there in your property?’” Craig said. “We also asked if there is additional information, such as if there are any elderly, financial hardships, disabilities, as well as any other information that we need to capture.”

Superintendent of Inspectional Services, Goran Smiljic, said that once they receive a complaint they would schedule an appointment with the property and see if there is any evidence of rodent activity.

The challenge for 311, as Alderman John Connolly said, is that certain property owners may live far away from Somerville and they are hard to reach when the neighbors of their properties complain about on-going rodent activities around their buildings.

“Some of the landlords live on other continents and they are impossible to reach.” Ward 2 Alderman Maryann Heuston was concerned about how absent landlords pay for inspecting their properties.

“Assuming that [absent landlords] pay their property tax bills, if there is an extremely problematic property causing rats to run rampant in the neighborhood and affecting other areas, would it be something for the committee to get together with the legal department to find out if we can go on that property and put a surcharge on their tax bill for inspectional services? I think that will be very helpful,” Heuston said. Smiljic will look into it.

Dian Blewett, who lives on 40 Tennyson Street, reported during the public hearing that rats are found along the retaining wall in the back of the houses on Tennyson Street. And behind the retaining wall, there is a large dumpster on the property of a Sycamore Street apartment that is like a “drive-through restaurant” for rats.

Blewett was looking for help from the city and inspectional services to get the dumpster replaced. She paid $120, the initial fee, to an animal pest control company. The company could not do anything about the dumpster, since it is on another property.

Connolly said that the city was going to pressure the owner of the apartment on Sycamore Street to replace the dumpster, which has plastic lids, to an all-steel dumpster. He said rats could easily get into any plastic-lid dumpsters, but it is impossible for any animals to get into an all-steel dumpster, especially the ones with padlocks.

“This particular dumpster has a rubber top on it, which doesn’t really close that tight. We may want to talk about changing some of the ordinances for certain size buildings that rubber top or flip top that doesn’t really cut it,” Heuston said.