In an editorial, Hoboken resident Joshua Sotomayor-Einstein expresses his dismay on how the municipal government has handled rat control.
The exponential increase in Hoboken’s rat population has finally caught up with City Hall.
While some say political office has long attracted vermin, it was not until recently that elected leaders in Hoboken began addressing the (several years long and) obvious explosion in the rat problem.
Of course, the first ‘solution’ offered by the ‘parks and rec’ obsessed virtue signalers that are many of our elected officials was wastefully spending the public’s purse on pamphlets instructing people how to better close their garbage bins.
Now the ‘wise heads’ of city hall would like to mandate that buildings, small and large, use new garbage cans and bags.
This cost, of course, will eventually be passed on to residents but importantly, City Hall’s proposed solutions ignore the fact that this city council itself has created more affordable housing and greater food access for rats than for any human residents.
Street eateries and the rat hotels that are corner “bioswales,” are the cause of the explosion in the rat population.
Ending street eateries and cementing over the infested pockets of corner curb side dirt and weeds is a huge part of the actual solution. Before street eateries and the bioswales Hoboken’s rat population was lower, after giving them greater access to food, greater cover to hide in and under from which to dart out, the rat population exploded.
While none in City Hall will say it aloud, thousands of Hoboken residents have seen rats running around and under street eateries and coming from the dirt patches called bioswales.
The meager poison program the city has solicited will not stop the rise in rats. At best it will temporarily arrest, not the total number, but the growth rate of the rat population.
A more intensive extermination plan combined with eliminating the rat habitat and de facto outdoor rat cafeterias city hall has created, will lower the population permanently.
Until then Hoboken is stuck both with the rampaging rats in the streets and those in City Hall (living on government cheese) and ignoring the problem they created.