* WARNING: THIS IS AN UNOFFICIAL, INTRODUCTORY COPY OF THE BILL.
THE OFFICIAL COPY CONSIDERED BY THE CITY COUNCIL IS THE FIRST READER COPY.
INTRODUCTORY*
CITY OF BALTIMORE
COUNCIL BILL R
(Resolution)
Introduced by: President Rawlings-Blake
A RESOLUTION ENTITLED
A COUNCIL RESOLUTION concerning
Title
Informational Hearing - Bureau of Vector Control
FOR the purpose of requesting the Commissioner and the Director, Bureau of Vector Control of the Baltimore City Health Department to report to the City Council on the operations of the Bureau, the status of outreach and educational rat abatement programs, and the efficacy of programs to control rat infestations throughout Baltimore City neighborhoods.
Body
Recitals
A news report, in April 1994, quoted a Hopkins researcher as saying that there are probably more rats than people in Maryland. In Baltimore alone, there were 3,600 rat complaints logged in the previous year, an increase of more than 40% from 1991. A leading manufacturer of rodent traps and baits ranked Baltimore 8th among cities in its sales of rodenticides.
By 1998, the Director of the City's Rat Rubout programs reported that the problem persisted. There were 50 to 100 complaints processed by program staff each day, an increase blamed on the warm weather brought on by EL Nino. The number of complaints so overwhelmed workers to the point that it took a Rubout Truck and 2 pest-control workers a month or more to respond to them.
In February 2001, the City was making headway in the war against rats. Citizen complaints about neighborhood rats had dropped to 50 a week - far below the 600 calls a week the Rat Rubout program received, in 1998. This success was credited to an efficient sanitation enforcement program that targeted the trash and debris that provided food and breeding grounds for the rodents.
An early holiday present, in 2002. was the purchase of 33,000 trash cans - one for every 10 rats in the City said news reports - to be given to residents in 4 of the City's poorer neighborhoods, Oliver, Sandtown/Winchester, Washington Village, and central Park Heights where the rodents infestation was the most severe. At that time, City officials credited the efforts of the Rat Rubout crew for a reduction in the rat population from 700,000, in 1997, to 320,000 that year.
On April 25, 2005, the media reported that the warm temperature that week had revealed yet another unpleasant aspect of jury duty in Baltimore City: the 105-year-old Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse smelled like dead rats, a situation the Health Commissioner at the time declared was unpleasant but not a risk to health because rats posed few health risks, particularly when they were decomposing. He went on to say that he was unaware of any other recent rat infestations in City buildings, despite a rat population that he estimated to nearly equal the City's human population of 636,251.
Since early 2004, responsibility for control of Baltimore's rat population has vested in the Bureau of Vector Control (VC) in the Baltimore City Health Department. The VC provides rodent abatement services to residents by inspecting and treating sites reported to have rodent infestation. Inspection and treatment is in response to complaint reports through the 311 system, as well as strike teams that engage in neighborhood sweeps. The sweeps include prior meetings with neighborhood residents and community leaders to identify and implement an inspection and treatment strategy.
Past history shows that Baltimoreans have waged a long, intractable war against rodents. In the interest of winning that war, it is essential that the Council receive regular battlefield status reports from the VC agents on the front lines.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF BALTIMORE, That the Commissioner and the Director, Bureau of Vector Control of the Baltimore City Health Department are requested to report to the City Council on the operations of the Bureau, the status of outreach and educational rat abatement programs, and the efficacy of programs to control rat infestations throughout Baltimore City neighborhoods.
AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That a copy of this Resolution be sent to the Mayor, the Commissioner and the Director, Bureau of Vector Control of the Baltimore City Health Department, and the Mayor's Legislative Liaison to the City Council.
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