Rat Complaints In 2 La Grange Neighborhoods

LA GRANGE, IL – It's not an issue that La Grange's boosters would want to highlight.

On Monday, residents in two neighborhoods complained about rats to the Village Board. In one case, an abandoned house was believed to be the cause.

Anne Marie Eischen, who lives on the west side of the 400 block of South La Grange Road, pointed to the house next door.

The home's property tax bills are paid by a woman associated with a blues club in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood, public records indicate.

Eischen said the house is at the gateway of La Grange.

"I have rats running up and down my driveway in La Grange. This is four doors down from the La Grange Historical Society," she said.

She said she has complained about the home's "unacceptable" problems for years. The village's public works department was there Monday, she said, but only posted a notice for the owner to cut the grass, while ignoring other code violations.

Dan Murdock, who lives on the other side of the house, said the home has multiple holes in the roof, tall grass and a fallen-down fence.

He said animals go in and out of the house, but he didn't mention rats.

"Last winter, they had a pipe break," Murdock said. "No one knew about it until my fence fell down when it froze, and then I went out to go look at it, called the city. The city wasn't even able to go into the house because the stairs were dilapidated, flooded everywhere. No one ever mitigated the damage."

He acknowledged that trees in the front make it hard for people to notice the issues when they're driving by.

Kim Mosley, who lives on Washington Avenue in La Grange's northeast corner, said she, too, is seeing rats.

Referring to Eischen, Mosley said, "When she stood up there and said that about those rats, she's not lying."

She said she had never seen a rat in her life until she spotted what she thought was a squirrel.

"My husband let me know it wasn't a squirrel. You look at the tail, you can't tell the difference. I didn't know the difference because I had never seen a rat before," Mosley said.

She told the Village Board about a nearby house on Washington that she said had been vacant for at least five years, with a big hole in the roof, weeds and an abandoned car.

She urged the village to take action.

"All I'm asking, whoever's job it is, just do your job because when my taxes are due, I pay them," Mosley said. "I don't want to pay for rats, I'm sorry."

Village President Mark Kuchler said the reported issues are unacceptable. The village's administrative adjudication, he said, should take care of the issues, including slapping liens on homes with code violations.

He said the village would look at the problems.

"I sometimes wonder why they're not all being cited," he said. "It's my hope that they will all be cited."

Trustee Beth Augustine, who lives a block away from the La Grange Road house, said she walks that street a lot and had no idea the home was in such condition.

"I'll look closer," she said. "I'm pretty certain you're going to get that addressed.