Upper West Side Rat Problem Causes Political Rivals To Spar

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — Upper West Side political rivals have turned to finger pointing over a sudden panic about over-aggressive rats the neighborhood.

City Council challenger Mel Wymore released a statement Thursday blasting incumbent Helen Rosenthal for "for years of inaction" to control the Upper West Side's rat population. Wymore called Rosenthal out for not securing funding from a recent City Hall initiative to battle vermin in some of the city's most overrun neighborhoods such as Chinatown, Bushwick and Grand Concourse.

"The Upper West Side is facing a worsening rat infestation that threatens our health and quality of life. Rats in playgrounds are unacceptable," Wymore said in a statement.

"It’s outrageous that the Mayor's anti-rat proposal did not include the Upper West Side and that our council member didn’t fight for our community. She’s had four years to address this problem. Grandstanding a month before the election isn’t leadership, it’s too little, too late."

Following video of a rat rummaging around in a Riverside Park playground's sand pit, first reported by the West Side Rag, Upper West Side parents and politicians have proclaimed a neighborhood crisis. The Wall Street Journal even claimed that rats are "boldly jumping in strollers."

Rosenthal spoke with Patch to defend her record on fighting rats. While the incumbent council member refused to directly respond to Wymore's comment — saying she "really can’t speak to what my opponent says or does" — she did tell Patch that her office works with neighborhood residents to mitigate rat problems year round.

"Like every issue that our office gets notified about, or that we see going on, we use every tool in the toolbox to address the issue," Rosenthal told Patch.

Some of those tools include working with the Department of Health to develop "rat reservoirs" — sections of the neighborhood where city exterminators concentrate efforts — and allocating nearly $80,000 in funding to install "Big Belly" trash receptacles in Riverside Park playgrounds. Rosenthal said that the new trash cans, which will deprive rats of a food source, should arrive in Riverside Park by September.

Rosenthal also told Patch that the City Council is working with the city Parks Department to develop pilot programs designed to fight rat populations by using dry ice to exterminate rat burrows and by sterilizing rat populations in a way that won't be hazardous for the hawks that feed on New York's rats.

Photo by Eden, Janine and Jim via Flickr/Creative Commons