By Charlie Finnerty | cfinnerty@queensledger.com
Ridgewood community members, business owners and city service workers from various city agencies held an event Oct. 26 to provide information and instructions on best practices to control the neighborhood’s rat population and educate about the city’s anti-rodent initiatives under the Adams administration. City employees demonstrated rat baiting methods and green space management techniques to prevent burrows from forming. The Horticultural Society of New York educated residents and community gardeners on which crops attract and repel rats.
The NYC Rat Czar speaks in Ridgewood. Credit: Charlie Finnerty
Rat Czar Kathleen Corradi, who oversees and coordinates the city’s cross-agency rat control efforts in her newly-created position, said local-level involvement is crucial to ensure the city’s aggressive new approach to rat management is successful.
“They are hand in glove to me. We’re changing policies at the top level with the goal to take away rats’ access to food, water and shelter, but the acute response in these community partnerships are of the same importance to me because this is the impact New Yorkers are feeling. Building that trust with community, to me, is paramount” Corradi said. “We want to meet people where they live to make sure we’re doing that direct engagement.”
Ricky Simeone, Director of Pest Control for the Department of Health & Mental Hygiene, said he is hopeful that the Adams administration’s approach to pest control can make a serious difference in the city’s long history of rampant rat populations. Simeone said the city’s requirement that trash be placed in sealed containers starting next year, rather than left on the sidewalk in bags, will be a critical step to eliminate rat access to food scraps and other waste. The same requirements will soon follow for residential properties as well.
“This administration gets it because its number one concern is to address the garbage and the plastic bags out on the street,” Simeone said.
Caroline Bragdon, Director of Neighborhood Interventions for the Department of Health & Mental Hygiene, said the Health Department has a dual role of not only enforcing health codes but also educating property owners on how to meet their requirements. Bragdon and Corradi both said mitigation starts with waste management and caring for green spaces where rodents can create burrows and nests.
“What we say at the health department is everyone has a role in pest control,” Bragdon said. “We’re here to show property owners the best and safest things you can do to keep rats off your property. We don’t want people to use a lot of harmful chemicals or pesticides. We want people to take proactive steps to prevent rats.”
Bragdon pointed to the city’s rat academy, a free training for property, business owners and community gardeners offered online and in person, and the rat information portal website at nyc.gov/rats as examples of resources offered by the city to educate and inform residents on mitigation strategies.
“We want communities to be engaged, to be involved, to visit our website and to come to our trainings to help us find a rat-free Queens and a rat-free New York,” Bragdon said.
Executive Director of the Myrtle Avenue Business Improvement District Theodore Renz, said his organization was ecstatic to work with the various city agencies to combat rat issues in Ridgewood. Renz has been working with the city since the summer to strategize Ridgewood’s rat mitigation efforts.
“Right now we are exploring possible locations off-site where we can set our bins to get rid of our bags,” Renz said. “We will still have the problem of illegal dumping, but we’re on board to strategize and come up with a reasonable comprehensive plan that’s fair to all stakeholders.”
By Charlie Finnerty and Celia Bernhardt
news@queensledger.com
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined Halloween festivities at the Queens Night Market in Corona Park Saturday Oct. 28. The congresswoman was a judge in the event’s costume contests, met dozens of community members and sampled food from vendors. After three weeks of chaos in congress following the Republican ousting of Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House, Ocasio-Cortez said she was glad to be back in the district connecting with constituents.
“You’ve got to be where the people are,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “To be able to be back in the community after being stuck in DC for a while, I just want to kiss the ground when I land at LaGuardia. It’s really great to be able to be here, bring folks together and just be a person, hang out, be with our neighbors.”
The Night Market was rained out the preceding four weekends, but visitors enjoyed a bout of good weather on Saturday night — just in time for the Halloween-themed finale to the Market’s season. Competitors in the costume contest vied for prizes including a football signed by Eli Manning, tickets to Forest Hills Stadium events and round trip Delta Airlines flights. After the contest concluded, scores of attendees lined up to greet Ocasio-Cortez.
Events like the Night Market provide crucial opportunities to meet with constituents in a casual setting and have open dialogue about community needs to break away from the broadly accepted policy prescriptions of the Hill, Ocasio-Cortez said.
“There’s often such a huge disparity between Washington consensus and everyday people,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Being back on the ground — having these conversations with folks and actually hearing from our community what their thoughts and perspectives are — it’s super grounding and helps me give me a lot of confidence in being able to advocate for our community in Washington.”
The congresswoman said the recent violence in Israel and Palestine highlighted the especially rigid approach to US foreign policy in DC. An attack by Hamas on Oct. 7 killed over 1,400 Israeli civilians and ongoing mass bombing of Gaza by the Israeli Defense Force has killed over 8,000 Palestinians. Ocasio-Cortez, alongside fellow Queens representative Nydia Velasquez, is one of 18 members of congress who have called for a ceasefire. She said constituents she spoke with at the Night Market expressed gratitude for her stance on the issue.
“Usually in Washington there’s a very strong foreign policy consensus, it’s very uniform and we never hear anything outside of that. For a very long time, you couldn’t even say the word ‘Palestine’ in Washington. People were just thankful in a borough with the diversity that we have, that we can hold space for the humanity of Israelis and Palestinans,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We can do both, we can fight for everybody. This is a borough that can be safe for every single community and can advocate and protect the rights of every single community.”
Asked about the current influx of asylum seekers to New York City and Queens, Ocasio-Cortez called for a measured and humanitarian response and highlighted the city’s history as a global hub for migration. The city has welcomed over 100,000 asylum seekers in the last year, a noticeable rise from recent years but a number that pales in comparison to 20th century peaks in immigration when some years saw over a million new immigrants enter the country through the city.
“There are of course logistical and resource constraints that accompany any migratory or refugee situation the way we have now, but they will not break our city. However, the rhetoric surrounding these migrants often makes the situation worse and can be inflammatory,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We don’t need to approach this with a deficit-based point of view. This is what our city has always been built on. We have dealt with waves of migration that were far larger than this before, the actual challenge has been that it was much easier to get a job and it was much easier to get documented. That’s really the path that we should look towards now. We have to make sure that we can make this logistically as easy as possible so that people aren’t stuck in these systems.”
Ocasio-Cortez said the values and strength of Queens’ communities inspires her work in congress as she heads back to DC this week.
“Our community is important,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “If we can make this work in Queens, we can make it work anywhere in the country. I’ve always felt that way and that’s why I’m so proud to represent this borough.”
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