Residents critique rodent hotline, seek more regulation of leaf blowers

Quality-of-life issues are the task of any local government. But few places bring quite as much passion to the day-to-day problems of city life as Cambridge does.

Case-in-point: the rat problem. Though the councillors themselves have rarely delved into discussions of the city’s rodent infestation in the past two years, citizen speakers are often eager to bring the pest problem to the councillors’ attention.

The Cambridge Department of Public Works (DPW) operates a rat hotline, where citizens can report rat sightings or get help keeping rats from entering their house.

DPW also has a Web site with frequently asked questions about the pests, providing information like the weight of the heaviest rat found in Cambridge (1 and 1/3 pounds).

But some citizens give the hotline poor reviews, telling the council that it did not follow up sufficiently on rat complaints. In October, Amy Todd told the council she called the hotline after having caught or found dead some 9 rats. She said she was “very impressed by the city’s initial response to the problem,” but after an inspector found no points of entry for the rodents around the outside of her building, she said the city washed its hands of the affair.

“Rats began coming in again, and I called the rodent hotline again, but I was told that at this point, there was nothing the city of Cambridge could do for me,” she said. “I think it’s a public health issue for sure, but at this point, it seems to be being treated as a private health issue.”

Residents have developed creative strategies to approach the infestation. On March 19, Minka Van Beuzekom of the Area 4 Neighborhood Coalition advocated introducing rodent education to the public schools, in programs that would teach children “the importance of keeping the city clean.”

She threatened to bring the fruits of her “hobby”—rat-catching—to a meeting should the councillors prove intransigent.

“[I’ll] bring my rat trap, and there will be a live rat inside, to show you they do indeed exist,” she said at the time.

But the agitators aren’t without their opponents and the most vocal among them has been serial commenter Roy Bercaw.

“The only way you’re going to get rid of rodents is to get rid of people and food. If you just allow biotech companies and alcohol in the city, you’ll have no more rodents,” Bercaw said at a council meeting in February.

Rats may have an opponent in being the dominant public nuisance issue of the campaign: leaf blowers.

“Their particular pitch—irregular and whiny—is particularly irritating,” said city resident Cynthia Kennedy Sam in a representative attack on leaf blowers. “They harm our lungs and cause cancer and premature death.”

Though some candidates, like challenger Sam Seidel, have said they would consider banning leaf blowers, outgoing Councillor Anthony D. Galluccio has said that leaf blowers shouldn’t be a public issue.

“I think we need to be cautious as a community when we hear more and more of these quality-of-life issues that we as city leaders foster a community where people can talk to each other,” Galluccio said in May. “If I pick up my phone and call the police because my neighbor is leaf-blowing early on a Saturday morning, I think we become the sort of community that I don’t think we want to become.”