Last week, the Boston City Council held a hearing on rodent control, prevention and trapping.

The hearing went on for well over two hours and featured city officials detailing rat control strategies and policies, as well as resident input.

Boston Assistant Commissioner of Environmental Services John Ulrich, along with several members of his team, went through an update on the status of the Boston Rodent Action Plan (BRAP), with all the food reduction and extermination strategies the city is doing to help control the rodent population.

Ulrich has said many times in the past that controlling the food source is the best way to limit the rat population. Rats are famous for quick breeding and large broods, and the size of the broods are tied to the ready availability of food.

A big issue discussed during the hearing was that of areas of Boston – Back Bay and Beacon Hill mostly – where containerized trash was not an option. Several residents asked for enforcement on two issues there, first citing residents who don’t use strong bags and then citing other residents who put their trash out too early.

District 9 City Councilor Liz Breadon, however, harped on the biggest offenders: absentee landlords. She said that many of the city’s corporate landlords – many of whom also run buildings that are home to students – simply look at the $25 fine for improperly stored trash as a cost of doing business, and likely fold it into rents.

Breadon said citing those offenders would be the best way to make the most reductions in the “rat buffets” that permeate Allston, Brighton, and the city at large.

“One of our constituents talked about bad landlords, and that they are perpetual offenders and keep coming back and getting zoning relief,” she said. “I’ve just filed a bad landlord ordinance, and one of the ‘teeth’ in the ordinance is that if you’re a chronic offender (e.g., a bad landlord constantly not complying with code enforcement), if you come back to the Zoning Board (of Appeal), they’ll say, ‘No, excuse me, fix up your issues and come back and we’ll talk.’ But I think we need more teeth, which is what I think we’re missing here.”

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She said she, the Boston City Council and the Massachusetts Legislature enacted a law last year that allowed the City of Boston to increase fines up to $2,000 per infraction for chronic offenders. She asked about how that’s been going, and Ulrich said the Inspectional Services Department (ISD) – of which his Environmental Sanitation Department is a part – doesn’t handle fines. That's the Code Enforcement Department. He said for his department, when an issue comes up, is ignored and repeatedly not resolved, they take the offending party to land court.

According to data from Analyze Boston, of the 63,592 fines sent out by Code Enforcement since the start of the year – https://gvimes.link/cdfns – there were more than 70 fines of $1,000 fines for site cleanliness and illegal dumping sent to property owner throughout the city, with several examples in Allston and Brighton. The biggest fine still open within the data set this year – it’s still marked as open on the website, but it’s from 2017 – was for illegal dumping with a vehicle on Rockingham Road in West Roxbury.

The vast majority of improperly stored trash infractions were listed as $25 infractions, though there were many $100 fines for the overfilling of a barrel or dumpster. There were more than 1,300 fines for $250 for illegal dumping less than 1 cubic yard, as well as several dozen $300 fines sent out for maintaining a dumpster without a permit – though those fines were the same amount as illegal parking as a property owner, second offense.

Breadon also pointed out that while many parks in the city now have rodent-resistant trash cans, Allston and Brighton are still going without.

“Allston Village – the rodent-proof trash cans – we were promised them last year, asked about them this year and still not coming,” she said. “Just wanted to put it out; we need to be consistent. If it’s a priority for Allston-Brighton, we should be getting our rodent-proof cans.”

For more information on BRAP, go to https://gvimes.link/brap