Presenter
Presented by Mr. Peduto
Title
Resolution repealing Resolution No. 584, effective October 5, 2005, entitled A Resolution authorizing the Department of General Services to contract for rodent control services for the City of Pittsburgh and directing the mayor to immediately implement a rodent control program citywide and to provide for a rodent control program in the 2006 budget.
Body
WHEREAS, the Council of the City of Pittsburgh provided the Mayor with a solution to address the problems associated with rodent control in March of 2005, which has yet to be implemented; and,
WHEREAS, it is estimated that the United States has some 100,000,000 rats. Rats cause enormous economic loss, consuming or contaminating vast quantities of food and destroy property when they cause fires by gnawing the insulation from electric wires. Each rat damages between $1 and $10 worth of food and other materials per year, and contaminates 5 to 10 times more. Thus, rats may cost the United States between $500 Million and $1 Billion annually in terms of direct economic losses; and,
Whereas, rats and mice are responsible for spread of diseases, either directly, as by contamination of human food or indirectly, by way of rodent fleas and mites. Diseases spread by rats include rat-bite fever, leptospi rosis salmonellosis, trichinosis, murine typhus fever, plague, rickettsialpox, lymphocytic choriomeningitis; and,
WHEREAS, in any urban center, controlling rat populations is a matter of public health and is widely recognized as a municipal service function. To rely upon citizen action to control rat populations is ineffective at best and potentially dangerous at worst due to inappropriate applications of poisons that pose a threat to human life, protected wildlife and domesticated pets. Controlling rat populations, not individual rats, is the key to a successful rodent-control program; and,
Whereas, the Council of the City of Pittsburgh finds that due to inac...
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