De Blasio’s NYC Goes to the Rats

New York City is under siege from rats — and not simply the political variety.

As Gotham residents complain about an ongoing crime hike in the increasingly blighted Bill de Blasio era, many also are bemoaning an influx of rodents that are racing across the city.

These are not good-natured Iowa rats, but big city, gimme-yer-sandwich rodentia.

Rat complaints are approaching a new high, aon pace to beat a record this year. More than 24,000 rat complaints were lodged in each of the past two years. Apparently rats are immune to the mayor’s liberal social engineering, and are running amok in a libertarian spirit of free expression.

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The issue got more attention after a video went viral of a healthy looking rat that clearly got into a free enterprise mindset. It dragged a full piece of pizza down the subway stairs.

Hey, now. Can anyone truly avoid a good slice of street pie?

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In May, the mayor expanded the city’s rat eradication program — after successful tests on the Upper West Side, Harlem and the East Village, according to the Daily News — releasing nearly $3 million devoted to tracking, baiting and trapping the unseemly critters. The city’s rat-busting force (who ya gonna call?) will also increase from nine to 50 staffers, all focused on getting a grip in a problem that is not new but seems to be in full flourish.

The city’s comptroller has taken on the new role of rat czar.

The city’s comptroller has taken on the new role of rat czar, pitting him against the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which he says isn’t keeping its subways clean enough, as well as the city’s sanitation department, the Associated Press reported.

“I’ve seen rats walking upright, saying, ‘Good morning, Mr. Comptroller,'” said Scott Stringer, who in a 2014 audit called the city’s response “weak” as well as “inadequate.”

“It’s unsightly to see rats running through neighborhoods like they actually bought a co-op somewhere,” he joked.

To be fair, other mayors have had little luck with rats in the Big Apple.

“Just follow the numbers,” Joseph J. Lhota, deputy mayor and one-time rat czar for former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, told the Times. “Anybody who’s in charge of eradicating rats in New York knows exactly what Sisyphus felt like.”

He added with some humor, taking the heat off politicians: “The rats were here before the first mayor.”

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Times readers, in typical Manhattan style, responded on the paper’s website with a flood of ideas for how to stop the onslaught — everything from licensed hunters with BB guns, to poison, to lidded trash cans.

One poster from Chicago, with a dash of Midwest practicality, said to stop throwing money at a problem that isn’t truly dangerous.

“Do the rats in New York pose serious public health risks? I am wondering if millions would be spent on these futile efforts if there was not the ‘ew’ factor with rats and the stigma that comes with the mistaken belief they were the catalyst for the spread of the bubonic plague. As long as there is garbage everywhere, there will be rats.”

New Yorkers are expressing less concern about rats than they are about city crime. 

New Yorkers are expressing less concern about rats than they are about city crime. A poll of voters taken by Quinnipiac University in August showed that Democrats, blacks, Hispanics and independents had tepid feelings about their quality of life.

A little more than a third of Democrats described it as “very good” or “good,” while 26 percent of blacks and just 18 percent of Hispanics registered the same responses. Nearly 50 percent of all voters said the city’s quality of life was “fair.”

While city officials assert that crime rates overall are at historic lows, gun violence and killings are rising. Some 46 percent of city voters said crime was a significant problem in the August poll — up 10 percent from May.

As for the rats, perhaps they add to a perception problem that things in the city are growing grittier.

Some have countered that the latest rat influx is due in no small part to the snowstorms of last winter that left garbage piled high and offered the rodents an above-ground buffet that left them sated and ready to breed.

A new app is allowing city residents a quick way to complain, too, by dialing 3-1-1 on their smartphones.

A new winter is coming and The Old Farmer’s Almanac calls the Manhattan forecast grim. “Winter will be colder and snowier than normal in the north,” it noted.

So everyone will be cold and grumpy — or rather, ratty.