Transcript: Mayor Adams And Citywide Director Of Rodent Mitigation Corradi Appear Live On NY1’s “Mornings On 1”

April 13, 2023

Pat Kiernan: As we've been telling you this morning, New York City has its very first citywide director of rodent mitigation. The mayor announced yesterday that Kathleen Corradi will serve as the so-called rat czar, coordinating a cross-agency effort to reduce the rodent population across the five boroughs. She comes into this new position with a background in fighting rats. She worked in that capacity for the Department of Education. For more on this, I'm joined by Mayor Adams and Kathleen Corradi. Thank you both for being here.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you, Pat. Good to speak with you.

Kiernan: Kathleen, nice to see you on the program for the first time. I want to ask you about a background in fighting rats. Was that something that you were drawn to or did you just end up with that sort of a resume?

Kathleen Corradi, Citywide Director of Rodent Mitigation: Thanks, Pat. So, when I was a child, around 10-years-old, I did some petition work in my neighborhood to get rid of rodents there. And then when I started at the DOE, I had a heavy focus on waste, and as we know, rats and waste go hand in hand, so that's what led me into the rodent fighting war.

Kiernan: Mayor Adams, it seems that you have taken a real personal interest in fighting the rat population. Do you think that it's gotten worse or is this something that has annoyed you for a long time?

Mayor Adams: Well, I know that it deals with our quality of life. Pat, just take a personal approach to this, you wake up in the morning, you open your cabinet, and you see a rodent jump out of that cabinet, or you step into your shoes and a rodent is inside. You are going to think about that all day, if not all week. You will never open that same cabinet again without thinking about that image. It plays on our psyche. It's a health risk. I know how it really impacts our quality of life. I think there was an increase probably after Covid, too much food left on the street during garbage pickups during that time, and now we have an issue. We've always had a rodent issue in the city. I believe it has gotten worse, now we're going to zero in on it.

Kiernan: So, I'll ask this question to both of you, I'll start with Kathleen though. Others have tried to tame the rat population and have had varying degrees of success. What could be different if everybody was working together?

Corradi: We know rats need three things to survive: food, water, shelter. The benefit of the position I'm serving in now, it's the first time we're going to have a coordinated effort, breaking down silos across the different agencies, Department of Health, Sanitation, DOE, Parks, have someone really taking the reins and making sure all agencies are doing our most effective coordinated work, and we really think that's going to be the key to make this happen.

Mayor Adams: And it's so important, what Kathleen just stated, because let's be clear, this has been a problem for many years and everyone has tried, and we are trying now. This is something that I focused on even at Borough Hall. Remember, I collected and killed 96 rats just around Borough Hall because we used a rat trap. We put out and looked for innovations for years, and so this coordination, plus we're in the process of studying new ways that are currently underway right now, and we're going to continue to incorporate that and give Kathleen the tools she needs, coordinate our efforts at every agency, not only just one, and go after those things that really contribute to the rat population.

Kiernan: You had a real show of force at the press conference yesterday showing how many other agencies will be involved in this. One of the things at that press conference was a map showing Harlem and a particular area you're calling the Harlem Rat Mitigation Zone. Kathleen, what does that mean? Will this be a laboratory for some of the techniques that you would roll out to other parts of the city? Or is this just because there is an extreme rat problem in Harlem?

Corradi: We're making this investment in Harlem, we know they've had a rat problem for decades, it will serve as both. First and foremost improving the quality of life for the residents in Harlem, but we're also going to test, measure, and quantify the strategies we're using in the Harlem Rodent Mitigation Zone and make sure we're scaling them citywide, see what works, and then take it to task.

Kiernan: Mayor Adams, Director Corradi just said quantify, which is always the tricky thing on something like this. How do you define success on a quality of life issue like this?

Mayor Adams: Great question. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, they're currently using counters, believe it or not, at certain boroughs that we have in the city. But I think success is determined by, number one, those counters and other measures, 311 calls, and what's most important to me, I could give New Yorkers as many numbers as possible, how do New Yorkers feel? Do they feel as though they're seeing visible results of rodents? That is my real indicator of success, not only the numbers, but the feeling that New Yorkers have.

Kiernan: Mayor Adams, I want to get you on a couple of other topics, one of them is related here. It's been two weeks since the new garbage rules came out in terms of what time you can put your trash out on the curb, part of that to mitigate rats, part of it just to not feel like we're all stepping over garbage bags all the time. How is that working in these early stages?

Mayor Adams: It's still early, and you're right, think about it, Pat, our city, the garbage bags played the role during the '60s after the sanitation strike, but we have to do something about the garbage. European cities, South American cities, they all understand that garbage should not be sitting on the streets for a long period of time. I take my hat off to Commissioner Tisch, and we're going to continue to monitor, we are continuing to move towards placing our garbage in containers because that's going to improve our quality of life.

Kiernan: You've had some big announcements this week. A couple of days ago you were out with the police commissioner talking about technology that will help the NYPD, these robots that will patrol subway platforms and be in places like Times Square. You said yesterday, when asked about some of the surveillance privacy concerns, that this is only the beginning in terms of this technology. What did you mean by that?

Mayor Adams: No, well, actually at the top of the interview you mentioned DOT also is using technology for street safety. That's what we're talking about technology. I made it clear it's not going to be used to impact surveillance or privacy. It's going to be transparent in how we use it. This is just the right time. Imagine being afraid of technology to count cars or vehicles or movement for street safety, or to use technology to prevent people from entering our schools. We put a new sensor and almost a door alarm on our school doors.

This is what we are going to do to make people safe. And the technology we rolled out the other day, the Digidog is going to be used for emergencies primarily, buildings collapsing, things like that. And the other two items we produced is to stop high speed chases and go and do routine patrol when a police officer is not there. These are great ways, we're going to look at them, if they're successful, we'll scale them up. If they're not, we're going to try something else. But we've got some more things that we are going to be rolling out.

Kiernan: Mayor Adams, thank you for joining us. Kathleen Corradi, thank you for joining us. Good luck with the rats, we'll follow up with you.

Corradi: Thank you so much.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. I hope you see more of her and less rats.