Mayor Adams paid a $300 fine he received for failing to address a rodent infestation at his Brooklyn rowhome, city records show.
A Health Department inspector issued the ticket in December, writing in a citation that he had detected “refuge conditions that encourage rat nesting” in the front yard of Adams’ Bedford-Stuyvesant home, including improperly disposed of recyclable materials. The inspector also wrote that the Adams property “was known to be infested with rodents.”
Adams challenged the ticket in a hearing before an official with the Office of Administrative Hearings and Trials last month. But the officer denied the challenge and ordered the mayor to hand over the $300.
The mayor could have chosen to appeal, but city records show that sometime this week he paid the fine in full.
“Like every other law-abiding citizen, he’s already paid for it,” Adams’ spokesman Fabien Levy said Wednesday night. “One thing is certain: the mayor still hates rats.”
At last month’s OATH hearing, Adams also challenged a $300 fine he was assessed for a “rat hole” the inspector observed along Adams’s front lawn fence. The officer granted that challenge and released Adams from the money lien.
“The mayor appreciated that one of the two citations was dismissed,” his spokesman said.
The mayor’s decision to pay off his debt to the rats culminates a wild rodent-related sequence of events involving his Brooklyn home.
After the tickets were first issued last year, Curtis Sliwa, the one-time Republican challenger for Adams mayor, showed up at the property with an offer to help eradicate pests on the block by fostering a colony of feral cats. in the neighborhood. Sliwa also offered to become Adams’ director of rodent mitigation for free.
Adams, who has made the city’s rodent problem a cornerstone of his municipal agenda, turned down Sliwa’s offer. The mayor has yet to hire someone for the newly created position of director of rodent mitigation.
