The months-long search for a rat czar to address New York’s rodent crisis is over: Mayor Adams announced Thursday that he has finally hired someone to do the job of reducing the city’s four-legged vermin population.
“We called for a rat czar and got thousands of respondents. We have narrowed it down to one person that we are preparing to announce,” Adams said at a rodent mitigation event in the Bronx hosted by the Department of Health.
The mayor said that the tsar is a woman, but shed no further light on the long-awaited appointment.
“The first thing I asked him was, ‘How do you feel about rats?’” he said. “And I was expecting some kind of, you know, ‘Well, I think they should be out there.’ No. He made it very clear: ‘I hate rats.'”
Adams first announced in December that he was hiring for the newly created position, formally called director of rat mitigation.
This story will be updated.
