i'm the director of the belmont health department i'd like to thank you all for coming out tonight to learn about what we can all do as a community to help better control the rat population and belmont's i hope you will find the subject matter covered by tonight's expert speaker to be well worth your time as we all look forward to warmer weather and begin to plan for our spring clean ups of our yards and gardens before we begin i would like to take a moment to thank the members of the belmont board of health that are here in attendance today more specifically dr david helper and julia and they in the front seat and also in spirit with us is donna david the chair i'd like to thank them for their service and dedication to improving all residents of belmont i'd also like to recognize brianne gray our graduate student environmental health and turn from the vu school of public health i'd like to thank her for her efforts in planning tonight's event i'd also like to think franks or tori and mary beth callan and the rest of the staff from d p w for participating in tonight's meeting and also thank you for all that you do to keep our town nice and clean and last but not least the board of health and d b w would like to collectively thank steve bono owner of dole months very own bono pest control for being tonight's featured speaker tonight our meeting will feature presentations by representatives of health d p w and bono pest control there will be time at the end of presentations for a brief question and answer session as tonight's meeting is being recorded by the belmont media center we ask that you line up at the microphone in front of the stage to ask your question all right so we're ready to begin and first up is going to be brief from the health department very like busted on the environmental health intern for the vama health department so i started as an internal last may through the massachusetts state department of public health local internship program and for this particular internship i was required to provide a poster presentation summarizing my experience with the by my health department so i started out creating a poster about health department and this should haves but then instead turned my attention to the growing amount of rat complaints we seem to be getting at the time so i was really curious to see how the complaints had kind of changed over time and effort sightings were in the same areas of town or if they had shifted so from my project i used geographic information system  geo code addresses of the complaints and then created a map of these complaints so so for this this map shows from two thousand and sixteen may to august of two thousand and sixteen so you can see that a lot of the rat sightings were near the town field area and then the whole beech tree area down as well this particular map is from january to august of this last year and then it had significant clustering we could see in the whole beech tree area as well as in the watson road area so this one is currently the most updated version of the map that i created just the other day so this shows about sightings and complaints starting in january of last year to march of this year so you can still see the significant clustering in the hole and beech tree area with newer sightings in the warwick and chester road area and then also the saw one heard road area and then also the yellow and orange buffers are three hundred foot buffers around the coaching square project as well as joys park just so that you can see potentially how far a rock could travel from its burrow for food and water and kind of see th ere really are as many sightings in that three hundred foot buffer as you might expect so in two thousand and sixteen the health department received a total of fifty complaints for the year and then this past year in two thousand and seventeen we saw that grow to include one hundred twenty three complaints so far this year we have had only twelve complaints but from what i could see last year we had six complaints at the same time last year so we were already doubled  the amount of complaints from last year so when we get a complaint and the property owner would like us to come look at their property we try to find anything that could be attracting rats to their property so far top three attractants that we have seen include improper trash storage so bags not uncovered containers or containers that have been true chewed through unkept yards with clutter piles of building material lumber and firewood and then a bird feeders composting bens and gardens were kind of tied in third place so overall we're just when we are giving suggestions for things to do we just say to make sure to type your trash bags store them and close containers until they can be disposed of properly make sure your art is maintained so the yard waste is properly dispose of in the yard bags rats are drawn to bird seed on the ground so making sure that bird seed under control and stays in the puter as much as possible and compost piles that are not properly contained can provide a food source for rats so just making sure again that that's properly maintained and covered so next we'll i i am the recycling coordinator here in the town and when there is usually rats it is trash so i get involved in it in the d p w and on our and we are going to discuss public public barrels three times per week and the d p w workers get called off what they are doing for the day when we get complaints of over filled barrels or trash spilling out of public barrels and the other one is this leads to litter so the d p w in the parks division have to spend time picking up litter along the streets and in our parks so  here's a photo of people think we need more barrels in the park and that's a fallacy because here you have barrels and none of the trash has made it in the barrels so the residents really look to us to help with this problem but it's really a resident there personal responsibility and to keep things neat and tidy so this is a great thing the only cure for litter is you which means all of us have to work together and so in some communities and i'm sure in some national parks you've seen the carry in carry out so right here what we have is this is where joeys park is and i don't know if any of you are familiar but i'm sure you are joey's park was closed because of rats in the playground and we were told to take all of the trash barrels out well this is a very old and used water fountain with a cement base and we had taped over it with duct tape so no one would use it but as you can see there was a flat surface and they cut into the tape and they put their trash there instead of taking it out so what is carrying carry out it's basically what you carry in you then carry out  leads to no trash barrels in parks and visitors as well as residents have to remove all their leftover food packaging and bring it home with them so here is a nother photo and this is waverly square and it's a very busy area with the bus stop in the commuter line and as you can see that when the recycle bin and the trash barrel were full people just placed their trash anywhere they could since then we have taken out the recycle bins all around public ways we would do in a pilot project and no one followed instruction there were all trash dog feces and bags in them so it was just being trashed anyway when you do carry in carry out it's less likely for people to litter because as you can see in the photos that they're either going to as in the photo previously at night they just there's no one watching and they're just going to leave their trash on the ground but during the day with other people it's less likely for people to litter in a public space but it's more common for them to sit something on an on a used ben fountain or a little ledge somewhere because it's actually not getting on the ground because i think people think that litter is on the ground but it can be anywhere it increases safety not having trash barrels in the park because it doesn't attract pass such as rodents be squirrels it's the other thing and people take their trash and unused food home where they can eat the food at another time and if there's any recycling they can put it in their recycling bin so it is  it actually is more environmental in it kind of not just people to do the right thing and the this is the last statement which i think is a good one the parks and fields belong to all of us it is our responsibility to care and protect them for future generations get rid of problems without using chemicals ceiling stuff up cleaning the trash exotic cetera i'm more of a guy that takes questions and then i can roll with that i don't know if anybody want to start with the questions and go and have those  because then i can roll an answer a lot more like that it's just it's much easier in the past you know more nervous than your look i'm glad there's only a few but i wish there was more so i would be more educated for everybody that's wh live right a town field we live right across the street and we've watched this problem developed over time and there are several concerns we have and one of them is that a lot of new houses were constructed and right around right very close to us all houses came down new ones went up and i don't know what the town laws are not only how much force into our of these things but i used to watch these buildings go down and up and i didn't see where there was visually where there was any preventative work done to prevent rats  with all the movement and all the you know destruction going on in the ground so that was one part of the problem that a across the street from us which is by cherry street on a waverly i'll never forget there was one day and then one month where bunch of us would be wa gas pipes care of and all during that time there was all this destruction also so a lot of upheaval in that area which can cause rats to wake up and move around that's why but so that kind of worried us to a lot and of course we're not happy because when all these things are going on around us we had to go higher pest control service and pay for problem that we didn't create you know so we're concerned about how that type of thing is managed them town that's one of my concerns the second concern is  that sound field well first of all the idea of carry and carry and carry out is a great idea play think most of the people that i know in town really try to be clean and organized i'll give an example which would be the  find carrying carry it's a great idea i was a boy scout i learned that you know too many decades ago but but it seems to me that you want to have trash cans and recycling tans at the fields i think it's important with the lids and everything i think people would step up and really most people want to have the place clean and organized and are going to litter that much i certainly know that when we had soccer games and there was big parties at the a season all type of stuff the fact that it would sit there for forty eight hours before taking care of somebody to step up so those are the types of the concerns that we have and the third thing i wanted to mention is there are residences and i'm not going to name names or anything but there's residences in our area that are either no one lives there or there for other any other reason kind of in the dilapidated state and there's two there's two houses one of waverly and one an orchard where it looks like there's nobody there in the places or minimally maintained but inside those houses and i've seen my kids i've seen rats at one of them i've seen mice at the other one i have seen rats and it feels like to me the town check those residences out if they haven't already and find out what's going on and there's propecia controlled company out there and survey it and make sure there's no evidence or past there and they put bait stations around the set some traps up and they have to write a report and give it to the contractor to give it to the building department to get a permit to do anything i think the problem is that there should be a program going through the whole entire construction site and so from the from the beginning to the end i don't make the rules i recommended to my customers they do have some customers that do follow that says yeah we want to program but that's up on a scale of in the million dollar projects so you get these houses that are going up and they're only selling for a million or whatever when the new budget is kind of low but when it gets to that they have in place and in it and it kind of works long as there's a program that can t so that's that's part of the situation which is probably one of hundreds if you want to look at the big threats com know it's every we've got the railroad tracks to follow when they can get a ride on the train they can get a ride on dumpsters that are coming in piers or i'm sitting in the trash lot and whatever site it might be in another city and they're inside the dumpster and then when the dumpster comes it gets placed on the site the construction site and they're coming out i could be from that pallets again and come in in redwood tracks you've got a hundred ways that they could come into  and you've got an overexposure bostons like right down the street you know we say you know what ten miles but big picture it's a coin throw away so those rats come in from boston the coming out they're moving they get nadja tainted and they get around when you sorry but your question about properties that aren't maintained very well by residents you're definitely welcome to give the health department a call and just report that address to us and we'll investigate whatever we're able to see from this or allowed to these i'm a resident not too far from the window at schools as a low concern about the joeys park closure and that kind of caught me by surprise so i wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about what to look for i know ranchers sneaky you don't always know they're around i noticed i had some disturbed earth on the back side of my garage i was wondering maybe ranch or burrow there but i don't know enough so what do people don't use the garage it's a good nest form and after awhile it gets overpopulated the rats are going to move and you know there's a couple around houses around joey's back that i drive by all the time i look at them like they're right there inside that house and i don't know if anybody goes in the garage because you can't so if the garage doors open up i'm not going a piece of tape on it to see but i'm sure that's one area that could be addressed like that there's the fecal matter if it's real bad you're going to get a lot of fecal matter you're going to get a lot of grease marks and you're going to get an order from them if you want to get really technical you can get that u v light black light and start going around your yard and it was show up a year and stuff like that i don't know pick up other stuff i'm sure it will  the best thing to do for your properties like the ends right brianna said earlier to you know keep the trash keep it clean like that she showed the garage with all the stuff on the side  looked like it was from eighteen twelve you know get rid of it it's just hanging around and you get a lot of people that are elderly that can't do that and can't afford to do that and if you guys are living into somebody like that you should you know not going to do and say hey i saw a couple rodents going over  you mind if we get rid of the trash over there what you want what you don't want to stack it up neat don't lay it down i mean there's a lot that everybody can do as a community to keep down to look for that's what you want to look for and that's where we're kind goes you've got the compost bins laying on the ground and people just throw the stuff in there that's going to be an attractant they get compost bins now that are like and like a barrel like this and then they get little stilts on them like this little poles with a rattle really there's nothing to whack grass their claws to climb up on it and it kind of high off the ground it's kind of like a tumbling and it's great pass the word around i've been trying to do that a lot of customers of mine and i've done it and the rats go someplace else and that's what you've got to do to keep them to keep going and going to but they're not going to you're not going to get rid of one hundred percent if you do you get to have a really good program and a deep deep wallet and to have that everybody's going to participate  compost absolutely when you see the tracks going underneath the fence with the bar oh yeah can you prevent that absolutely can tragic all around that make a barrier stop them the rat will go that's get go down go around somebody else's yard and then go that way then it goes on to the next person and you want to concentrate on your own piece of property and that's what pretty much everybody isn't really care what's around them don't don't want to in their house that i want to in the garage you know when i'm on the property it's sad to say but that's what you going to look for question is if the kids are playing around it they're like they were saying take the trash it out because there's no one to throw in an attraction around the candy wrapper the first question that would have to be up to frank on that one anything that they think will break down can you speak a little bit more about what a good composting pile is and the second thing is maybe you can educate us a little bit about the difference between poison and non poison and i know there's something similar calls like a ratatouille which i guess  garlic and pepper and in a gel type of thing but maybe you know i know frank you guys been trying to do everything you can to stay away from the poisons would certainly make sense around a playground but are they effective enough for we simply just treading water with some shed it's you want to get it tilted moving around that's a compost works not sit in the corner and just keep piling up the leaves and everything else like that it's not you know the twigs it's not compost and that's just average and for rodents to get i use everything because i'm in the business i'm going to go more towards chemical chemicals real safe we've got one of the toughest states for making laws up side new york and california right up there for the way it's used there's certain chemicals out there that you know secondary poison that will go after the birds if the rat guys i've only seen hawks chew on the road kill that's going to bring much die when they're sick like we get sick they're going to go back to their home one hundred percent to side of the boat a dead so there is chemicals that you can use that will not you know kill the wrapper won't kill the second there we as the birds and everything else like that i have accounts that are farms and animal hospitals that  the animal hospital understands that they don't want the horses the everything else like that so they deal with the situation the problem there's a lot of repugnance that you can use there's a ton of them to you you can plant that meant in your house that stuff will spread all over only rosemary oil lime oil you can use all that kind of stuff the problem is you have to use it all the time you can't just spray it once on that bought the mulch and say ok the pelts specially when you get a year in the fecal matter is inside that already in the soil if you had rats you've got to get rid of this oil take it out agitated get that layer underneath the sun and bring that and bring the smell down because it's going to attract the other rats  coming in the neighborhood so it's kind of you kind of get rid of the odor with the determent inside there too and then hope they will push them away to another area so there is a lot of deterrence but you've got to use them they're only good for two weeks three weeks couple of days their brains get washes away so it can get expensive fine some of that stuff is like you know eighty bucks a gallon and how far does it go and how often you get to do it you know you know it's like line i mean that's that's it's another tool that you can use to prevent rodents from getting into a particular area it's another tool and if you talk going to joey's park or any park that's a lot of manpower and  can all kinds of deterrents you can use it works but you just got to keep on using it's not like a one time thing the stuff that we use the road genocide it works if it gets contaminated if you sprayed that inside the base stations and they have a program going and say joe was park pest control company in there on your piece of property and you have those bait stations and anybody spraying on that and again they're going to you just kind of waste your money on the bait especially if the company has come back into a follow up and make sure the bates  up that's up to the town and i'm just here to give you a little education on the rads i mean i can give recommendations and you know they have pot bellies they're called the solar panel barrels that hold more i think it's ten times more the trash where they can they can pick it up last and then they're right i'm concerned because there was a rat in my mother's choice and thank god she's an older woman she didn't find it but i mean if this is going to keep happening it really is a terrible thing and it seems like no one in the neighborhood wants to admit there's rats except one person who was four doors down he says oh yeah i see the rats all the time run the around the ads and so on so what's going to be done if checked the house the foundation but coming from the drain pipe but i mean this is a problem and people just don't i mean if people don't want to admit oh they live in belmont and they have rats yeah but you know because it's you know it's a bit of a sub a good suburb or whatever they want to row street in belmont so i mean they are around and i think it's so regarding the concern about the rats in the sewer that's really something nice yeah well i mean infrastructure is old so it's you know it's a d p w matter that they would investigate and try to resolve your duff we welcome again to give us a call and we're happy to call inspect and do what we can but we just don't have the equipment we don't have the scope to go on right bipes but if you know there's a property five you know doors down that's having a problem the best thing to do is if you have a good relationship  neighbor talk to them tell them what's going on and let them know how it's impacting other people in the community and it's really to solve this problem as a community effort in roles it involves residents involves help from us  so i'm up here to disk discuss the trash and recycling the new carts there will be about two to three public meetings and a lot of public outreach to teach the residents how to put their cards what to put in each cart and they'll be a lot of education surrounding that for recycling well i wouldn't say right right i at this particular point the contract every other week  well recycling should be clean lightly rants there and so that's through education we can teach the residents well and that's a part of education that we're going to have to really work on a quick rinse is pretty good and just to empty all the liquids and not put food waste in it but we can discuss all of this at one of the upcoming meetings and just really concentrate on the trash i mean on the rat problem but yes trash does attract rats  thank you for being here i have a couple of comments i'm sorry i don't have any questions for you but i sorely disappointed in the comments that i have heard about everybody just sort of literally ratting out on their neighbor we're playing whack a mole here and unless the community as a whole laundry takes this there is always going to be someone who is not going to pay attention to the issue because they're on capable or you know they don't have the financial means they're elderly they don't care and we're just really passing the problem to our neighbor and that's pretty much what happened as my husband said we had a  problem someone reported us we took it seriously we paid for a year and a half of service on our property and our condominiums property with two other families it cost us a lot of money that we didn't have but we're responsible residents there were some construction that happened and lo and behold it's two years later and guess what they're back and we didn't do anything differently we had the department of public health come out and walk our property we took all the recommendations i don't feel that it's a fair or appropriate for people you know who are doing the right thing to have to bear the burden because other people are and i really think it is a town wide problem and it will not go away unless the town as a whole addresses it so you know while it's great that you can talk to your neighbor and that's helpful it's not going to solve the problem they're here and we have to deal with them so i guess that's the first thing i also want to say that i don't want to just complain i want to be part of the solution and i haven't really heard much in terms of a town wide solution and i popped into the department of public health office the other day and some of the suggestions that i came up with just at the top of my head were things like we should be handing out barrels that are rat proof  or trash and making people buy them at the d p w if they want if they you know we're giving them if they're on a low income or at the housing authority and that should be just they sell the recycling not the recycling bins the compost bins  i don't see any reason why if people want to if this is a real problem that we want to take seriously the town can go out just like they do where they get us a reduced rate on certain things that they sell through the d p w why don't we make rat traps and and whatever else available to the residents of the town at a reduced cost through the town there may be grants available from the state to be able to handle that i don't know could we consider putting out an r f p on behalf of the residents of belmont and having a couple of pest control kind of companies that if you contact as a resident at the moment you get a percentage cut rate for using them because we're taking seriously the rat problem that we have here if the town you know i get that people feel like their property values may be devalued if they step up and say there's a rodent property in there you know that on their property but you know the town can get the information on the back end through through the r f p without anybody having to you know step forward and same thing publicly so i think until the town is really seriously going to address this is an issue it's going to fall upon the individual to pay the financial burden for something that isn't necessarily their fault their issue or their property i would also say in response to the building issues i find it disconcerting and i had hoped that someone from the community development office would be here tonight because i totally agree with my husband's comments and the john who just spoke before me that any kind of disturbance to property whether it's a major landscaping job or a cable t v infinity laying wires whatever gas repairs these things should every single one of them we've lived here since two thousand we didn't have a problem until the first tear down happened kitty corner to our property and that was the first time we'd ever had a prop and we that was probably we've been here a good eight years with no problem whatsoever on our property until that tear down so i also think maybe it's not a bad idea that if there's some kind of construction going on in someone's property the neighbors should be informed and get a copy of what the broad control plan is so that they can make sure we can be community policeman to use us so i'd like to be part of the solution i haven't heard what i was hoping here in terms of solutions tonight and i'm hoping that the town will take this seriously otherwise again it's just going to be here a bigger problem and it's you know the few of us that are willing to step up and address it well and i'll tell you after you know we're punkin down thousands of dollars again to deal with the issue i'm not sure i have the finances to do it a third time hi my name is ronald or i've been a business owner in this town for over thirty years and of dealt with the rat problem in several capacities over a long period of time i am not an expert on rats but i recommend this book to anybody that's interested it's called rats it's by robert sullivan it's the definitive book on rats i've read the book because i had an interest in it because i had problems relative to a commercial building in town and there's a couple of points like to make to the to the  group based on what i've read here and based on my personal experience although mostly is based on this book first of all you're never going to get rid of the rats they're going to be around they're vollies been around the whole concept is to control the rats the rats only care about food if you take away the source of the food you will control the rat problem it is absolutely true that people see a large influx in rat populations where there's construction because you're basically impacting the boroughs where they live but they don't feed off of construction sites unless people are throwing things away you have to control the food source the commercial building that i was that i am associated with had a problem because right next door to me were restaurants and i literally watched the bakery that is no longer in town they would take entire sheets of unsold bakery goods and just load them into the dumpster and the dumpster doesn't isn't a protected even though it's metal they would burrow they would eat right through the plastic without a problem and you could see the the baseball sized holes that that they created that's so that's point number one they're always going to be here point number two they care about the food source if you don't solve the food source probably you're not going to solve them the third is you can't poison them away if you poison a group of rats you basically bring other rats to fill the space where the food source exists so poisoning is not the answer and poisoning does create problems for a lot of the other species in town i've seen after a big episode for poisoning i've seen stead squirrels and and that's a problem because the raptor birds then feed on the squirrels and pretty soon you've got these coagulants going up the food chain and i don't think that's what we want either so i can't emphasize enough that there has to be a concerted effort to control food sources and rats don't basically care about playgrounds they don't care about parks they don't eat things that are white they're not interested in grazing on the on the lawns they look for food sources so you have to you have to have materials the infrastructure or something there's a lot of parks around town that don't have rats and still have food so what is what is it about jellies and is there i mean we solved a problem in the fall and then we have it again so what was the plan for monitoring or what is the plan for monitoring going forward once we think we have it under control  eighteen bucks apiece and it works and you going to get rid of the source of food which the gentleman was talking about that's absolutely correct it's still going to be around you want to you want to you want to make sure the rats  right everybody's outside shoveling how you don't have it right what about the small talk of my neighbors i live in a cul de sac i get ten houses and i would see many of the conversation with them because of the snow all right universities complexes it's hard but it takes time and it takes a lot of long as everybody's communicated on that i think the board of health is doing a great job there for the moment you know and also the surrounding towns because i should be here you know i told you what i wanted it prompts me to say that you know we have this tremendous opportunity coming up this summer and this fall when we go to this new recycling program with the automated everything in the big barrels the kind of stuff and i think that you know a lot of people don't even know it's going to be happening yet but when he gets here is going to be a big buzz as it starts to happen and there's a the be a tremendous learning curve for a lot of people but the there will also be a tremendous opportunity for everybody here and the town to to leverage that you know and to create more awareness about being more clean clearly have wearing having work loneliness and being work and eyes and managing your trash and recycling better so there's this big i don't know if there's a campaign  carrying carry out is not the only or the primary strategy for the town going forward i really feel that we can have proper receptacles and proper management of receptacles at the fields and at the parks if we can endorse everybody into using them now they're going to have to use it for their residences i think we should be able to you know encourage people to use it at these other places too so i sort of say my hoping that carrying carry out as much as i love it like i said i was a boy scout we learned that when i was twelve experience and like i said we've been here since two thousand and two is that you know everybody but i think most people want to be responsible on a different and that's life we saw about trash is everywhere you know you don't have some of that but i feel like most people want to be responsible and you give them tools to be responsible i think most people will so i like to hope that we can incorporate that not that when the other one you go to the beach and people care and that's that's what i was thinking of right there thank  you i feel like most people will be responsible given the ability to to have the tools there to be response anyway best just based on my experience being a parent and being at these a town feel especially day in and day out for fifteen years now all right thanks have wearing that hat right now and i'm going to take that off and put on another had and represent the industry and for those of you who do get a pet pest control company just make sure that they're licensed and certified by the commonwealth state of massachusetts and call get references and really ask them what their plan is you know and just really research the company and make sure you have someone that's there that's reliable knowledgeable trustworthy and know what they're doing so i just want to make sure that you knew that to you those of you here and for those of you on the t v the selectmen are going to be bringing up this kerry policy at their next meeting of march twenty sixth it's an open meeting as all select meetings are so if you have an opinion if you have a thought  one way or another about this policy that's the best time to be heard by the board of health will be there that the highway department will be there so this type of thing is exactly how policy is well made  i my name is nancy davis resident of emerson street which is perpendicular to concord avenue near the high school and i want to thank you for doing having this meeting and for all of the very good and helpful comments that have been said so far but one thing that occurred to me is that we haven't talked too much about commercial trash and there's been a lot of talk about residential issues i had the experience of walking a dog near the railroad tracks actually while we're talking about those on the cambridge side right  crossing and noticed that there were quite a few boroughs right there very very close to brighton saint i when i looked up happened to notice there was an enormous dumpster and i am assuming it is part of the hills and hill estates property but i'm not positive about that but this dumpster was totally open and overflowing with trash  i guess maybe it wasn't actually flowing over but it was piled up so high that i could see it so i'd like to know maybe from the town what are the rules for commercial dumpsters dumpsters or are great source of food for routes we shoot dumpster permits on an annual basis for them so we have a good sense of where they're located throughout the town we when we conduct a food inspection of a restaurant more often tech check their dumpsters to make sure that they're well maintained when we're driving around the community will also keep an eye out for that and if that's a problem will notify the business owner but if you see something you should report it to us because we can't always be out there where we're pretty small department there's really only two of us full time i double as the director and also an inspector and then we have an assistant director  so unless we have any other questions will likely wrap it up again thank you all for coming out tonight if you have any questions on the road you're always welcome to visit us at the health department or give