The Oak Lawn Village Board approved an updated rat ordinance that will hold public spaces and multiunit dwellings more responsible for rodents which, Village President Terry Vorderer said, are on the rise.
The rodents are an issue throughout the city, but only public areas are subject to city control.
“What it does is it holds commercial properties responsible for baiting on a regular basis,” Vorderer said Wednesday.
The move last week comes after the village established an investigative committee and found more than 100 potential violators of the laws. Essentially, the updated ordinance seeks to shore up loose garbage and have a contract with rat control experts.
“It requires condominiums and multifamily properties to have contracts with pest control companies,” Vorderer said.
New York has itself been dealing with a hike in rat reports and Vorderer said Oak Lawn isn’t unique.
“I think the milder weather may be an issue, maybe the pandemic, maybe that forced restaurants to close and we have a lot of construction going on, I don’t know,” he said. “They probably crawled the planet before we did and they will probably crawl the planet after we’re gone.”
Either way, the village has an employee who deals with rat complaints, so he said that person can handle residents’ concerns, and Vorderer said he expects a hike in complaints.
“Every trustee has an issue with this,” he said. “As a trustee in the fourth district, I don’t think I ever saw a rodent complaint but I did see one in the summer time.”
Village manager Thomas Phelan introduced a task force in August, and village reports show since that time there were 40 inspections done with 408 citations issued. Of the inspections, 153 concerned rodents.
Phelan did not return messages seeking a breakdown of the citations. But after the task force was established, Trustee Alex Olejniczak explained the need for better enforcement.
“The top three issues with rat abatement are multifamily housing rentals and cleaning up after our dogs and making sure we are keeping our garbage in garbage cans,” he said. “This is a commitment this board had made to keep up with this rodent issue.”
Jesse Wright is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.