NYC Lands First 'Rat Czar' To Send Rodents Packing

NEW YORK CITY — Rats, start packing — a brand-new czar is in town.

Kathleen Corradi will serve as New York City's long-promised first "rat czar," Mayor Eric Adams announced Wednesday.

Corradi, a Department of Education official with a background in urban sustainability, promised a broad science-based approach focused on stamping out the food, water and shelter that millions of rats scurrying underfoot in the city need to survive.

"You can’t just deal with one part of the problem and call it a day," she said.

Rats have long been an irksome fact of life in New York City — and Adams, a self-described rodent hater who once turned dozens of them into a boozy slurry, has vowed to make them squirm.

In November, Adams' administration released a gruesome pun-filled job posting for a new rat czar with the "bloodthirsty" attitude necessary to lead and coordinate the city's efforts to tamp down the four-legged critters.

Out of 900-odd applicants, Adams chose Corradi, a city official with no specific background in rat mitigation.

But Corradi said her past work with the Department of Education's office of sustainability had her tackle rats in 120 public school buildings in Bed-Stuy, the Lower East Side and Grand Concourse. Those efforts led to 70 percent compliance on the city's Neighborhood Rodent Reduction taskforce, officials said.

Corradi currently serves as the education department's director of space planning in Queens. Her past jobs include a stint as an elementary teacher and a program lead at Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

Adams, for his part, highlighted what he considered a qualification: as a child, Corradi organized a petition to rid her neighborhood of rats.

"This is almost a job that's made for her," he said.

Members of the City Council's so-called "rat pack" were also present at Wednesday's announcement, including Manhattan Council Member Erik Bottcher, who told Patch that "today is a bad day for rats."

"We're hopeful that Kathleen Corradi will provide the inter-agency coordination that is needed to truly address this problem," Bottcher said. "New Yorkers are counting on the city to get this right.”

The rat czar position, which pays $155,000 a year, is also meant to coordinate rodent-control efforts between city agencies, from parks to health to sanitation — an issue rat-concerned New Yorkers have been citing as a rodent roadblock for years.

"You'll be seeing a lot of me, and a lot less rats," Corradi said.

So far, the new czar already announced she would be taking dead-aim at what even the mayor himself called a "simple thing" that rodent-concerned residents say the city ignores: trash bins.

Corradi repeated the mantra sung by a choir of city rat experts of what the intractable rodents need to survive: food, water and shelter.

To that effect, Corradi said her reign as czar will make trash containerization a top priority.

"Fighting rats starts with fighting litter, garbage and food waste," Corradi said. "Every anti-rat initiative starts with making sure food related waste gets into bin that rats can't."

Adams said he has sent deputy mayors across the globe, including to Israel, Greece and Buenos Aires, in order to learn from how other cities manage to not have giant mountains of trash bags on the sidewalks.

"We're watching what others are doing, so we can get it right," Adams said.

Adams also announced a new Harlem Rat Mitigation Zone, with a $3.5 million boost to speed up rat-killing in the neighborhood.