Health Dept. 'Slanderous, Incompetent' In Rodent Issue: Residents

The following is a letter to the editor submitted by Melrose resident James Moler in response to the a recent story on Melrose's rodent problem. If you want to get in on the conversation, email mike.carraggi@patch.com. If you think you have what it takes to be Melrose Patch Mayor, apply here.

My name is James Moler and I live in Melrose. I just read your piece on the Rodent Infestation in Melrose and the quotes given to you by Ruth Clay, the Director of the Health Department and I felt the need to respond with what my wife and I have been dealing with when it comes to Rodents and the Health Department.

To add a little prequel to this, my wife and I have been dealing with a rat infestation in and around our neighborhood for months, due to the condition of a lucrative rodent food source (dumpster) next to a Diner we abut. We have called 2 different extermination companies who both told my wife and me that as long as the dumpster is out of code and in the current condition (constantly overflowing and chew-holes all through it), we will never get rid of the rats around our house. We invoked the help of the Health Department of Melrose, who ended up being Coral Hope, to make sure the Diner’s dumpster was up to code so we could tackle this issue. Instead were met with push back from the Health Department, stating it was our problem to deal with and the extermination companies we had out were “full of bologna”. Coral asked us to call a specific company, EHS, which she also called them liars for relaying the same information as the previous 2 we had out earlier in the year. She asked us to try a different inspector from EHS, so we had EHS out a 2nd time, for a total of 4 extermination visits to our property. It took all of that for her to finally agree to go speak to the owners of the Diner about their messy dumpster. In fact, in the beginning, it took her an additional 3 weeks to find and look at the right dumpster, as she kept going to Comella’s.

This whole event with the Health Department started mid-April and took them until the second week in July to get the dumpster up to city code, roughly 12 weeks. That was weeks after a letter to our Alderman Peter Mortimer, Mayor Infurna and Ruth Clay. The extreme delay due to incompetence and refusal of action has caused the infestation to spread and get much worse than when we originally had a concern. This caused our extermination bill to skyrocket to over $1,700, which we paid once the Health Department finally got the diner to get their dumpster to code.

In our letter to those 3 (Mayor, Alderman and Health Director) we offered solutions on how the issue can be mitigated, which included moving and enclosing the dumpster away from residents' property, suggested emptying it more than once a week and also having it cleaned by the dumpster company once a month. All of those suggestions went ignored.

What makes this worse, is that while we’ve been fighting with the Health Department to get the dumpster issue fixed, they were telling our neighbors who were calling to complain about the dumpster, that the rat infestation was our fault. Even though we’ve been trying to work with the town to get the food source cleaned up as to not attract more rodents before we throw away money at it. The Melrose Health Department has been disrespectful, slanderous and incompetent in what’s supposed to be their area of expertise.

So, my question is, how can it be a neighborhood effort as Ruth Clay is saying when the Health Department treats and abandons their residents who are trying to tackle this issue this way?

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