BRICK – Usually when someone says there are rats in town hall it is meant as an insult aimed at those serving in public office but recently that question has come up in a more literal sense.
Mayor Lisa Crate and Business Administrator Joanne Bergin both told The Brick Times that despite commentary to the contrary by township employees, there is no rat infestation within Town Hall located at 401 Chambers Bridge Road.
Bergin didn’t rule out that a mouse might have found its way into the building that was built in the 1970s.
Three employees who spoke anonymously with The Brick Times, saying they feared losing their jobs if they went public, made it clear that someone witnessed more than one rat in the building.
They each shared incidents of poor conditions at Town Hall such as leaks in the ceiling, poor AC/heating and several captured rodents in municipal offices located in the lower floor of the township municipal complex.
The first informant said they discovered items from their desk “that were boxed up. I never heard of them doing that to anybody.” At the time the employee wasn’t sure what was in the seven boxes that came from their desk drawers.
Items included “stamp pads and papers that were used for different things. Two drawers had miscellaneous items that didn’t have anything to do with work such as coffee. If they felt that was drawing any kind of rodents they should have boxed it up and told me to come in and get a box at a time,” the employee said.
They added that they were informed of a dead mouse found on the floor and another near the computer monitor. “Then I found out that there were mice running around the office that same morning and they put mouse pads down and they caught a mouse in the kitchen. I was told that there are rodents all over the place. It bothers me that anyone might say that you brought something in that would have drawn them.”
Any sweets present in the employees’ desk were sealed tightly. “If any mice were able to open those containers, they should hire them as they must be excellent employees.” The employee expressed that any supervisor saying there is no problem is not telling the truth.
The second employee shared their concerns over the situation saying “it has been a festering problem in that building. The building is a disaster. The rugs haven’t been changed since the 1980s. They look like those old movie theater rugs. They don’t hire any professional cleaning people. They don’t have any kind of fumigation that gets done they just hire people who are contracted for.”
“This particular mouse situation started at 8:40 a.m. on the 25th of June in the building department. I heard some screaming over in the middle of the building within the office. The first thing you see is a little creature scurrying around,” the employee said. The person noted that employees there screamed and jumped and on the next day “the inhouse people came in and did a clean out. They went into a corner into a desk that had an accumulation of treats and boxes of cereal and things of that nature. They found dead mouse number two.”
“On July 8, 8:20 in the morning another big rat was found in the trap so you had three different mice situations on those particular days so if somebody is going to deny it upstairs, they aren’t telling you the truth,” the second informant said.
The informant added, “the whole building department is really atrocious. We have a conference room which has had major water leaks in the last couple of years and you can see the water stains that were on the walls from the leaks. How embarrassing when you have residents coming in and commercial businesses coming in and you have water stains on the wall.”
“They kind of patched that up with painting and stuff like that and they also had a big plumbing issue down in the bathroom in the basement last year. It was shut down weeks at a time. There is dust all over the place. A very unhealthy situation there. You have to get things done professionally,” the employee added. “I don’t think they’ve ever steam cleaned the rugs.
The third employee reported, “there were four rodents that were captured in June and July in Town Hall by traps that were laid out and this is just one thing that happened and the last six months to a year. It seems that things like this just become common. It is really sad that the work place is like this.”
“There is a ceiling leak in the duct work. In our conference room there was actually black mold in the ceiling tile and it sat there for years. Eventually that did get resolved and it was something that would take two seconds and just replace a ceiling tile but there were large issues in the duct work but it’s been like whack a mole. There are areas that are leaking in one area and it stops and then it leaks in another and it has been going on for years,” the employee added.
The employee said the conference room is used by the public at times and the problem there existed for the last five years. The traps were not laid out by Department of Public Works (DPW) “it was definitely by a staff person. Just somebody who was office staff.”
That employee added that the business administrator is aware of the situation. The rat situation “was within a two-week period of time. We’ve asked them to get in an exterminator and from what we know they didn’t get one. They have beat around the bush and told us very little information.”
“A lot of these things seem like they are being swept under the rug and not addressed. In February we came into work and it was 63 degrees and we were saying ‘you can’t work in these conditions in an office building where you need to have it at a certain climate.’ It was also at 57 degrees on multiple days. The building definitely has some issues,” the third employee said.
“There was a time in October 2022 when we were using porta potties for a month because backups weren’t working,” the employee added. “That was throughout the whole building and this was for the public too. There wasn’t a working bathroom in this whole building. It was the whole month of October.”
On July 25, the township website posted a message in the morning that the municipal building closed early due to mechanical reasons. Mayor Crate explained what occurred telling The Brick Times, “It was hot on Friday and for safety reasons we dismissed all employees at 11 a.m. That has been remedied since. It is a big building and an older building. We have issues sometimes and when those issues arise, we immediately have our inside construction or whomever we need to take care of those issues.”
“On a cold day if the heat wasn’t working or any unsafe condition, we would obviously send the employees home until they had the correct temperature for everyone,” the mayor added. “As to bad carpeting – there is carpeting we have replaced throughout Town Hall. There is no mold or anything like that. Is our carpeting outdated? Sure, but we have no rat problem.”
The mayor added, “I have spoken with the person in charge of safety. There have been and there are no rats in town hall. There were no rats at all. I don’t know where that information came from. There were no rats in traps.” She added that if there are any photos or video showing this she would like to see it “as we’d like to take care of it.”
The employees did not provide photos or videos to The Brick Times.
“Let’s be clear here if there were rats somewhere in Town Hall I would want it taken care of. It not something we would ignore. I work in Town Hall too. We don’t want rats – that is unacceptable if that were the case but it is not the case. If there were an issue, we would absolutely mitigate that situation. Rats and mice – if you have them you have them, (in reference to the lower and upper floors of the building). I don’t think they can differentiate between upstairs and downstairs. There is food throughout Town Hall so if we had a rat or mouse situation, I would like to think that they wouldn’t be in just one area. I feel this is completely false. If a rat is seen (an employee) should report if not to me or Joanne then to their direct supervisor so the supervisor should let us know and that has never been the case. Not one person has ever notified us or let us know or indicated that there was a problem. Otherwise we’d take care of it. I mean who wants rats, obviously nobody.”
Council President Derrick Ambrosino was also contacted for this story but did not reply at press time.
