Got yourself a dreaded case of the Mondays? Start your week off right by catching last Friday's Hell Gate Podcast. Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Mayor Eric Adams hates rats, fears rats, and sometimes worries that the rats are listening. He's made his all-out war on the city's rat population a focal point of his administration, appointing a rat czar, creating a team of anti-rat activists, and installing more than a thousand hulking trash containers in Harlem.
But over the weekend, Mayor Adams cut the rats some slack.
Adams has refused to sign off on a plan to give hundreds of thousands of one and two-family homeowners enrolled in the state's School Tax Relief (STAR) program free garbage bins, the New York Post reported Saturday. The giveaway program, passed unanimously by the City Council in February, was supposed to start on Friday, and would have refunded homeowners who already bought their bins.
Instead, the mayor told the City Council to foot the estimated $14.5 million bill, in a "middle finger to middle-class taxpayers," Queens Republican City Councilmember Joann Ariola told the Post. Adams criticized the law in March, saying some homeowners should pony up the roughly $45 to $55 to buy the bins, like he did, presumably for his own Brooklyn building (which has been a documented rat hangout).