By William Tauro
One night last week after a late meeting at about 10:00PM, I decided to walk around Assembly Row and grab a bite to eat outdoors. The area was full of people eating on outdoor patios with doors wide open to the restaurants.
I sat there just looking around, thinking with all this food, with all these people here, with all this open area I didn’t see one rat. In fact I’ve lived in Assembly Row for over five years. I’ve never seen a rat here. 
The reason why there are no rats in Assembly Row is because they spend the money to combat the rodent problem. Assembly Row has leaders at the top who care and have the common sense to know how to manage their community, unlike the City of Somerville where we don’t have qualified leaders, we only have empty suits with no clue running our city. 
I would love for residents all across our city to be able to sit outside in their backyards, porches or even on their front steps and allow them the same confidence and comfort to enjoy their quality time as I did last night without seeing a single rat. We can make this change into a reality all across Somerville!
Change is at your fingertips this coming November 7th! Make that change and let’s make Somerville livable again for all our residence to not only stay cooped inside in fear of rodents, but to have the confidence to sit and enjoy our outdoors comfortably and enjoy all our open spaces and especially our back yards rodent free! 
Mr. Tauro, you failed to actually say your plan to fix the rodent problem. Perhaps you could walk around the streets of Somerville and convince the residents not to throw chicken bones in the streets. Not to put bread out in their yards to “feed the birds.” To use the rat-proof trash bins provided by the city instead of throwing used take-out containers on the ground. Also, isn’t Assembly Row part of Somerville? Don’t we all have the same leadership? Anyway, keep throwing rocks, Billy. Maybe you’ll get lucky and hit a rat.
Where can I get a rat-proof trash bin? The rats ate through the trash bin the city gave me. I’ve called to have it replaced but was told they are all out and it could be months before the get anymore. Wonder how they ran out of trash bins? 🐀🐀