Committee: Environment
Cost: $360,000
Location: To be determined based on need and impact assessments.
Short Description: Purchase, place, and maintain 100 additional Smart Boxes (rat traps) for rodent reduction and data collection. Adding these traps would expand existing pest control measures through 2027.
Long Description:
Cambridge has a rat problem, which comes as no surprise to city residents. Reducing the rat population requires data collection to target the city’s efforts. The City currently contracts for 40 Smart Boxes (rat traps) and there were 929 captures in 2023. Additional Smart Boxes will allow us to track how our efforts reduce the population of rats (without use of rodent poison). All capture results are available through Cambridge’s Open Data portal. With this budget allocation, the city will be able to more than double our current inventory of Smart Boxes, maintain them over the course of three years, and provide rodent control to more locations.
![A Smart Box rat trap.](/-/media/Images/participatorybudgeting/pbcycles/pbcycle10/smartbox.png)
A Smart Box rat trap.