§ 8.24.070. Conditions conducive to harborage of rats

A. All food and feed kept within the city for feeding animals shall be kept and stored in rat-free and rat-proof containers, compartments, or rooms unless kept in a rat-stopped building.

B. It is unlawful for any person to place, leave, dump or permit to accumulate any garbage or trash in any building or premises so that the same shall afford food and harborage for rats.

C. It is unlawful for any person to accumulate or to permit the accumulation on any premises and on any open lot any lumber, boxes, barrels, bricks, stone or similar materials that may be permitted to remain thereon and which are rat harborages, unless the same shall be placed on open racks that are elevated not less than twelve (12) inches above the ground, evenly piled or stacked.

D. Whenever conditions inside or under any building or structure provide such extensive harborage for rats that the health department deems it necessary to eliminate such harborage, he or she may require the owner to install suitable cement floors in basements or to replace wooden first or ground floors or require the owner to correct such other interior rat harborage as may be necessary in order to facilitate the eradication of rats in a reasonable time and thereby to reduce the cost of such eradication.

(Prior code § 8-507)