By all accounts, the bedbugs are swarming our defenses.
Now after months of planning and, one can only assume, military-campaign-like preparation, the city is ready to release its counterattack strategy on Wednesday at 2 p.m. on the steps of City Hall.
“If fully implemented, the recommendations could reverse the current increase in bedbug activity and actually improve our situation,” Gil Bloom, president of Standard Pest Management, told Brick Underground.
Mr. Bloom, one of 10 members of the mayor’s Bedbug Advisory Boardcreated last year, also provided the blog with some of the key points of the 39-page report, which is said to include: 1) a team to coordinate bedbug control efforts; 2) a “Bedbug Academy” for building managers; 3) an online resource of bedbug facts, checked by the city (presumably to counter user-generated sources of information like Bedbugregistry.com); 4) better guidelines for disposing of infested furniture and clothes, and better public education about how to handle such items; and 5) higher priority for bedbugs in housing court.
Paying for the effort may pose a problem, as Mr. Bloom acknowledged to Brick Underground. “There are many obstacles, including misinformation, unwarranted stigma and fear, and cost factors,” he said. “But if these obstacles are not overcome, the situation will get worse, and the bedbugs will just laugh.”
