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Introducing a NYC Council Bill - IMPORTANT!!!
(9 posts)-
BettyV4
junior member
Joined: Nov '08
Posts: 109
Posted 1 year ago
Sun Dec 7 2008 11:39:04
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Dear Friends,
I am writing to ask you to support a recently introduced New York City
Council bill, Intro 873, which would direct the New York City
Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (let's not forget the mental
hygiene part!) to do the following:1. create a bed bug control training program for (a) pest control
providers and (b) property owners;
2. make available educational materials on its website; and
3. establish a bed bug toll-free hotline for the public to report bed
bug infestations and request bed bug information.We will be tracking the progress of this bill on this page:
http://newyorkvsbedbugs.org/nyc-council-intro-873/ so check back for
updates, tools and sample letters.I am basically writing to beg you to please get in touch with your
council member. You can find your council member here:
http://council.nyc.gov/html/members/members.shtmlAsk your council member to support Intro 873 currently in the Health Committee.
Every other bed bug bill in the NYC Council going back to 2005 has
died. We're now at the end of 2008 and, surprising exactly no one
I'm sure, bed bugs are more spread and more intractable than they were
in 2006 when the NYC Council held a hearing. That 2006 bill never
came to a vote. And we still have no bed bug awareness campaign, no
resources to fight infestations, and completely disengaged NYC
agencies. This new bill will correctly assign responsibility to the
NYC Department of Health for the dissemination of information and the
creation of bed bug control protocols. The hotline provision of the
bill is absolutely essential in order to get an accurate picture of
the spread of infestations and to provide timely information to those
who are newly exposed (remember how it felt when you first discovered
the problem?).Please consider telling your family, friends and co-workers, the
people you have trusted and commiserated with about bed bugs. Please
ask them to support this bill.Please contact us if you have any questions. Thank you!
Sincerely,
--
Renee Corea
New York vs Bed Bugs
tel/fax: 646-417-8168 (ext. 1)
http://newyorkvsbedbugs.org/PS: Guess what I saw in the subway the other day? Bed bugs! A
picture of three adult bed bugs, that is, on an ad for a mattress
encasement company. It said: "Bed Bugs are Back!" and "Protect
yourself!" Mixed feelings about this. It was great to see bed bugs
in the subway, but it's also context-less and it feeds into people's
misconceptions about bed bugs. And we should have proper PSAs! -
HI Betty,
This is a really important message and I am glad you're helping to spread it around.
However, you just pasted in an entire email which Renee sent to you. Since it's meant to be forwarded, I am sure that's okay, but you should probably make it clear it's a forwarded email, next time. You can highlight the whole message and click "quote" in the edit box.
Also, I am not sure Renee wants her phone number on websites. I can ask her.
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It's cool. Thanks, Betty--and thanks, nobugs.
Has anyone else seen the mattress encasement subway ads? I saw it on the 7 and, yeah, did a double take and all. It's significant I think.
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Marixpress
member
Joined: Sep '08
Posts: 305
Posted 1 year ago
Mon Dec 8 2008 10:48:43
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Yeah! I saw it on the 6 train over the weekend. It was an ad for Protect-a-Bed allerzip mattress cover. It said "BED BUGS ARE BACK!" Protect your mattress with blah blah blah . . .
I was glad to see that.
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parakeets
oldtimer
Joined: Mar '07
Posts: 913
Posted 1 year ago
Mon Dec 8 2008 11:07:36
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Bedbug education is going to have to happen along the lines of this bill since the newspapers are not covering the rise in bedbugs. The word has to get out. I think some businesses who pay for advertizing in newsppaers in most cities (hotels, tourism, real estate) don't want the public to panic so there seems to be a "cone of silence" around the topic, unless you talk about bedbugs in relation to someone poor or in public housing or something.
I hope they keep counts on the numbers of calls they get on the toll-free number and publish the stats. Is it my imagination or is the bedbug problem silently growing more than we realize? No one talks about it.
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Additional response here: http://bedbugger.com/2008/12/08/new-york-city-has-a-new-bed-bug-bill/
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DeathToBBs
junior member
Joined: Jan '08
Posts: 88
Posted 1 year ago
Mon Dec 8 2008 20:27:46
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Keets wrote: "....since the newspapers are not covering the rise in bedbugs." Check out this thread that contains a link to an article that was printed in the NY Times a couple days ago:
http://bedbugger.com/forum/topic/womans-ordeal-wbbs-in-bronx
The headline only mentions "Bug" infestation. I think it should've mentioned "Bed Bug" infestation, but it's a start. Of course the bug infestation is bedbugs.
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parakeets
oldtimer
Joined: Mar '07
Posts: 913
Posted 1 year ago
Tue Dec 9 2008 10:27:02
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Great catch about that headline, DeathToBB's! I once gave a talk about bedbugs and the group running the event actually made me to change the word "bedbugs" in the title to "insects" in the printed agenda. Are people even afraid of the **word** "bedbugs"? We have to see this bill passed. I wish I were in NY to lobby for it.
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The bill is a good start, but we need a system that directly tracks bed bug infestations with a central data base.
If we amend the measure to require that all PCOs report infestations to a confidential data base maintained by the Department of Health, we then could track the spread of infestations more accurately & create a database that can be used to evaluate the impact of bed bug infestations throughout the city.
The data could also be used to judge the effectiveness of any efforts to control the public transmission of the nightmare parasites with specialized training & educational interventions.
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