Rancid rat clears office at West Kelowna city hall

WEST KELOWNA – A rotting rat has driven seven employees out of their portable office at West Kelowna’s municipal hall.

Facilities mananger Erin Goodwin said the corpse of a rat found three months ago has come back to haunt them and forced the removal and treatment of everything from the floorboards down.

“We brought in pest control and they discovered the remnants of a carcass and removed it. We thought we had resolved the problem but the smell returned,” he said.

Goodwin said the portable office was the oldest of the three that sit outside the municipal hall on Cameron Road and was likely the easiest target for rats.

“These are old portables. They probably found a hole underneath and found themselves a nice warm home with batt insulation,” he added.

Goodwin said the city has a pest control program and has had no infestations within the other two portables or the main hall.

“It doesn’t mean we have no mice in the area but we haven’t had any major problems,” he said.

Employees displaced by the two-week long repair job have been slotted into the work stations of those who are on holiday.

“We’re fortunate this is peak vacation season so there’s a lot of people away,” Goodwin said. “We have had to convert some meeting room space into office space.”

Cost of the repair job to the portable office is $35,000, Goodwin said, much lower than the $200,000 it would have cost to replace it.

West Kelowna voters head to the polls September 17 to vote on whether to borrow $7.7 million for a new city hall.

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