Sylvania’s Public Safety Building has been infested with bats for a while now, but their numbers are getting so high that the city is taking bids from professional removal services.
At dusk and dawn, hundreds of the small, black bats can be seen swarming around the outside and inside of the fire and police station on Mims Road. They nest inside a brick column on the front of the building and, at night, come pouring out of a hole in the roof.
Firefighters working out on exercise equipment have to duck when the erratic fliers swoop past. They can be heard chittering through the brick column.
City Manager Carter Crawford said three companies have presented bids to remove the bats, but he declined to say the amounts because the bidding process is going to be started all over again. That’s because one company came in a lot cheaper than the other two because it planned only to remove the bats and leave the work sealing the building to be done by city workers.
Crawford said the other two companies are going to be asked for new bids calling for removal only, with the city sealing the bats’ entry holes.
Crawford said bats are protected and the law prevents them from being killed. He said he isn’t sure just how the companies propose to remove the bats, but acknowledged that if they are sealed out of the building and not carried elsewhere, they may move to another, nearby building.
The nearest building to the Public Safety Building is the county courthouse. “They may have bats over there already,” Crawford said.
The city council postponed taking action on the bat removal at its meeting Tuesday until new bids are submitted.
In other action Tuesday, the council unanimously amended its tobacco-free policy to prevent city workers from smoking in city vehicles. They also amended the policy to prevent tobacco spitting in city trash cans.
Crawford said the change was prompted by complaints from city workers who dislike getting in vehicles that had been smoked in and cleaning up trash cans that had been soiled by chewing tobacco.
Crawford said every few years, he talks with every employee and asks for suggestions on how to do things better. The tobacco complaints came up during those talks.
Also stemming from those same talks, Crawford said the city may consider a ban on city workers using personal cell phones on the job. He said some city employees have complained that their co-workers sometimes take personal cell phone calls, distracting them from doing their jobs.