Taylor, TX Public Health Rules: Rodent Control (2026)

Chapter 18, Article I, Sec. 18-2 lists conditions the city treats as a public nuisance on any public or private property, and item (3) singles out any condition that provides harborage for rats, mice, snakes, and other vermin. Under Sec. 18-4, once the city health officer finds a nuisance within the city or its extraterritorial jurisdiction, the officer must give the property owner or occupant five days' written notice describing the nuisance and the corrective action required. If the owner does not abate it, Sec.

18-7 lets the health officer's office go in and correct the condition directly, and Sec. 18-8 turns the resulting cost into a lien against the property, filed and collected like other statutory liens. Separately, Taylor adopted the 2018 International Property Maintenance Code under Sec. 18-81 (Ord. No. 2021-31) and amended Sec. 2 through Sec. 18-82(j) to place a specific duty on landlords: where an insect or rodent infestation exists in a structure or on a premises, the owner is responsible for exterminating it before renting or leasing the structure to a new tenant, rather than leaving the problem for the incoming renter to discover.

Together, the two provisions cover rodent control from two directions: the general nuisance rule reaches any property with a harborage condition, while Sec. 2 targets the turnover moment between tenants, when an infestation is most likely to be quietly passed along.