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Fee boost a shot in arm for Enviro Health |
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Wednesday, 28 November 2007 |
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By Mike Gervais
Register Staff 11-27-2007
In an effort to help mitigate rising costs and an ever-expanding list of state-mandated inspections, Inyo County Environmental Health has received the OK to increase by 25 percent the fees it charges to businesses and other vendors.
The across-the-board fee hike, which will be enacted today, Tuesday, Nov. 27, will help cover some of the expenses
it incurs while inspecting hundreds of local businesses, from gas stations to restaurants
to body piercing and tattoo
operations.
According to Environmental Health Director Marvin Moskowitz, the 25 percent fee increase will generate approximately
$40,000 annually for the health department.
Those funds will go towards covering the costs the department
incurs during its inspections
of restaurants, food vendors
and other places of business
that are expected to meet state health codes.
According to Moskowitz, research has shown that the current, $49 hourly fee charged by EHD is the lowest among the 38 counties he surveyed. Even with a 25 percent increase that will push the fee up to $63 an hour, Inyo County will still be near the bottom when it comes to EHD hourly rates in the state.
He added that even with the increase, the fees will only cover approximately 22-28 percent of the expenses incurred by the inspections.
The department’s charges for virtually every type of inspection, ranging from testing
water quality at small water systems, inspecting pools and spas, abandoned dump sites or septic systems, are also lower than nearby counties and across the state in general.
Moskowitz explained to the Inyo County Board of Supervisors last week, that if the new fee hikes were not enacted by today, they would not go into effect until approximately
mid-January.
“If it isn’t enacted by next week we’ll see about a $30,000 loss because I send out most of my billing at the first of the year,” he told the board last week.
“We’re still right there at the bottom of the barrel” and the increase is necessary, Moskowitz told the board before it moved to enact the fee increase this month.
The department must inspect businesses from Bishop to Death Valley, and the cost for providing inspections
to all those businesses can add up, Moskowitz told the board.
The new fee structure will include charging a small fee to multi-day events in the county, such as Mule Days and the Tri-County Fair, to cover the cost of inspecting the food vendor booths at those events, which is mandated by new state regulations.
There will be no impact on one-day community events where food is served, such as Good Ole Days at Laws Museum or the Fourth of July celebrations in Independence and Bishop.
Not every business in the county will see higher inspection
costs, however. A change in the inspection guidelines will result in lower fees for smaller restaurants in the county.
In the past, a flat fee has been applied for the inspections,
which results in a small restaurant paying the same as the larger eateries, such as Whiskey Creek. According to Moskowitz, virtually all other state EHD restaurant inspection
fees are based on the size of the restaurant, and the new Inyo County fees will adhere to that formula.
New state regulations will prompt the EHD to change its approach to inspecting food vendors at multi-day events such as Mule Days or the Tri-County Fair. Previously, department employees inspected
the food vendors and gave them a permit for free. Moskowitz has noted that the process is not only quite time-consuming, but vendors – especially those used to setting
up shop at events in other counties – expect there to be some sort of fee anyway.
To keep the costs and level of recouped charges fair for everyone involved, Moskowitz has suggested charging the “event organizer,” such as the Tri-County Fair, a flat fee. The fair could then decide whether to pass that cost on to vendors, making for an all-around simplified
fee-imposing and gathering
effort.
The last time EHD increased its fees was in 2004.
Even with higher fees in effect, Moskowitz said that EHD will still be relying on state funding for more than 70 percent of its total budget. Currently, fees make up about 22 percent of the department’s budget, and the proposed new fee structure would only result in fees covering 25 percent of the department’s costs.
Any drop in state funding or loss of a grant could mean the higher fees would simply keep the department at its current
funding levels, Moskowitz said.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 29 January 2008 )
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