Memorandum #14-09: PDF 10.6MB Adoption of Proposed Environmental Health Division Permit and Plan Review Fee Schedule; Consideration of Business Impact Statement
Acting Chair Smith declared the public hearing open.
The following is a verbatim transcription of the public hearing concerning Memorandum #14-09.
Dr. Sands: Number 3 is Memorandum #14-09, this is the adoption of proposed environmental health division permit and plan review fee schedule and Consideration of Business Impact Statement. Scott Weiss, director of administration along with Glenn Savage, our director of environmental health and Robert Newton, administrative analyst for environmental health are all here to present the proposal and answer any questions you may have.
Glenn Savage: Good morning, Madam Chair, Board members. Glenn Savage, the environmental health director. With me today is Robert Newton, administrative analyst for environmental health. Also in the audience I have Steve Goode, who is the manager of operations and Dennis Campbell, who is the manager of solid waste, who I might ask to give some comments concerning some of these fee proposals.
Environmental health is proposing a fee increase to the Board of Health to cover the essential and necessary services that we provide to Clark County residents and tourists in the regulated community. EH started preparing our budget back in November of 08 and, quite frankly, we’ve been fine tuning it ever since. We acknowledge that there is a downturn in the economy and again, we started making cuts to our expenditures beginning last year. A few of those things that we have done since November is that we’ve placed a hiring freeze and we defunded positions, so we do have these vacancies, which we kind of refer to them as being “on the shelf” – right now they total 8 vacancies and that’s resulted in a cost savings of around $700,000. We’ve provided cross-training for our staff in all sections of environmental health, so whether it’s in administration, solid waste, plan review, or operational inspections, we’ve been doing this cross-training and we do have a number of people that are actually doing multiple job duties. We have cut over $250,000 in supplies, travel and training. Only travel that’s being allowed is if it’s totally reimbursed from a third party or a contract. And as far as the supplies, we’ve set up a standardized way of ordering supplies, with supplies to be ordered and quite frankly we’re counting every pencil and ink pen that we’re purchasing through our administration group. Just recently we’ve implemented the no overtime policy, which will be handled by adjusted work schedules to handle those after-hour/weekend work activities, and we feel that could result in a savings of about $200,000.
We’ve also made some administrative changes, such as ending the daily activity report, which will save staff an incredible amount of time – we estimate over 15,000 hours of filling out this one bureaucratic form, will then give staff the opportunity to go out in the field and do more inspections and plan reviews. In our plan review section we have put more information and plan review documents on the web so that applicants can go there and download the information, start filling out their application which will speed up the process, and we’ve noted that things are faster in our food program alone. So with all those cuts and changes we have estimated that we’ve approximately saved $1.15 million in all these different things we’ve done since November.
We’ve also identified programs that currently are unfunded, and these are programs in which we do investigations/inspections. Those include: our CMART in which we work with the County Multi-agency Response Team to check on public nuisances and other issues; the MAT program – it’s a similar CMART type of event where we go out with code enforcement people; urban rodent surveillance; hantavirus surveillance; the public nuisance calls we get – anything from water intrusions to no air/no water in rental properties; and also our illegal vending inspection/program and surveillance.
I’ll say some good news I just received this morning was from North Las Vegas – I received a call from Ron McDaniel, who’s asked me if I’d like to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding with us which will allow them to go out and also confiscate food and destroy it, again getting more people out there in the community to work together, I think it’s a fine thing and I’ll be talking with legal counsel about that and Mr. McDaniel from North Las Vegas. I’d like to also extend that option and opportunity to Henderson and Boulder City and others who have illegal vendors, so it kind of gets everyone at least on the same playing field and let businesses then compete and build a program, but when you have people who are not pulling permits, we’re not for that. And if they’re serving an unapproved food, you don’t even know where the source of the food is coming from, I think that is a health issue we’ve got to get after.
Now for the process that we’ve gone through and making some recommendations to our Board of Health. We’ve held a number of workshops in Mesquite, Laughlin and here in Las Vegas and at that time we had discussions with the community, we were looking at a 6.7% increase, and part of your package today is a fee schedule table and also the comments that we have received in those workshops, also emails we received and other letters that we have responded to. I can tell you that we’ve heard loud and clear from the people in the business community that this is a tough economic time, whether it’s utility billing increases, insurance increases, the minimum wage costs going up, costs of products they have to purchase to stay in business, gasoline prices, promoters increasing their fees, business license fees going up, and probably more that I have not recalled, and they told us about but … it is in the record … and have impacted their business, and we very much understand that and we listened to them. Some of the other comments that we had, and I’ll just give you the wide range of comments from the community was first no increase at all, zero percent across the board of increases. A second component of discussion point was don’t increase in a specific area, and maybe someone else can pick up the increased fees. A third was specific percentages, I believe the Nevada Restaurant Association did send me a letter saying that maybe 3.5% would be a good spot to be at. We had other business members in the solid waste community and other specific businesses say that no problem, we can handle the 6.7%. So I just want to give you a flavor – there was everything from zero to 6.7. And taking that into consideration, again we’ve sharpened our pencil, as industry has asked us to do, and we’ve moved from 6.7% as an option, to a 4.25% option.
I can tell you on our fee schedule, a majority of the fees that we’re looking at addressing are at that 4.25% figure. There are some outliers to that we can discuss especially in the solid waste arena where we spend an inordinate amount of time – the cost of labor and plan reviews or inspections at those facilities. And also I can tell you that in the fee schedule itself is, we’ve broken it down with the general category on the left column, the amount of what the current fee is – we’ve broken it down per day costs – the 6.7% increase if so agreed upon, what that new cost would be, increase of 4.25% again new costs per day increases – staff comments and the public comments, so that’s how it kind of reads. We kind of took what Ms. Crowley had suggested to us about providing tables and trying to make things easier to read so we attempted to do this during this fee schedule.
So this morning I’d like to, if the Board would like for me to, I could go through the points of discussion – I counted up last night, there’s actually forty-one things we could sit and discuss today, or I could hit the highlights. It would be your preference on how you’d like to proceed with this.
Acting Chair Smith: Well, I would suggest, first of all, we take questions from the Board, and then I’d like to see what the public has to say and then you can probably just address what you hear versus…
Mr. Savage: And just one last comment before we do that, is that if, again if there’s comments made by the public in certain categories, on this table we just put down “none.” And I think, the other thing that I can tell you is the industry also did ask for certain areas of change. For instance Mr. Stokes representing Wynn would like for us to expand the seasonal permits from four months to eight months and was willing to work with us on what that cost would be. For us, I probably wouldn’t have any issue with that. A gentleman who would like to bring a tattoo/body art convention to one of the MGM properties – this is the first time ever we would have this convention come to our community – we added up the costs and using the old costs, it would be somewhere around a half million dollars, a first-time ever use, now we have something we can compare what his costs were going to be. We sat down and worked with him and came up with a different rate – that’s also included. So my point is that we had some interest from the industry to make some changes, what they felt would benefit them and give them business opportunities, which are also part of the fee schedule.
Acting Chair Smith: And I also know in the past that there’s been various groups, particularly the farmer’s markets and vendors, that we’ve already made major changes to reducing the costs for them, so I know this is an on-going process, that you’ve been doing this for quite a while now.
Mr. Savage: Right. We, this last year, we set up a new point for high-risk annual itinerants and we arrived at a figure for an annual permit of $750 and again working with the businesses we’re hoping that instead of them having to take that special event permit each week, which would cost them over $100, which potentially 52 weeks out of the year is $5,200, now we’re down to $500 for low-risk, $750 for high-risk, that they could have those savings, use it for their businesses, cost of purchasing equipment which would help them do their job and provide a good, sanitary product for presentation to the community.
Acting Chair Smith: Thank you. Well, are there any questions from the Board at this time? Commissioner?
Member Weekly: Yes. Mr. Savage I notice in the back of the materials here that there have not been an increase since 2007?
Mr. Savage: Yes.
Member Weekly: Is that correct? If in fact, this particular item here, if that didn’t move forward here today, what type of setback or impact would it have on environmental services in terms of what it is you’re looking to do. I mean I heard you saying, you spoke about the hiring freeze and take away the travel to various workshops and things of that nature. But if you could answer that part then I’ll have another second part to that question.
Mr. Savage: Currently environmental health’s budget is made up of about 91-92% labor. We, again, have cut back supplies, travel to the bare bones. So if we were not to receive any rate, it definitely would impact our bottom line and we’d have to consider taking a look at our labor costs, and that’s kind of where we’re at. If it was a $1.1 million, which was a target of ours, if an environmental employees with fringes…the average environmental health employee with fringes and salary is about $82,000, divide that into $1.1 million – that could impact, 12, 13, 14 people, if I did the math correctly. That would have to be a consideration. The other consideration if we were not to go that way is the health district would have to look at other funding mechanisms to somehow substitute for that, grants and contracts, other things we try to utilize. It’s going to be difficult to find those, though. We’ve already explored that in previous years.
Member Weekly: I appreciate that. One of the things that concerns me, personally, is as a member of the commission, is not that it’s just so much the hotel industry that we are hearing from, but I’m also hearing from small businesses as well, who are very, very concerned, of course, with the economic downturn that we are experiencing right now, and for me, there’s by no stretch at all would I want to do anything to impact labor costs in terms of possibly jeopardizing someone’s livelihood by you having to go back and justify by laying off people, because we couldn’t afford not to have their jobs today. A number of people that are losing their homes and so it concerns me and puts me in a real precarious position because I have not supported…did not support the water rate increase, because folks I represent cannot afford it, whether it’s a quarter or a nickel. Again, right now people are strapped and again, when we look at the foreclosure crisis and they showed us the geographic areas, it’s the district that I represent, a true high population of those foreclosures. So I didn’t support an increase of the water rate, I didn’t support an increase in the sewer rate, definitely don’t support the power rate increase, and I’m just today I’m not in favor of an increase at all – I think the timing’s bad with the number of issues we’re dealing with right now and I’m not sure…I respect and appreciate…I was in briefing with you and Dr. Sands and I appreciate the compromise from 6.7% down to 4.25, I believe here you’re doing everything, you’re bending over backwards to try to make some type of concession, and Dr. Sands and staff, which we appreciate that very much. But Madam Chair, I’m just going to on record saying today I’m just not in support of an increase right now – the timing is too bad.
Acting Chair Smith: Well, I appreciate your attitude, but I’d also like to say, though, but what is the cost of one health-related incident? So, the few pennies that people will have to come up now will pale in comparison to Las Vegas getting shut down for some health-related issue. Nobody’s going to come here and then nobody’s going to have jobs because everything will dry up. So I think that sometimes we have to balance the whole picture that, I mean, I don’t like paying extra at the gas, but the price is going up and I’m just gonna have to pay it because otherwise my option is having to just walk everywhere, which probably wouldn’t kill me. You know, I don’t want to see some health-related issue overtake Las Vegas because we are tourist-based and for the people who live here. And so I think our obligation is public health, and that’s how I’m going to view this. But before we go there, let’s hear from the public, speaking of public health. Oh, I’m so sorry…
Member Jones I think we also need to recognize that, you know, we’ve asked the environmental health division to go into a process of being funded through a fee structure and we’re kind of at the end of that first cycle. During this current fee schedule cycle, I think now is the first time that you’ve had 100% of your expenses brought into the fee schedule, I think some of your HR costs and some of your support costs were coming out of general fund in the past, so unfortunately that cycle comes at the same time as the down cycle in the economy, but I think we’re on the right track for making that a self-sufficient business paying for business type of a process. Without being able to put a 100% to fee schedule covering all expenses, otherwise we won’t be at our goal of business paying for business.
Acting Chair Smith: Member Crowley?
Member Crowley: Well, I just want to reinforce what’s being said here, it has been a balancing act with giving them the charge of being basically self-sufficient as far as fees go, because funding it literally drying up across the country, and you’re balancing the fee schedule and the hardship that it imposes on our community, and it does, against the rules that we’ve implemented that require that you get out there and make your inspections. So you’ve got to balance the fee schedule, the funds and the resources to do what we’ve asked you to do in our regulations and you have to balance that against what the community needs as far as its’ business goes. And a good example is the tattoo event that you were talking about…
Mr. Savage: Right.
Member Crowley: …and that if you look at what our regulations give us and what the fee schedule is set up to be right now, they basically would not be able to do it simply because we would charge them too much money and then it would be a non-event. And so you balance those three things and I don’t know that we have any option, quite frankly. If we’re going to enforce our regulations I don’t know that we have an option not to increase the fees.
Acting Chair Smith: Doctor Christensen.
Member Christensen: Madam Chair, as I’ve said numerous times, in public health pretty much this is the whole ball of wax – this is where the rubber meets the road. This is, and to your credit Mr. Savage, you and your team has probably done to good of a job in the sense that we’ve not had outbreaks, we’ve not had problems. So people see these fees as why am I paying them, nothing really happens. We’ve done such a good job that we don’t see the downside risk. The downside risk, if we don’t do this, is tremendous, it’s huge and it’s economic slow-down.
Mr. Savage: I appreciate that comment. I just want to say we hold ourselves to a high standard to continue. Just as with the Virginia Graeme Baker Act, which was a federal law we don’t enforce, but we went out with the HOAs, the contractors, trying to work with them more than ever before, we worked with them as far as doing a telephone communication with the contractors – we had them out on site so that they could be in compliance. So we’ve tried to take our business plan and have it flexible enough that we can move it from one spectrum to the other. I was telling some of the members of the public the other day, who would have thought that environmental health would have gotten into a prostitution wrap ring out in the Henderson Office that Councilman Kirk asked us to weigh in on a couple years ago, and they were able to utilize us, instead of law enforcement and business license, to get us in because why? The home didn’t have a swimming pool permit that they were charging for, and a food facility and a hotel, and so we were able to use our laws to get in and get the job done and that no longer exists. So again, just examples of what we try to do, which is beyond just food program – we do a lot of things in EH.
Acting Chair Smith: Well, thank you. Yes?
Member Strickland: I just wanted to say that, you know, Boulder City has been going through some significant rate increases and as a councilmember I have historically voted against increases in utility expenses, property taxes and that sort of thing for the reasons that everybody is struggling. But I think that whenever we have a discussion about rate increases as they are associated with health and safety for what I would call primary services provided to the public such as fire and police department, I’ve always been in favor of that. I think, for me, one of the things that you said, that we haven’t had a rate increase since 2007 is significant to me, as well. So I very much appreciate that you have taken the opportunity to really streamline your management, fiscal management, in your department, I think that’s very commendable. So although I’m historically against these kinds of increases, I will be in favor of this.
Member Schroder: I just had a question, a clarification, regarding what we’re going to be voting on here. Is the recommendation for the 6.7% increase or the 4.25% increase?
Mr. Savage: I’m sorry.
Member Schroder: Is the vote, or the vote that we’re going to be taking this morning going to be for the 6.7% increase or the 4.25% increase or is that something that one of us would move for?
Mr. Savage: I guess our point in doing this is just to show where we were at last month before the last workshop that we had here and then again, we were able to take a look at a couple other vacancies which just came up, the policy change to do away with overtime, and so that helped in cutting that increase down to that 4.25.
Acting Chair Smith: Well I believe staff…the answer to your question is staff’s recommendation is 4.25.
Member Schroder: OK, because I can understand the rate increase, but if we can save as much as we can for the people that are actually going to be paying this, I’d love to see any kind of savings for them. While at the same time I understand that we have to conduct our business, too.
Mr. Savage: Right, and I would just say that was a good faith effort, I believe, on our part to industry. They did ask us, I had conversations with Mr. Bible, Van Heffner, Julie Tracy and others and they said can you keep cutting, can you sharpen up that pencil, and we tried to. And I think some of the things we did since then would show that.
Acting Chair Smith: And I’m real intrigued by that because most of these cuts (indistinguishable comment) the health district.
Dr. Sands: Just want to make a point of clarification, where it’s true as far as that this is the first rate increase we have brought before the Board since 2007. At the time when rate increases were approved in 2007, it was approved for two years, which is generally what we do. So there have, and it was a big bump in 2007 because that’s when we closed the loop and included the indirect costs, you know the overhead that wasn’t previously included, so truly the last two years the environmental health division has been self-sufficient based on the fee revenue that they collect. And then in 2008, based on what was approved in 2007, there was a smaller bump. And so again we’ve been watching since early last year what’s been happening with the economy and making plans on how can we further reduce any increases that may happen and because I think the longer you go out, the worse it can get. But the thing is right now, this is what we’re proposing, is really is the best that can be done to be able to be sure that we can maintain the services and balance that with the cost savings that so far have been achieved and the ones that we believe we can achieve over the next year with the idea that we would continue looking at how we can improve operational efficiency and being sure that our costs, the fees, are in alignment with the true cost of the service we had. The audit last year was to make sure that the fees that were collected were going directly to the service and they confirmed that that was happening. But again, I think there’s always room for improvement and we’ll continue working on that.
Mr. Savage: And the other point I’d like to make is this is just a one year, this is a one year proposal. Again, talking with people in the community, we’ve agreed that we’ll come back to the table in November, December and again start taking a look at the economy, look at what we’ve done, we found more efficiencies and been able to make some other cuts within environmental health and how we do work, how we provide the services, that’s what we’re going to be doing with the community.
Acting Chair Smith: Thank you. Since this is a public hearing, we’d like to invite anyone forward who wishes to speak on this item. Please state your name and address for the record.
Van Heffner Are we on? I’m Van Heffner. I’m president and CEO of the Nevada Hotel and Lodging Association. I’m also proud to be honored by being a member of the Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners. And today I’m with you on behalf of the Nevada Hotel and Lodging Association; we represent 150,000 hotels room and I really want to commend Glenn Savage and his team, as well as Dr. Sands, on really working very hard and long to correct what we need to have corrected. At the same time, on behalf of our Board, representing well over 200 properties in southern Nevada, they have expressed concern, as did Councilman Weekly, in saying that at this time some of our properties are in and out of bankruptcy, some have stopped being built. And so I feel the department of health is very positive in reviewing this, almost like you would do a living budget, in other words let’s see how the fees come on licensees throughout Clark County and also if that needs to be revisited in October, whatever it might be, in order for us because our businesses are challenged as is this agency. And we’ve had a very favorable relationship with Southern Nevada Health District; I commend them for their effort. They’ve worked closely with us, hand in hand. And if we’re preventing an outbreak of cholera from a small, remote place in South America or something on the east coast, we’re able to capture it and do what we need to do. And so, on behalf of the Board, again I think this group would be very prudent to examine every single expense and I think the movement is in the right way, when you go from 6.7 to 4.25 and it shows very good faith on the their part. At the same time as industry, we want to make certain that we do not shoot the goose that lays the golden eggs, because if that happens it’s like in some of these business when you have small operator that goes out of business, we all lose.
Acting Chair Smith: So you were that while you don’t like it, you can live with this?
Mr. Heffner: We do not like it…
Acting Chair Smith: Right.
Mr. Heffner: …I’m thrilled that they have checkpoints on it.
Acting Chair Smith: OK, so you don’t like it, but you can live with it.
Mr. Heffner: I will live with it.
Acting Chair Smith: OK. Thank you.
Mr. Heffner: Thank you, Madam Chair.
Acting Chair Smith: Thank you very much.
Mr. Heffner: Any questions.
Acting Chair Smith: We certainly understand your position. Is there anyone else who wishes to speak on this item? Please come forward; state your name.
Ernesto Lucero: Is it possible I could get the overhead to show my slides – they’re just six slides, if you’d go along with that.
Acting Chair Smith: Wait. I’m not sure…we have two Board members who are going to have to leave so we’re going to need to…
Mr. Lucero: I can go through them very quickly.
Dr. Sands: If we find somebody…take a couple people so we can give them time to load it, then we could probably do that.
Acting Chair Smith: OK. So is there anyone else who wishes to speak? We’ll back you up a little bit.
Mr. Lucero: Alright.
Brenda Lovato: Good morning.
Acting Chair Smith: Good morning.
Ms. Lovato: My name is Brenda Lovato and I represent GSC Real Estate Management, homeowner’s association and the apartment association. The reason the apartment association is not here, they’re having a national convention so I’m speaking on behalf of everyone. I have also worked very closely with Dr. Sands and Mr. Savage, and I do appreciate the fact that they did sharpen their pencils; however I would like to make a couple of public comments. Number one they had made mention that the salaries of the average employee that works under their jurisdiction is around $82,000…
Acting Chair Smith: Salary and benefits.
Ms. Lovato: …and benefits. I am sure my managers would love to apply for these vacancies because I’m just telling them…well the vacancies are going to stay as they are. But I just would like to say that I want when they’re sharpening their pencils and they’re looking at their salaries and their benefits, I wish they would make sure that the employees that are working for them are performing to the best of their abilities, because I can tell you my experiences that my properties have had that when you have one inspector who’s inspecting who takes five hours to inspect two of my pools, there’s a problem. They’re not moving in the right direction. So I’m saying, they need to evaluate their employees to make sure that they do have…Again we do not need an increase. We have laid off people. You’re going to start seeing, as I mentioned in a public hearing before, you’re going to start seeing apartment communities in foreclosures themselves because the vacancy rates and everything else and like I mentioned at the public hearing, the state business tax went from $100 per business to $200 per business. That is 100% increase. And so again I come before you and say that I thank you, Mr. Weekly, for agreeing that no increases at this time, and that’s how I feel, that there should be no increases at this time. They should go back and reevaluate and bring this back to us. Let’s see what we’re like in a year. I’m sorry. Thank you.
Acting Chair Smith: Thank you. Are the slides ready here?
Member Weekly: Dr. Sands?
Dr. Sands: Yes.
Member Weekly: Just real quick, Madam Chair. Councilwoman and I serve as Chair and Vice Chair of another Board…
Dr. Sands: Right.
Member Weekly: … so I’ve casted my vote. So I’m just going to head out.
Dr. Sands: OK.
Acting Chair Smith: I don’t know that we can pre-cast before we close the public hearing…
Member Weekly: OK, well you know where I’m coming from.
Acting Chair Smith: What do we need as far as a quorum goes?
Shelli Clark: Seven.
Stephen Smith: We need seven.
Acting Chair Smith: Seven. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…Well, if you leave then…
Member Schroder: Cause I’m the chair and he’s the vice chair.
Acting Chair Smith: Well…we’ll go through this as quickly as we can…we can’t move forward…
Member Schroder: OK.
Acting Chair Smith: Go ahead, sir.
Andre Rochet: My name is Andre Rochet from Andre’s Restaurant. I also am a member of the restaurant association. I want to thank the Board and Mr. Savage who listened to us meeting after meeting. Two years you had a 25% increase and over two years it’s a pretty big increase. What you are asking now, you came down, I think you’re being more than reasonable. And we certainly appreciate the fairness that you give us to listen to us a lot better than the power department, that’s for sure. You know our business has been hit really hard and we’re down from 30-50% yet, but yet we are very labor intensive. It doesn’t matter if we do thirty people or fifty people, we still have to have the same amount of people working. And that’s very hard for us. And everything is up – the tax and everything, I don’t have to tell you. So I think 4%, yeah we can deal with it, but I think before we raise your fees again, we going to have to sit down again and see where the economy is at. I think we’re going to see a lot more businesses closing – this is only the beginning. We have to go through the summer for restaurant people – it’s the worst part of the year so it’s going to be extremely, extremely difficult. I closed my place downtown already after twenty-nine years. And for those of you who never come to my place because you said it’s too expensive, well now I’m giving a three-course dinner for $45 so there’s no excuse.
Acting Chair Smith: We go to your restaurant for our anniversary, so…Yes?
Member Schroder: Yes, really quick. When would this be in effect? If this gets approved for 4.
Scott Weiss: July 1.
Member Schroder: July 1st?
Acting Chair Smith: Yes.
Bill Bible: Good morning, Madam Chairwoman. For the record I am Bill Bible, president of the Nevada Resort Association. I believe I’ve appeared before you, since you’re a member of the judiciary committee of the state legislature…
Acting Chair Smith: That’s right.
Mr. Bible: …and I was a chairman of the gaming control board. Like the other speakers I wanted to commend Glenn Savage for his cooperative attitude and approach for what is a very, very difficult issue. You probably know this started out as a 14% fee proposal that would span a two-year period. I met with Glenn last week and with Scott last week, at that time it was a 6.7%, asked them to sharpen their pencil and obviously they’ve sharpened their pencil and gotten it down to 4.25% increase. As all of you know the industry is struggling, it’s struggling. Last year, 2008, calendar year 2008, gross gaming revenue, and that is the major driver in our industry, showed the greatest decrease that they have on record. That trend has continued. Of those of you that follow the legislative proceeding you know that the economic forum which forecasts state gaming revenues made a projection in December that was extremely pessimistic. The governor used that to build his budget and they moved through time they made another projection in May that reflected an even more pessimistic attitude as to what gaming revenues were going to look like not only for the balance of this year, which ends at the end of this month, but to succeeding fiscal periods. The amount of revenue, when I was looking at the figures yesterday, it struck me as interesting they’re projecting that total fiscal FY2011 collection, and that’s two years out from today, were going to be approximately the same as what was collected in 2005. So during this period while there’s been ups, the revenue picture has been fairly stagnant. And our companies have universally had to tighten the belt; they’ve done many of the same things, all the sort of things that Glenn had described that they have done in the budget review process. They have implemented very extreme cost savings measures, they’ve laid off employees, they’ve reduced work hours, they’ve suspended contributions to a retirement plan…these are the sort of things that are necessary in order to accommodate the changing economic circumstances. We have to some extent delay the dialogue apparently on defunding and some of the issues, I think, we’re going to be facing in the upcoming months as Commissioner Weekly indicated, there’s no clear consensus as to whether we are the bottom of this economic cycle, how long it’s going to last. Dr. Schwer earlier this week, you may have seen the story in the Review Journal yesterday in the mid-section was the mid-year review located that local unemployment was going to rise about 12%, it’s currently about 11.3%, which is a record for this state; he predicts that there’s going to continue to be job losses in the construction industry, there’s going to continue to be job losses in the hotel industry, and we are having what are probably the most dramatic and challenging economic circumstances we in the industry have ever faced. At the same time, we have substantial new capacity coming into the marketplace that was planned a number of months ago…so you can recognize our economic circumstances. Clearly we need to focus on this budget on an on-going basis, labor costs have to be one of the areas we’re going to look at. Also we need to take a look at the indirect costs. They may be self-sufficient…there maybe some opportunities for savings in that particular area. We’re going to welcome the dialogue as we move forward. My numbers have not really flown in a consensus on a number, like most of your testifiers that represent trade associations and multi-member organizations. We have some properties at one end of the spectrum…one property indicated they felt that they could, it would be a struggle, but they could accommodate the original proposal of 6.7%; other properties have indicated to me that it would be a very severe struggle to meet fee increases that are being proposed here, even at the 4.2%. So on an ongoing basis you’re going to have the same kind of due diligence on your part as the people that you regulate and other partners. I’d be happy to respond to questions. And again, it’s good to see you again.
Acting Chair Smith: So good to see you, too.
Mr. Bible: Thank you.
Acting Chair Smith: Thank you very much.
Katherine Jacobi: Katherine Jacobi, president and CEO of Nevada Restaurant Association. Again, we’d like to thank the environment health division. They’ve been very patient at the numerous meetings that we’ve had. They’ve allowed us to express our views very directly. The Nevada restaurants are the largest source of tax revenue for our state. And most of our restaurants, as you heard today, are down about 40%. They’re operating on a 4-7% profit margin – it’s pretty slim. So although the fees are proposed as pennies per day, when you couple that with a minimum wage increase, modified business tax and also the increased utility fees, the cost of those, etc., it will have a serious impact on some of our restaurateurs. In some cases it’s going to have the unintended consequence of closing these restaurants. While we don’t want to compromise the services that are being provided in keeping our community safe, which they’ve done a very great job, we are requesting that you consider, again, the impact on our industry. As Andre has suggested some of our members are able to deal with the 4.2% and we truly do appreciate all that Glenn has done to bring that down. We do echo Bill’s comments and we suggest a review of the overhead costs and looking at the procedure for self-funding for environmental health to be self-funding. Thank you.
Acting Chair Smith: Thank you. Is there anyone else who wishes to speak? Do we have the slides ready?
Mr. Lucero: I’d like to apologize. I’m going to go ahead and waive my presentation and I’ll work directly with Mr. Savage.
Acting Chair Smith: Well, thank you very much.
Member Schroder: Thank you.
Acting Chair Smith: Please come forward.
Virginia Johnson: My name is Virginia Johnson and I’m here representing Las Vegas Farmers’ Market vendors and a lot of community vendors of events that we attend, outside events as accompanied volunteers to you, which is the requirement of business. We want to thank the Board for the considerations that have been given to us and to Glenn and his staff. We’ve all sharpened our pencils – now it’s time to get out the erasers. Unfortunately we’re all at that point from the big guys to all of us little guys. We’ve put approximately four to five hundred businesses in business or helped them get started on a springboard. As you know most of those food-type businesses and things maybe 5% will make it, but we’d like to have a better ratio, understanding for them to be able to springboard into the local economy on a larger scale and open their own stores and restaurants. The community involvement is we need more action from the community to help what is stated here. A lot of our vendors couldn’t be here today because they are working – they have to be at work today, and many of them had written in letters. They have to be collected on…we had requested that the fees be collected on a calendar year, which would generate more revenue because people are starting at a more regular time that’s conducive to them and the weather and their business. It’s hard to start a business on July 1st if you are a chocolatier or something like that. So different things are involved. The 4.7 is a nice concession, or 4.5, excuse me. Maybe we can even do that half, every other year maybe – not start this year but next year, provided things are a little bit better. The annual cost of an inspection…I’m not certain what is the actual cost of an inspection per business…I tried to find out and figure it out, but you know our inspections are anywhere from a minute to hours depending on what kind of an event we’re doing and usually it’s right in the middle of an event. Sometimes we have gotten a lot better in doing the inspections prior to the event but usually if there’s an issue in health, it’s going to happen later on in the event, so may be a buzz back by or something would be appropriate.
Mr. Smith: I think we need to limit the time to three minutes.
Acting Chair Smith: OK.
Ms. Johnson: Maybe an audit for service that is there and better forms would be appropriate. We can help…the community can help put together those forms if necessary. And I would be willing to volunteer for that. And that’s pretty much all I have to say. We would still like to have it, no fee for this term at this time.
Acting Chair Smith: Thank you very much. Is there anyone else who wishes to speak at this time? Well then we will close the public hearing and I’ll take any comments or questions from the Board. Alright. Well I guess I would just like to say very quickly that there’s no one listening here who’s is unsympathetic to the issues of cost. I’m about to lose one of my jobs, so I understand that personally. And as a teacher, I teach two classes a day for free, because there’s no money to pay me extra, and I doubt very many of you volunteer to do your job for free each day, but we all make sacrifices, so I understand that, but I still believe that our goal here is public health and that the cost of having a disaster would be so much worse than the consequences of having to look at fee increases, even though I know it’s a struggle. So I’ll accept a motion at that time.
Member Jones: So moved for approval at 4.25%.
Member Crowley: Second.
Acting Chair Smith: All in favor please say aye.
Board members: Aye.
Acting Chair Smith: Anyone opposed? Motion carries.
Member Schroder: And I apologize, I really have to leave.
Acting Chair Smith; We understand. So, I closed the public hearing, right?
Dr. Sands: Yes, you closed the public hearing.
A motion was made by Member Jones to increase the environmental health division permit and plan review fee schedule by 4.25%; seconded by Member Crowley and carried unanimously
