Vice Chair Strickland declared the public hearing open.
The following is a verbatim transcription of the public hearing concerning Memorandum #18-10.
Dr. Sands: Next item is Memorandum #18-10 – this is the adoption of proposed environmental health division permit and plan review fee schedule and Consideration of Business Impact Statement. And Glenn Savage, our director of environmental health is here to present on this item, along with Robert Newton who is the administrative analyst for the environmental health division; and Steve Goode, our environmental health manager. We’ve got the whole team up here.
Vice Chair Strickland: Good morning.
Glenn Savage: Good morning, Madam Chair, Board members. Glenn Savage, environmental health director. I brought with me today Steven Goode, to my right, who is the manager of operations and to his right, Dennis Campbell, manager of solid waste and compliance. And also in our crowd is Robert Newton, administrative analyst for environmental health. So I’ve got plenty of support here today.
The permit/plan review fee schedule before you, we would like to walk through that with you, but tell you that we did hold workshops in Laughlin and Mesquite, we had two here and we had also other discussions with different associations that represent industry here in our community. Recently there was some concern about the special events held at pools and fees associated with that and as I tried to explain to many, what we tried to do is just put a foothold, if you will, in the fee schedule for those type of events but that those events are still being defined through regulation that the State is working on, that we’re working with the State on, and with industry…and so we’re going to reference that in, when we get to that portion of the fee schedule, as “to be determined.” So you’ll probably see a TBD on an amended version of this fee schedule. And as I was looking at it this morning I noticed that the plan review for those special events also had a dollar amount figure and I will request that that be removed, and again instead enter in a TBD because we’ll have discussions further with industry and the State as far as how we’re going to regulate those pool special events in the future.
So if you’d like we can start on page one and go through line by line…it’s highlighted in a salmon color and also with a kind of red-purplish box that has some descriptors in it. Mr. Goode will start off and discuss this. One thing I just wanted to point out to the Board is that this is not an across-the-board every facility that we permit and work with fee increase – it is not. It’s reflective of what industry has come and asked us to do to describe better what they do in a fee; also it’s a regulation change we had with our food regulations the Board adopted a few months ago, and it’s also reflective of any legislation that was passed by the legislature at the last session. So with those caveats, we’ll have Mr. Goode begin.
Vice Chair Strickland: But I was just going to tell you, I don’t know if it’s on anybody else’s laptop, but mine on here is not in salmon, so we have to look up there…
Shelli Clark: Go to page thirty-two and it will be in the salmon.
Vice Chair Strickland: OK, alright. Alright, thank you.
(Member Weekly left the meeting at 8:50am)
Steven Goode: Good morning, Madam Chair, Board members. As Mr. Savage has already spoken about, the fee schedule is pretty much spread out very simply in that there’s been descriptors already written here to tell us why we’re looking at these particular fees and if it’s your pleasure, I can go through each one and kind of explain those to you. The first item we see here is that we’ve added in the little yellow box it says we’ve added “any food service permit” just for clarification purposes. Again, this is not an increase in any fees in this particular category – it’s just a clarification.
Member Jones: What page are you on, Steve?
Mr. Goode: We’re on page one of six. The very first item under “Food Service” it says “per drive up window” and “any food service permit.” It’s in salmon there.
Member Fairchild: Just for clarification for us on our computers, it’s page thirty-two of thirty-seven.
Mr. Goode: I’ll renumber these pages for…OK, so that was the top of page thirty-two. As we move further down on page thirty-two we have another salmon-colored area where we’ve added a new line of business, we’re adapting to what our industry has given us and that’s where…an example would be if we were in a Smith’s market and they have in their deli area added seating to that area, that is something that’s relatively new in a lot of our markets and so we’re changing our fee schedule to properly address that particular issue.
Mr. Savage: And a comment on that too, is that with the delis taking on seating to provide comfort, if you will, for their clients, as one restaurant owner/operator said “well, if they’re going to act like a restaurant and we pay for seating, then they should also.” And we talked to the deli folks who were doing this business and they said they understood. And it’s $2.71 per, most of the facilities are looking at nine to ten seats, so it’s an additional $27 total.
Mr. Goode: Continuing we have our self-service pre-packaged food trucks. Again, that was just a clarification of what was already part of the fee schedule. As we continue to page thirty-three, the first item you see there, what we did there is we moved this entire group from where it currently is to the miscellaneous area to make it more cohesive. That’s where we have the rest of our items that deal with this particular area. So we just moved that to make it an easier understanding for those who are reading the fee schedule.
Vice Chair Strickland: OK.
Member Jones: No change in the fees, just change in the location, where they are on the schedule.
Mr. Goode: That is correct. As we continue down on page thirty-three we have an item that is a new line of business; now it’s been something that’s been operating out in our community for a while, however from a health district standpoint it seemed to be a new line of business and this is our tasting events. What we’re speaking about here is where we may have like a chili cook-off where we have dozens, maybe even hundreds, of booths where an individual may be sampling their little container of chili, just for a contest per se. We found out that when our inspectors have been out at these facilities that we’ve only allotted a certain amount of time to conduct these inspections – we haven’t had enough time to do them. As the Board is well aware of, environmental health has been tasked to be self-sufficient, so we’re looking at every single minute that we’re spending out there in the field and we want to make sure that we are addressing everything that we do appropriately. So we’ve added this new category where we have a tasting event and we have the fees assessed there with our time being right now $112, $118 an hour for our staff out there. One of the questions that came up regarding this issue was whether or not we would make sure that every single booth was inspected during this time and we believe that the fees that we’ve established here would allow for that. Most of these events require more than one inspector in order for it to be done in a timely fashion prior to it opening, so we’ve written our fees in such a way that we’re able to accommodate inspecting all the booths prior to the opening of the event.
Mr. Savage: One other comment to make is that we were given some supporting information from industry of their costs and what the special event cost would be currently and they have told us that they would actually save money with this fee set-up. So that would be a gain for industry. I’d like to go back to one area Mr. Goode skipped, just right above that, is annual event coordinator. That’s a new line item. What we’ve heard from the Las Vegas Convention Center is that currently that have to pull what we refer to as an event coordinator for every event that they hold, and the Convention has a lot of events. And so if you would take basically the $200 and multiple that, that’s a lot of money. So they asked us if they could set up protocols and how they handle those events – bathroom facilities, hand sinks, other food, hot-warming devices, cold refrigeration in those events – and if so, would we consider an annual event coordinator fee, and we said sure. And we priced that out with their agreement of $1,160. Again that would take care of four events at the current price. So again, a cost savings for industry and we will review their protocols and procedures. So again, be a win for them and a win for us.
Mr. Goode: Right, as Mr. Savage said that is a new line of business for us. The next item here on page thirty-three are the swap meet food courts. What we did with that particular area is that we removed the descriptor that said “mall” because we know that a lot of casinos now have food courts and they’re not necessarily a mall, so we removed that descriptor and in addition to that we added a per seat charge, reason being is that someone needs to be responsible for the general areas of all of these food courts. I’m sure all of us have either visited a casino or a mall and we notice that the seating area doesn’t seem to belong to any one in particular. So we’ve added that as a new line of business, so that the mall or the casino would be responsible for the sanitation of that area, which would include the restrooms.
Continuing down we did…do you want…
Mr. Savage: Yeah, I’ll go ahead and speak on the mattress retail company, some of the miscellaneous public facilities. Currently we are in discussion with a number of the mattress retail and rental companies in our community. Some of you might recall that our Board of Health approved the mattress refurbishing regulations a couple of years ago, and industry’s come back and asked us to amend those regulations to include others who are in the business of renting soft-fabric materials and also refurbishing soft-fabric materials, which would include box springs, mattresses, chairs and other things. So we have been working with Walker Furniture, Mr. Alterwitz, and others in our community to amend those regulations. We’re hoping that we can bring those back to the Board in August or September this year. That’s a foothold as far as what the pricing would be. Again if the Board would like me to, I can put a TBD by that, but that was just a number we had come up with, trying to figure out what our costs would be to do those kind of inspections.
Member Eliason: Will the bed bugs wait until August?
Member Jones: It would seem consistent to use the TBD if it’s not yet determined.
Mr. Savage: Yeah, we can do that.
Member Fairchild: Madam Chair?
Vice Chair Strickland: Sure.
Member Fairchild: I really appreciate staff addressing the “ick factor” in this venue of industry. Thank you.
Mr. Savage: And again we can bring this back in a couple of months, but actually what we found is in our discussions that there are some businesses that are not cleaning or even attempting to sanitize rented furniture and we felt that with those regulations in place that that would, we would assume that was already happening. Well apparently it’s not happening again so we’re going to have to really take a look at how we amend those regulations.
Member Eliason: Well that would include like our convention people that rent furniture for conventions and stuff.
Mr. Savage: Potentially if they’re renting from a local facility…
Member Eliason: Well and yeah, and more than that really within, because I have two warehouse, they rent furniture and I guess it dawned on me when you said that.
Mr. Savage: If you did have soft-fabric chairs or whatever that could be part of their business plan, yes, besides a homeowner or apartment renter. OK? Steve? He’ll update you on the next page.
Mr. Goode: Right, we’re on page thirty-four now. And Mr. Savage spoke about when we first introduced the fee schedule there have been a lot of questions about these seasonal pool events, and that is something that those who are part of that industry and regular civilians have asked us about and whether or not we’re regulating them, whether or not we’re out there, whether or not we’re ensuring that the public health is being protected during these parties. So we’ve established this new category. As Mr. Savage has said, we’ve spoken with our industry partners; we’re trying to set up a fee that would be reasonable for everyone to be able to pay. So we put the “to be determined” area there. What we’re currently doing is developing a guideline for the industry currently so that they can practice good public health until we establish what the permit should be and how we will go about enforcing that.
Mr. Savage: Maybe just a little bit. Mr. Jones has volunteered his time and effort in working with us, along with others within industry, folks from the Hard Rock, Harrah’s, other consultants in our community have begun working with us in establishing those guidelines which we hope will be part of the state regulation which is now being worked at the state level. During that interim time that we are, as Steve said, we’re setting up these guidance documents to ensure good public health practices are taking place. I received an eight-page document yesterday from staff; it encompasses everything from filtration systems to food and alcohol being presented in the pool and spa areas to obstructions that are being built in those pools and spas. As one person said in industry, and I think it was one of Tim’s members of his corporation said, the business plan is that the nightclubs have now been placed in the pool or the spa and I guess that was just about the best way to define it. So pools and spas are really not designed to be a nightclub; however we’re going to be working to get things straightened out.
Vice Chair Strickland: I have a question. Is this those “party by the pool” things?
Member Eliason: Absolutely. Woo!
Vice Chair Strickland: Boulder’s pretty mild so we don’t have those things.
Mr. Savage: You can pull up some reality TV shows and watch the things that are going on.
Vice Chair Strickland: My question is if they do a “party by the pool” things and I’m going to sound really naïve, like every Friday as an example, does that become a special pool permit even though it’s actually a pretty regular activity?
Mr. Savage: Right, what we’re going to do, and one of the members of industry representing the Venetian told me that their business plan at the Venetian would be every Friday night it would be the same type of event for like twenty-six weeks in a row – and for our purposes a special, let’s just call it the DJ night where they bring a DJ in, set up the speakers and have other parts of the party, if you will – on Saturday it might be concert in the pool which is an entirely different stage or other things, and they might do that for twenty-six weeks in a row, and then Sunday it might be Ft. Lauderdale revisited at that. And so that’s a different permit. And so I asked them, well it sounds like to me three different operations, three different special permits is what you’d be seeking; he said yes, that would be their plan and they would be willing to pay for each individual day for those twenty-six weeks. Why we’ve put the TBD is we don’t know what that figure is, and what industry would be willing to pay and actually what it would cost us to go out and inspect those. We go out every Friday night, every Saturday, every Sunday and inspect twenty-six weeks in a row?
Member Christensen: Can I sign up for that?
Mr. Savage: Again at $118 times twenty-six weeks times three, there you have it.
Member Christensen: I’ll go help.
Vice Chair Strickland: Board members are not allowed.
Member Jones: We’ll sign you up.
Member Christensen: Yeah, not a problem. Woo-hoo!
Mr. Savage: We’ll deputize you in a few minutes.
Member Ruscingno: Yes, I have a question, Madam Chair. On the parties that I know about, where they’re eating and drinking around the pool, and they’re in and out of the pool, is there any special clean up that goes and water testing after this is done and they’re up? Is there reinspection and all that?
Mr. Savage: That’s what we’re definitely pushing for to happen, because it doesn’t take much to impact the water quality and we’ve already again had discussions with some of the industry people who have engineered some ways in trying to handle their filtration systems, dosing, if you will, with chlorine appropriately to meet the capacity of a number of bathers that are in those pools and spas. So they’re thinking this thing through. And part of what you’re asking, we’re making that part of any guidance documents and hopefully in those regulations.
Member Jones: Some committee reflection on your question from an industry standpoint, there’s an occupancy allowance for the pool, and whether that’s a party or whether that’s kids on summer vacation, it’s the same number of people that are allowed. And so from a standpoint of engineering and managing the sanitation of a pool, in either process it’s got to be leaned on, we have to coordinate between the health district and industry.
Member Ruscingno: I know from my end, some of clients that I have I tell them to stay out of pools for communicable reasons.
Member Jones: Certainly.
Member Ruscingno: So…
Mr. Savage: The other thing that I might add is that this process will also impact the jurisdictions you represent because it’s very likely that a building department’s going to be involved, or a fire department, especially if they’re building again castles which overhang into a pool area; again if you’re putting in a nightclub where you have speakers and electronics involved and you have lighting systems and generators and we’ve seen even the addition of petroleum products into the pool for some fiery scene. Again, it sounds like building department or fire’s going to be involved with us in this adventure.
Member Boutin: Madam Chair?
Vice Chair Strickland: Yes.
Member Boutin: What are castles?
Mr. Savage: We actually saw a, well one of the resorts build a castle…
Member Boutin: Oh, an actual castle…
Mr. Savage: …an actual castle and our issue was that some people who…
Member Eliason: Cinderella could let her hair down.
Mr. Savage: …well yeah, and some folks got kind of underneath the castle, that’s an obstruction and the lifeguard…makes it very difficult for them to see a person who has had too much to drink underneath that obstruction and it could cause a drowning quite frankly. So we want to work with them to talk about limitation and security, life guards and others, too, to make this thing work, if we can.
Vice Chair Strickland: And I remember in one of our past meetings we had a discussion about how you’re supposed to have a certain amount of walking area the pool that’s unobstructed and all that, so do they, like in the castle example, if that area’s not there for walking around do they get like a variance for that requirement or how does it work?
Mr. Savage: You know if they would seek a variance, I don’t want to go too far too out there, but I’m not sure we would support a variance, again, if that would impact someone’s safety. Instead, you know, maybe they if that’s what they would like to have as far as part of their design for this party or this event, post security people; put up barriers or something where people can’t enter the pool, kind of back behind the stage…I mean there’s thing that they can do that again we could more than recommend, but really tell them they need to get, along with the building department.
Vice Chair Strickland: So I guess maybe my better question would have been all those requirements that we have for these other things, like the walking-around distance, walk around the pool and stuff, those are still all in play…
Mr. Savage: Right.
Vice Chair Strickland: …even with these permits?
Mr. Savage: That’s correct.
Vice Chair Strickland: OK.
Mr. Goode: OK, continuing on page thirty-four in the center. We have a number of fees that have been added to be make it more in line with all of the other fees that we currently have. We believe that our body art section had been neglected for a while. They have, or the community has started to bring in big events into our community, and because these events are more on the forefront we have established a late fee for those artists that come in with less than 30 days of letting us know that they’re going to be participating in an event. Again we need to be extremely efficient and effective in our timing for our staff and whenever we have things occurring, or an event that’s going to occur without giving us enough notice, we need to be able to pay for our staff to be out there. So we’ve added a number of late fees to this particular area. Again this is new, a new fee and specific to our tattoo/body art.
Vice Chair Strickland: OK.
Mr. Goode: As we continue to the bottom of page thirty-four, there’s been one item that has been deleted. The first item you see there was a “failed reinspection following a downgrade to ‘B’” inspection. We felt this was redundant to the item that’s right under there, an “inspection following downgrade to ‘C.’” One must understand when we’re out there doing inspections and we go back to re-inspect a facility after it’s been downgraded to a “B” and they don’t get back up to an “A” they’re either closed or immediately downgraded to the next lowest grade, which would be a “C.” So that’s just a redundancy that we took out of the fee schedule. But like Mr. Savage has already spoken about our mattress refurbishing, again a new line of business and we needed to add this to the fee.
And finally towards the bottom of page thirty-four we have some training. What environmental health has done in the past is whenever an operator out in the community has asked for us to come in and conduct some training for them, we would gladly do that because our business is the business of public health and we want everyone to be trained as well as possible. But again looking at whether or not we were efficiently using the time for our staff, we thought yes that’s a very appropriate use of their time; however there should be a fee associated with that if we’re going to be out there providing additional training for a facility that may not understand or has had a problem complying with our regulations. So we’ve added that as a new line of business.
Member Jones: When we’re going to the food regulations training coming up in July/August, that’s not a charge.
Mr. Savage: That is correct.
Mr. Goode: That is correct.
Mr. Savage: I was going to add to that, but I’m glad you brought it up, Tim. What I can do is hand out to the Board members what the training is and if you take a quick look at it (attachment #1 PDF), we have basically booked our training officers from the first part of July all the way through to October 1st. And we’ve already guesstimated that we’ll have close to 6,000 attendees from industry who would go in and get the training and we’re offering that free. So that’s not part of this at all.
Member Eliason: Madam Chair?
Vice Chair Strickland: Yes?
Member Eliason: I hate to go back, but why do we have the difference on the tattooing and the art? $73 for the late fee and $232? Why wouldn’t they be somewhat closer to each other? A late fee for the late body artist event fee for $73 and go down three or four lines and you’ve got a breakdown of that. Are they different? One’s the body art and one’s the artist.
Vice Chair Strickland: One looks like booth. One’s the artist.
Mr. Goode: The first fee that we have there, the $73, you’re right in that that is the artist themselves, where they come in and apply and they’re late applying for that event. The final one at the bottom there is the event coordinator.
Member Eliason: Well…
Mr. Goode: I’m sorry.
Member Eliason: …I guess I’m not clear on the bottom of the one right above it, why would we have a breakdown one with five days, six to ten and eleven to fifteen. I mean, why don’t they do that with all the late kind of things. I’m not saying the dollar amount, but breaks it down between…
Mr. Savage: The artist and the event itself.
Mr. Goode: Right, exactly.
Mr. Savage: Basically the difference is the artist versus the event itself. The body art plan is they do bring in multiple artists that do come in to these events and they seem to have a tendency to add on artists late. So an event that might only have ten artists now has twenty artists. Sometimes they might be…
Member Eliason: But then we’d have twenty new booths, too, wouldn’t ya?
Mr. Savage: Sometimes they might include a booth; or sometimes they might be affiliated with a booth. So there’s kind of a split in that and that’s what staff’s trying to recommend.
(Member Onyema left the meeting at 9:15am)
Member Eliason: I guess my question would be why wouldn’t staff want that for the artist, too – one to five, six to ten, eleven to fifteen up there?
Mr. Savage: Because the artist is an individual.
Member Eliason: Well it’s easier no matter, I mean, just an artist or a booth, it’s easier to inspect a booth than it is an artist?
Member Christensen: We’ll get a body scanner out there.
Mr. Goode: It’s actually the event not the booth. For instance the first item there is an artist can come and apply for an event, let’s say three days before the event and it will cost him $73, because that’s an additional inspection that the inspector will be required to do. The second item there that you were speaking of is the actual event, so an event not being scheduled at all and seven days from today now this event will happen.
Member Eliason: But my, I guess my point I’m trying to make is when an event’s late your artist is late, more than likely.
Mr. Goode: There’s a possibility. There are a number of times when we’ve received applications for the artists, just like in a food venue and a special event, we’ll receive the special event people coming in prior to the event coordinator coming in and applying for the event.
Vice Chair Strickland: Dr. Christensen?
Member Christensen: Just for my own education. When the artists come, they usually bring their own tools and then we’re inspecting the booth for…
Mr. Savage: Sanitation, biohazard…
(Member Onyema rejoined the meeting and was seated at 9:17am)
Member Christensen: Now are they bringing all their tools, such as their sterilizers, all of that stuff?
Mr. Goode: Usually in these special events they are all disposables, so it’s not sterilizers they’ll be bringing. They have enough on supply that, of course, they wouldn’t be reusing nor having to sterilize before the next day.
Member Jones: But that would be the point of inspection – somebody was going to use reusable they would have sterilizing equipment….
Mr. Goode: Correct. Correct.
Member Jones: …in order to make sure the reusable were…
Dr. Sands: I think the idea, correct me if it’s differently, is that since we do have regulations county-wide for regulating body art, tattoo and piercings for on-going establishments, we want to be sure that if people are coming in even for a special event, that they’re in compliance at minimum with those regulations as well. It would be a big disconnect if we required that of our ongoing establishments in the community and didn’t require that of people coming in on a temporary basis.
Member Christensen: So do we have any of these body art things at the pool yet?
Member Fairchild: Oh, great idea.
Member Jones: We have temporary, I guess, it’s like body painting-type of thing at pool events.
Member Boutin: Actually there’s one at the Mirage, but it’s inside. It’s a tattoo parlor/bar.
Member Jones: Right, it’s not at the pool.
Member Christensen: Well it’s probably the pre-anesthetic.
Member Boutin: Boy you’re on today. Jim.
Member Fairchild: And that’s regulated, too.
Member Christensen: Yep.
Vice Chair Strickland: I have a question, and I’ve never been to any of these things, again I’m from a pretty mild jurisdiction…
Member Christensen: We know you go to church on Sunday.
Vice Chair Strickland: …if you have a booth at one of these things and all the booth consists of is an artist, then are we getting an artist fee and a booth fee and we kind of double dipping there or not?
Mr. Goode: We don’t believe that we’re double dipping and yes, we would be getting both the booth and the artist, because in a booth there can be a number of artists. It’s both that we’re inspecting, though, we’re inspecting the area for the artist themselves and the sanitation of the entire booth. The booth itself is the responsibility of the event coordinator, so they’re the ones responsible for that; the tools that the individual artist is going to be using is their responsibility. So that’s what we’re inspecting for there.
Mr. Savage: So if Sin City Tattoo might have the booth but in the booth might have the artists Tim Jones and Dr. Christensen might be the artists in that booth…
Member Eliason: Woo-hoo!
Mr. Savage: …so we have to…
Member Eliason: That would be interesting, wouldn’t it?
Mr. Savage: …inspect what they are doing and inspect the overall booth.
Member Jones: I can tell you there was a large conference at Mandalay Bay earlier in the year and numerous groups and the process was inspecting booths, I know the health district staff went through looking at backgrounds and training and methods of…process of each of the artists and that combination seems to be effective.
Vice Chair Strickland: OK, alright. Thank you.
Mr. Savage: I was just going to go ahead and pass this around about Tim’s question about the training for the food program, so the Board members can get just an idea of what we’re doing.
Mr. Goode: The final item on page thirty-four we have our mosquito control. As some of you Board members may already be aware, the mosquito abatement program, or the vector control program, is transitioning currently. It’s managed pretty much through environmental health currently; however the municipalities have chosen to take over the responsibility of a number of the areas, including the application of pesticides and the like for both green pools and general areas out in the community. So what we’ve done is we’ve reduced our fee schedule because we will no longer be doing the initial treatments generally speaking. We’ll only be doing those in those areas where the municipality’s asking us for assistance. So we’ve changed and we’ve added a new line of business. Where if we’re going to be doing treatment support we are charging $118, which is what we were saying is our hourly rate for that application. And I know that Mr. Savage and Dr. Sands have been going to the municipalities trying to find out how they would like for this transition to happen. What we’ve decided is that for the next fiscal year, this fiscal year coming up, is that we, the Southern Nevada Health District, will continue supporting and continue applying pesticides that we’re asked to but there will be a transition over the next year.
Mr. Savage: I’ll jump in. And we’ve been having meetings with the different jurisdictions: we’ve visited Henderson so far, we visited North Las Vegas just a couple of days ago, we plan on going to Mesquite and having discussion with…City of Las Vegas is also scheduled…all of the jurisdictions will have discussions. Boulder City I believe we’ve lined something up in July with Ms. Mayes. So we’d like to see what the transition and how they’d like to see it run through their code enforcement program and their public works program and also with our support.
Vice Chair Strickland: But this is a one…just $118, not $118 per hour?
Mr. Savage: That would include our time, staff time, writing reports, using chemicals, travel, administrative support….it’s the whole ball of wax.
Vice Chair Strickland: Wow.
Member Christensen: $118 or $118 per hour?
Mr. Savage: $118 per hour.
Member Christensen: When’s it start? When the phone goes down?
Member Eliason: Yes.
Vice Chair Strickland: Portal to portal?
Mr. Savage: What’s…I mean there’s been…some of the jurisdictions wanted to begin July 1st, other jurisdictions we want to have discussion and decision made. There’s also discussions about having some sort of memorandum of understanding or agreement for the transition of the program itself, and that has yet to occur. I know the City of Las Vegas has been working on that; North Las Vegas has also been talking with the City to kind of emulate what they’re doing.
Member Christensen: And then we’re going to have an on-going spot check evaluation to make sure that everyone’s consistent.
Mr. Savage: Yes and staff has already began training a couple of weeks ago, a training in this very room, sixty code enforcement and public works people went to a training, understanding chemicals and treatment, lifecycles of mosquitoes and valuable information for them to know. And yes we are going to be doing spot checking and we’ll have people in the field working with the jurisdictions to ensure that things are being done correctly.
Member Eliason: And if you’re called out by a municipality and you come out say to a home in North Las Vegas…two months later you come back out to the same address. It’s still only $118, because someone, I feel, later on someone should be dinged a little harder because they’re not addressing the issue that’s causing the mosquitoes.
Mr. Savage: Right. And for North Las Vegas, Robert, there’s discussion about how code enforcement might do the treatment; code enforcement might also just drain the pool. And they’ve told us that they’ll use their fining capabilities or lien capabilities to handle that individual…
Member Eliason: I’m talking if the health district…
Mr. Savage: The health district would not even charge anyone at that time because North Las Vegas was doing the work.
Member Eliason: But we get to a point where we’ve gone back for a second time to the same address and there ought to be a fee doubled that or something along those lines, for the same address within a six month period or something.
Mr. Savage: Right, we work with the jurisdiction on those costs and do the notification process, the building process also.
Member Christensen: It’s a big problem.
Member Jones: The health district is still doing the general environmental assessments, capturing the mosquitoes and analyses…that’s not coming…
Mr. Savage: We call that part of our surveillance program and we would continue looking at areas that historically have been an issue, some of the washes have been an issue, some of the irrigation areas up near Mesquite, which is in the County, and we’ll continue to monitor those through surveillance and also work with our EPI department towards human cases also.
Vice Chair Strickland: So, just so I understand this completely. If, let’s just say hypothetically Boulder City asked you for treatment support and so we pay the $118 and you had to go out to Boulder City say three or four times for treatment support, it would still be only $118 you would charge us?
Mr. Savage: It would $118 times one, two, three, four, ten, whatever.
Vice Chair Strickland: But if on one treatment support you spent five hours with us (which I know is a lot of time), and another time you only spent two, it would still only be $118 for the five hours or it would be $118 times five?
Mr. Savage: It would $118 times five; $118 times two.
Vice Chair Strickland: OK. Great. That’s what I wanted to make sure.
Dr. Sands: That’s correct.
Vice Chair Strickland: And is it billed portal to portal?
Mr. Savage: The $118 would include us getting in a vehicle here and driving all the way to Boulder City…
Vice Chair Strickland: Yeah…
Mr. Savage: …we’ve built that in and that’s kind of an average cost.
Vice Chair Strickland: OK. Right.
Member Eliason: Well, Mesquite’s getting a bill, that’s a long ways away from us.
Member Fairchild: Yeah, but I’ve seen Glenn drive.
Mr. Savage: It’s also interesting with the statistics that we’ve put together, that Boulder City and Mesquite, which are the furthest distances, have the less amount of problems, or less reported problems to us. The City of Las Vegas and the County has had the majority of the complaints we’ve had to investigate over time.
Vice Chair Strickland: Thank you.
Mr. Goode: Continuing to page thirty-five. The top of the page we have an entirely new section. As all of you know we’ve approved new food regulations, they are not active yet, but they’ve been approved and one of those items in there is the idea of HACCP plans, waivers and operational procedures. There are a lot of new and inventive ways to prepare foods out there in our community and they may not be in line with what the government, the FDA, has considered to be safe necessarily in and of themselves. So each of the businesses can apply for a waiver, or show us how they keep these foods safe as they go through the cooking process. With that, again, we were looking at how much time this would take our staff to review these plans. And because we know that it would be a significant amount of time, depending on the complexity of the food that’s being prepared, we’d added this new section. This is something that industry has requested and because it’s part of our regulation it is something that we’re mandated to do.
Mr. Savage: There are some one-time costs also. In discussion with different associations representing industry, once the waiver of HACCP plan has been submitted and asked for the review happens, it can just be one-time for that procedure or protocol for that facility. We’re also looking at how it can be shared with multiple locations so if McDonald’s come in and their corporate protocol for a certain food product or how they’re handling foods can be applied to all thirty-two franchise stores in our community, we’re looking at one review and I think an administrative fee of like $50 just so we can add that onto their permit for that certain location and it’s done.
Member Jones: That’s one time, one year and if it’s good for the next ten years you’re not paying a fee...
Mr. Savage: You’re not paying a fee every year. It’s just a one time.
Member Jones: That’s good.
Vice Chair Strickland: OK.
Mr. Savage: And I could also just make comment on that. Just recently, this could be expanded also to materials, we had two restaurants in the resort corridor that asked to have us review one was a slate plate – it was manufactured over in France and nice piece of material but we had questions as far as leach-ability from that stone material with, in conjunction with the food product associated, was it microwavable, could it withstand heat or dropping or whatever, so we did a review of that because we did that prior to this being approved it was a free consultant if you will. Another example was a tiki wood type of product, which is very absorbent and it was discussed that the tiki wood was applied with some sort of resin material, well resin material, chemical, food products, acidity, heat, can it actually work? And again staff did research on that and were able to approve it, again it was a lot of staff time and effort. So that gives you a couple other examples of things we’d like to work with industry, if you will be protecting public health but also as a consultant for them.
Member Christensen: Is that just a simple Google search or I guess...
Mr. Savage: I have staff sitting in the audience today…the amount of paper that she provided to me was more than a simple Google search.
Member Christensen: Well, no, but I mean Google gets you pretty much anywhere you want to go. But are these specific scientific databases that you’re going into?
Mr. Savage: It could be databases, it could be information from the manufacturer, it could be that chemical that they’re using and MSDS sheets associated with that. Any test data as far as presentation with different types of food products, again wash-ability, durability comes into play, so there’s a lot of…
Member Christensen: Does the federal government do a lot of testing on a lot of this?
Mr. Savage: I don’t’ believe so, especially the one where the slate plate was from France.
Member Christensen: Yeah, that’s what I was saying is somewhere someone has to do all the testing on this.
Member Jones: NSF can do them.
Mr. Savage: NSF is a good foundation that will put their stamp of approval and do a lot of that testing. If it was that simple, make life easier for us. But when we don’t see those kinds of seals on it, that it’s gone through a foundation of testing then we have to do our research.
Member Crowley: Madam Chair?
Member Fairchild: But are you also doing the testing in house?
Mr. Savage: We’re not doing the testing, although some staff members have done the “drop test” on some of these materials on their own to see about durability, but no we depend on manufacturers and others to provide that information to us.
Member Crowley: So we don’t do any chemical testing ourselves?
Mr. Savage: No.
Member Christensen: You didn’t see the lab?
Mr. Savage: OK. Want to talk about “portable unit for service of food?” It’s just a descriptor…I’ll go ahead and go through some of these other ones. General Plan Review, “portable unit for service of food,” again staff came to me and just wanted to change the descriptor to make it more clarified, clarification for businesses, so that’s just a word change, nothing to do with fees at all. The one below that is the seasonal pool event permit which I acknowledged early our meeting today that over in the right column instead of having what, $250, we ought to just scratch that out and put “to be determined.” So if you’d like to make that note, I know Shelli’s saying she will, so we’ll do that, because that would be part of that whole process of seasonal pool event dialogue we’ll have. Below that is an area of tattoo/permanent make-up. Body piercing was actually added to that and it should have been a stand-alone, so that was just an error in that descriptor so we’re just doing a strike-through for that. The next one, the annual event coordinator per fixed location the hourly field rate…what we found is that many times the work that we do with the annual event coordinators we gave them kind of a general cost and sometimes it would be too great of a cost and sometimes it was too less of a cost, so what we actually decided is just giving them an hourly rate. They were very acceptable to that and we would do our very best job in documenting our time spent so that the charge that they’ll incur would vary, for the amount of time we spent on a project, the hourly rate. And the one below that is the farmer’s market vendor low-risk…
Vice Chair Strickland: Glenn, I think…
Mr. Savage: Yes?
Vice Chair Strickland: …Susan had a question.
Mr. Savage: Yes?
Member Crowley: I actually wanted to say that that actually is a good idea…it reinforces for the operators that they need to be very open and help you through the process rather than withholding anything. So it actually opens up a process so it has an added benefit.
Mr. Savage: That’s a great comment and we agree wholeheartedly and I think industry does want to work with us and open up and provide us that information. Again, we don’t have to do research…
Member Crowley: Right.
Mr. Savage: …and field visits and other things to verify if they bring it to us during that initial stage of bringing it.
Vice Chair Strickland: Yeah, it’s good.
Mr. Savage: And I can also tell you that we’re trying to apply this to other business plans, we’ll probably be doing that in the future. Below that is farmer’s market/low-risk vendor/high-risk and the coordinator. And I believe we were putting this in a different area and we just need to spell out what that plan review was for those types of business plans. It’s interesting that the other day we had a meeting with one of North Las Vegas’ clients who is involved in farmer’s markets and swap meets and all and were able to clarify exactly what their business plan was and when that was all said and done they ended up saving a load of money. So thank you, Robert, for…
Member Eliason: Taking money out of your pocket.
Mr. Savage: Yeah, thank you.
Vice Chair Strickland: Glenn, is there some place in this document that definition of what is a vendor low-risk versus vendor high-risk?
Mr. Savage: It is actually found in the farmer’s market regulation itself, which is part of the food regulations you just adopted.
Vice Chair Strickland: OK.
Mr. Savage: Normally the difference in low-risk for farmer’s market has to do with presentation. If it’s just a matter of presenting melon, it’s a low-risk. Once you start slicing up a melon and offering it up for sampling, then you get involved in refrigeration issues, sanitizing that product if you will, there’s more involved in it, so the risk is different. And it’s explained in our regulations.
And the last one on page thirty-five is self-service pre-packaged food truck, and again that was just a clarification of our descriptor for industry, no change in fee with that. Going on to page thirty-six, the top mattress retail company…again that’s a position, a footprint that we can use in the future for those amendments to those regulations. You can see that $118 is basically kind of an hourly rate because we feel that is what it’s going to take us to do the plan review for those types of facilities. So far industry has not had an issue with that, but I’m sure we’re probably have further discussion on that in the future.
Vice Chair Strickland: Were these going to TBDs, too?
Mr. Savage: We could probably go ahead and put a TBD by that also, although I have to tell you, a figure that was higher than that was discussed at another meeting where industry actually thought that they would be paying us even more, so we can go ahead and change this to TBD. Right now we’re giving them the “blue light special” I guess as far as a rate goes.
Vice Chair Strickland: Maybe we’re giving a blue light special because…
Member Jones: You’re not ready to hold this fee…you may need to change it, so because it may change let’s say TBD.
Mr. Savage: OK, so let’s go ahead and change to TBD and put that in the record then.
Vice Chair Strickland: And Donna?
Member Fairchild: Glenn, just for a point of clarification and I think it would probably make it easier for everyone who uses this fee schedule. There needs to be some kind of indicator…which fees are hourly fees and which fees are origination fees or general fees, a one-time situation, because it could be a little misleading to look and see $118 and as a business person I’d think “oh, great $118,” not knowing that that is an hourly fee. So if you perhaps identify that it would be better.
Vice Chair Strickland: That’s a good point. That’s why I got confused on $118 on the vector control issue, sort of…it is misleading I guess.
Member Christensen: And highlight it, OK? I mean, per hour is not going to work, you’re going to have to do something else because…even though it’s in plain English they’ll skip it.
Member Jones: If another column tell you that it’s hourly, one-time or an annual type…
Mr. Savage: Thank you. Those comments…I’m sure Shelli’s putting those in the public record. We’ll look at that when the meeting’s over and Mr. Newton, who does this for environmental health, is sitting in our audience and I’m sure he’s taking notes. So we’ll take all your comments. Thank you. Moving further down, again, on plan review miscellaneous fees a new added line of business, again mattress refurbishing. Again this is just a footholder that again we could make the change to put in TBD at this point in time. And it is page thirty-six. Go over to page thirty-seven and Mr. Campbell gets his opportunity now to speak on about four areas that are listed on page thirty-seven.
Dennis Campbell: Good morning.
Vice Chair Strickland: Good morning.
Mr. Campbell: Page thirty-seven, the first…right at the top of the page, is the waste asbestos hauler/transport permits. Basically what we’ve done here, this fee has already been established for a period of time, we just added in a one-time fee to make it clearer that if it’s a one-time project there’s a fee; if it’s a on-going fee there’s an additional fee for each additional transport permit. Under the regulations any time asbestos is transported it has to be disposed of in an industrial cell Class I landfill and they have to track there. We’re actually taking on some responsibilities from the County when it comes to tracking waste asbestos. We’re actually doing a workshop this afternoon to talk about how we’re going to be carrying out this program. We have been, in the past, issuing transport permits, but we hadn’t been charging for them, but now we need to do a better job of tracking where the asbestos is going, and making sure that it’s handled in an appropriate manner. So that’s the first one.
Member Eliason: What if it goes over the county line and it’s out of our jurisdictional…
Mr. Campbell: Basically right now if waste asbestos has been collected in a facility here, the only facility that it can be disposed of right now is Apex Landfill in their industrial waste cell. So any facility in Clark County that’s creating waste asbestos has to have a waste asbestos transport permit and that material has to be taken to Apex Landfill – it’s the only facility available.
Member Eliason: I guess, and I agree with you on that, I guess I’m completely clueless thinking through this, which with our friends just up 93 that’s just over the county line, could an individual get their permit from us and end up at their with no kind of protection whatsoever?
Mr. Campbell: No, because that is a Class III landfill, you’re speaking of Western Elite and that is a Class III landfill – waste asbestos has to go to a Class I landfill that has an industrial cell specifically designed, because once it’s deposited into that cell it has to remain in that particular cell…
Member Eliason: Do we get a receipt somehow…
Mr. Campbell: That’s correct, it’s part of the permit…
Member Christensen: So we issue the permit and then we make sure it’s checked in.
Mr. Campbell: That’s correct and then we work…right now we’re working on the process with Republic Services…
Member Crowley: However, oh I’m sorry.
Mr. Campbell: …because they’re the ones mainly that operate Apex Landfill.
Member Crowley: However it wouldn’t make a lot of economic sense because the transport would be quite a bit more expensive, but someone could go outside of Clark County to a Class I landfill. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to do that, but if you for some reason didn’t want to go to Apex you could go to other landfills…
Mr. Campbell: But if it’s been created within Clark County, been generated, our permit would specify…specifically says it has to go to Apex Landfill.
Member Crowley: Oh…
(Member Member Boutin: left the meeting at 9:45am)
Mr. Campbell: But we just had Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin has two contractors that just came in for their permits to transport waste asbestos from the Mohave Generating Station to Apex.
Member Crowley: And actually it probably would be closer for them to go to a Class I landfill in Arizona.
Mr. Campbell: It would be but the way the permitting process and the way the regulations read they need to go to a permitted Class I landfill within Clark County.
Member Eliason: I guess…
Mr. Campbell: There is a Class I landfill in Laughlin…
Member Crowley: Yeah.
Mr. Campbell: …but it doesn’t have an industrial cell so it has to come this direction.
Member Eliason: And I guess I’m really ignorant. They don’t…what’s the penalty if not they don’t go to a Class I?
Mr. Campbell: Then we’d probably take them through our Notice of Violation process because we can use that process as well, because they’re failing to comply with the conditions of the permit.
Member Fairchild: And would that be a violation of federal regulation as well, most likely?
Member Crowley: Only possibly – if there’s a Class I landfill that’s closer say for the Laughlin folks, they may have had a desire to take it to that closer landfill but what we’re doing is requiring that they bring it up to Apex for some reason, I’m not exactly sure if I understand that, but…
Mr. Campbell: Yeah, it’s because of the way the regulations read it has to go into a Class I landfill with an industrial cell specific for that asbestos, because once asbestos is deposited in a landfill it’s in a specific area that they keep GPS readings on it so it’s not disturbed.
Member Crowley: There are other conditions, too…
Mr. Campbell: Yeah.
Member Crowley: …it has to be covered every day, there are special things that you have do with a cell that holds asbestos and landfills have to be familiar with that.
Mr. Campbell: Yes.
Mr. Savage: And to follow up on Robert’s question, if we were to find that someone was taking this to an unpermitted site, still within our state, we would provide that information to the holder or issuers of that permit with an example you used, would be the state, the EPA, and let them know our findings and let them do what they need to do enforcement-wise. Otherwise we find that within in our community, yes, we would go to our hearing officer for violations of what we would allege.
Vice Chair Strickland: Following up on what Susan was saying about the Laughlin example; if they took this asbestos out and they wanted, I know they’re supposed to go to Apex, but if the…the Arizona facility was closer and it was one that was a type I and it had the ability to hold and keep it in the cell that you’re talking about, can they give us evidence that they took it to a facility that had the appropriate type of cell and it was the appropriate type of landfill?
Mr. Campbell: I would guess they could because as part of their…they would have to…there has to be a survey done on, every time there’s a project – how much the volume of waste asbestos present in the facility – and if they can provide that evidence to us that it was going to an approved facility I don’t believe we could really prevent that from occurring.
Vice Chair Strickland: OK.
Mr. Campbell: But we would need to know, we’re supposed to track where that waste asbestos is going, so…
Vice Chair Strickland: Right, so you could incorporate that into your records to show that we as the health district had done our duty based on the representation but I would think there’d be something formal from that landfill saying this came in on such and such a day, this is what was done with it…
Mr. Campbell: That’s correct. Generally speaking, when it comes to solid waste other states are very reluctant to take our waste and as we tend to be very reluctant to take in solid waste from outside the state…
Vice Chair Strickland: Mm-hmm.
Mr. Campbell: …but if they can provide that evidence, then yeah, that would satisfy the conditions.
Member Crowley: And that’s not a hard thing to do, because there’s a manifesting system…
Mr. Campbell: Yeah, that’s correct.
Member Crowley: …that is well-followed and I guess as part of the permit we could require that a copy of that final manifest get forwarded back to the health district and that would like solidify where it went…
Mr. Campbell: Mm-hmm.
Member Crowley: …when it went there, that they received it, it’s covered, it’s…
Member Eliason: You have the same issues with Mesquite and Utah.
Member Crowley: Yeah, yeah, that’s right.
Mr. Campbell: OK. Moving on, the next one is the new line of business – scrap metal dealers, and we’ve added this one in based on Assembly Bill 233, which requires that people dealing with scrap metal now have to be registered with the Solid Waste Management Authority and so we’re going to be amending our recycling center regulations to incorporate the requirements of Assembly Bill 233 and getting it…so we added this fee in as a new line of business for that…to satisfy those requirements.
The next one we’ve added in the cost of publishing public notices. Whenever we do a public workshop, any time we’re preparing an application for a fee, for a permit we have to have a public workshop and incorporate public comments and we have to post that notice in a number of newspapers, so what we’ve included in this is the cost of publishing those public notices, as part of that general public workshop requirement.
Member Jones: How much is that then, Dennis?
Mr. Savage: A few hundred dollars.
Mr. Campbell: Yes.
Mr. Savage: I’ve seen it upwards of $500…
Mr. Campbell: Yes.
Mr. Savage: …posted in the different newspapers and the different requirements that they have, lettering size, I mean there’s all kinds of different requirements.
Member Jones: So if XYZ Disposal wants to have a permit then they’re going to have that cost.
Mr. Savage: Yes.
Mr. Campbell: Yes.
Mr. Savage: Versus us paying it out of our pocket.
Mr. Campbell: OK, the next item was under waste management plan review, waste tire hauling business…we’ve stricken that one on the plan review side simply because there is no plan review required for a waste hauling business. There’s an application that they have to fill out and it comes under our general operating section, so this was a redundancy that wasn’t necessary, so it was stricken.
Again, the next item down was scrap metal dealers, somebody’s going to be dealing with scrap metals they’re going to have to go through our solid waste plan review section, and so we’ve added in a new line of business on that particular area.
The next item down is any variance or waiver…we’ve added this section in…we’ve been getting some requests recently for waivers of requirements and we did not have under the solid waste plan review side we did not have a line item for charging a fee for that, reviewing those waiver requests. So what we’ve done is just taking the same language that’s under our general plan review section and added it in to solid waste plan review.
(Member Member Boutin: returned and was seated at 9:50am)
And then the last item under solid waste management was a, if somebody was to submit a request for a modification to an existing permit it incorporates scrap metal dealers, again under requirements of Assembly Bill 233, we’ve added in a new line of business for that. Other than that, for the rest of the solid waste and compliance fees, nothing else as follows.
Vice Chair Strickland: OK. Great presentation, very detailed. I know we’ve been asking you questions just as we’re going along getting our comments. Were there any further questions or comments from the Board at this point? This is a public hearing, so let’s open it up for public comment. Any members of the audience or public who wish to come up and ask questions or testify or…No? OK, we’ll go ahead and close that and bring it back to the Board and entertain a motion at this point.
Member Jones: So moved with the adjustment on the TBD items.
Vice Chair Strickland: Yeah, I believe we have the TBD line items for the pool special events, the mattresses, and I think you were going to also designate the per hour things that were being charged versus the flat fee type things.
Mr. Savage: That’s correct.
Vice Chair Strickland: OK. Do we have a second?
Member Christensen: Second.
Steve Minagil: Excuse me, Madam Chair. Just for the record, Mr. Jones your motion…
Scott Weiss: Hello?
Mr. Minagil: …your motion is made to adopt is made following consideration of the business impact statement in the materials, is that correct?
Member Jones: That is correct.
Mr. Minagil: Thank you.
Vice Chair Strickland: Alright, we have that clarification and we also have a second with that clarification. Yes?
Member Christensen: Yes.
Vice Chair Strickland: OK. All in favor say “aye.”
(Member Ross joined the meeting via phone at 9:52am)
Member Ross: Hello?
Board members: Aye.
Mr. Weiss: Councilman Ross, hold on one second.
Vice Chair Strickland: Those opposed? And motion carries. Oh, you have something?
Dr. Sands: No, I just wanted…we have Councilman Ross from the City of Las Vegas phoning in because we have items that require a quorum of elected officials in order to proceed so…
Vice Chair Strickland: OK.
Dr. Sands: …so he’s joining us with this next item.
Vice Chair Strickland: OK, who’s that joining us?
Dr. Sands: Councilman Ross from the City of Las Vegas.
Vice Chair Strickland: OK. Thank you.
A motion was made by Member Jones, following consideration of the business impact statement, to adopt the Southern Nevada Health District Environmental Health Division Permit and Plan Review Fee Schedule with the following changes: TBD line items for pool special events, mattress facilities, and to add a column or otherwise clearly designate whether the charge is hourly, one-time or flat-rate; seconded by Member Christensen and carried unanimously.
The program launched in May and serves as a personal nutritionist for users to plan complete, healthy, balanced meals using a person’s favorite foods. The program also features an interactive report card to show where nutritional deficiencies occur as well as how well a person is doing getting essential vitamins and nutrients, including fat, fiber and overall caloric intake.