Restaurant Inspection Fees
The Health Department’s Environmental Health Division is responsible for assuring the health and safety of more than 5,000 facilities in Multnomah County, the largest food safety program in the state of Oregon. Inspectors are out in the community seven days a week performing approximately 15,000 inspections a year.
The Health Department has not increased inspection fees since 2020, in an effort to support pandemic-impacted businesses. Concurrently, the current fees are inadequate to support the required staff and resources to meet the statutorily required level of regulatory oversight to ensure the public’s health.
Restaurant inspection fee expenditure increases will be subsidized through one-time-only General Fund dollars for one final year for FY 2025. This budget note requests a briefing from the Health Department’s Environmental Health Division before March 31, 2025, to include detail on broad, inclusive community outreach and engagement efforts, including priming business owners on the accumulated fee increases that will need to be assessed in FY 2026 to sustain the restaurant inspection program.