The Multnomah County Board of Commissioners was briefed Thursday, Oct. 19, by Interim Public Health Director Andrea Hamberg and Interim Environmental Health Director Jeff Martin on a resolution to increase health inspection fees by 6% on facilities like restaurants, food trucks, daycare centers, schools, pools and spas.
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.
Martin explained that over the course of a year, an inspector sees about 650 violations. Those can include instances of facilities operating without hot water or any water at all, hand-washing violations, and food that reaches unsafe temperatures because it’s left out too long. The inspections team also conducts investigations of foodborne illnesses as an additional manner of protecting community members.
Beginning in 2015, the Environmental Health program met with the County’s Food Service Advisory Committee, inspectors and members of the public to find out what resources operators and inspectors needed to perform high-quality inspections. The inspectors focus on educating operators to the safest food handling and other practices, and work with them to overcome language and other barriers to compliance.
“We were reliant on too many on-call employees doing this work, so we made an agreement to do a multi-year, phased approach of raising fees to be able to hire full-time inspectors to perform this work, and then to continue having a small fee increase every year to ensure we were able to keep those employees,” Martin said.
But as the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically limited and even shut down many restaurants, pools and hotels, the County held fees at the same amount to limit the financial hit on businesses. In the four fiscal years since, the Board used County General Fund dollars to cover increased program costs. The Board also provided more than $5 million in small business grants directly to local restaurants and food trucks to help offset the cost of restrictions from COVID-19.
But as businesses continue to recover and the number of license applications in the County begins growing for the first time since 2020, the Department proposed a staggered fee increase to return the inspection program to a self-sustaining one, shared Martin.
Martin said the program currently relies on $684,557 from the County’s General Fund, which covers about two-thirds of the costs of Environmental Health’s Fiscal Year 2024 program. With the 6% fee increase, the program anticipates collecting about $336,000 more.
“We have been fee-supported prior to the pandemic, and our intent is to get back on that model so we’re not reliant on General Funds to ensure that the operations of our program can continue.” Most facilities, Martin said, would see increases anywhere from $30 to $70 for the largest facilities that take the most time to inspect. The amount a facility has to pay is based on the number of seats, and the fee increase varies per facility.
Chair Jessica Vega Pederson noted that the 6% increase is lower than the post-COVID-19 fee increases in neighboring jurisdictions, including Clackamas County, which recently raised fees by an average of 15%. Washington County has similarly raised fees recently in a range of 6% to 16%, with a 22% increase for smaller restaurants with less than 15 seats.
Rachel Clark, owner of Goose Hollow Inn and a member of the Food Service Advisory Committee, testified to provide a restaurant’s viewpoint. The advisory committee worked with the Environmental Health team to help craft the proposed fee increase, she said. Clark spoke to the troubles restaurants in the downtown core continue to experience, but also expressed hope and optimism that Portland is recovering.
“We rely on the restaurant inspections program to give us valuable feedback and assistance in figuring out what to do to keep everyone safe in consuming their food and drinks and beverages,” said Clark, “and the inspection program relies on us for fees.”
All the commissioners said they recognized both the need for robust inspection services and the considerable challenges that businesses owners have faced over the past three years. However, the Board was split on whether business owners should resume paying a portion of the inspection fees, or the County should continue using General Fund dollars to pay for the program. Ultimately, the Board rejected increasing health inspection fees in a 2 to 3 vote.
“As a small business owner for over 30 years, I understand the challenges that you all (small business owners) are faced with, and how important our restaurants are to not just the core downtown, but out here in east Multnomah County as well” said Commissioner Lori Stegmann, who voted against the resolution.
“The question here is not about foodborne illnesses, but how we're paying for the program,” said Commissioner Sharon Meieran, who also voted against the resolution, “and whether we’re figuring out a way to take an amount of funds for this year, potentially for another year or two, from a source at the County. Or are we taking this money off the backs of the small business owners who are just starting to recover, who have been traumatized for the past few years, and are we considering the impact of increasing these fees on these owners in our community?”
There also was a call from all the commissioners for more proactive community outreach by the Environmental Health program to facilities about fee increases.
If there's been a fee increase, “it is communicated at the time when there's been a fee increase,” said Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards. “There's always opportunity for feedback, but it's more of a back-ended process after… the fee has been increased.”
Earlier in the meeting, Chair Vega Pederson instructed the Environmental Health team to engage in more community outreach, directing them to “re-engage with local restaurant owners and community members to further discuss the impacts on future plans for cost recovery. I look forward to making sure the community is deeply involved in our response moving forward.”
Commissioner Brim-Edwards, who voted against the resolution, thanked the inspections team for always striving to work with facilities who are found not in compliance after an inspection and to find a way to immediately make corrections so that both the public’s health is protected and businesses can continue to operate.
“Restaurants are vital. A thriving food scene is vital for our region. The food inspection program is also vital for that thriving food scene,” said Commissioner Susheela Jayapal, who voted in favor of the resolution. “If we did not have a strong and vibrant food inspection program, I'd argue we would not have a strong and vital thriving food scene.”
Commissioner Jayapal also pointed out that since the commissioners are stewards of the County’s General Fund, they have a responsibility to make sure that programs can be self-sustaining.
“We care deeply about our restaurant industry and about a full and equitable recovery for these businesses,” said Chair Vega Pederson, who also voted for the resolution. “The fact that we’re meeting our restaurant and cart owners halfway by continuing to spend General Fund dollars through 2026 to protect and safety through a top-notch, mandated, fee-supported program is significant.”