What's at stake?
A report by the Fresno County Civil Grand Jury found that the current state of the Public Health’s Environmental Health Division negatively impacts food inspectors and their ability to efficiently inspect the growing number of restaurants in Fresno, despite the number of food inspectors remaining the same since 1990.
Fresno County “cannot always” ensure food safety in local restaurants.
That was the conclusion of the Fresno County grand jury in a new report that revealed problems with the software used by food inspectors that caused numerous issues and allowed restaurants to operate without proper certifications or permits.
“Several areas of concern surfaced: a lack of violation enforcement; inconsistency in code enforcement; a failure to collect fees for permits and re-inspections; facilities operating without a current permit; and facilities lacking a Food Safety Certification or Food Handler Card compliance,” the Fresno County grand jury report stated.
The Fresno County grand jury also concluded that the Fresno County Department of Public Health’s Environmental Health Division restaurant inspection team is understaffed, underpaid and said permit and inspection fees don’t cover the county’s costs.
Fresno County responded to the concerns raised in the report, outlining areas of improvement as well as future plans:
- A 23% salary increase for all inspectors by July 2025.
- Inspectors can park for free in downtown as of Spring of 2023
- Inspectors are now receiving more affordable healthcare plans as of January of this year
- Updates to existing fees and new fees will be proposed and presented to the Fresno County Board of Supervisors in the fall
- Improvements to visibility and navigation to the EHD’s website that make finding inspections easier
“Food safety is a priority for Fresno County’s Department of Public Health (DPH) and the goal is to support local businesses while ensuring public safety,” said Sonja Dosti, the communications director for the county, in a news release.
Updates to the AMANDA software that inspectors use are also expected to be released this fall, according to Sonia Brar, a county public health communication officer.
Problems with the AMANDA inspection software
The report detailed the AMANDA system’s issues as follows:
- The software only works with a WiFi connection and not cellular data. Often, the software does not load on the tablets used by EHD inspectors, prompting them to complete inspection reports at a later time instead of in real time.
- This also causes inspectors to have to use their own phones as WiFi hotspots in order to utilize the inspection software.
- Inspectors were told the software would have a calendar feature and a calendar tickler system to help them organize and notify them when restaurants were due for inspections. No such features exist yet.
- For at least a year after the software was introduced, the software did not generate bills for annual permit fees, leading to fees going unpaid. When this was fixed, the software began to double-bill restaurants and completely stopped billing for re-inspections.
- When the system began double-billing restaurants, fees were forgiven in order to make up for the system’s mistakes. As a result, real fees were forgiven at a great cost to the EHD.
California law requires restaurants have hard copies of their latest inspection reports available for consumers to request. Since the transition from paper reports to the software in 2020, restaurants that don’t have in-house printers are given the extra step of printing out the report, a step that is further confounded if the report is sent to a corporate office and not the restaurant.
“Completing the inspection form on the software system takes up to twice the time it takes to complete a handwritten report,” the grand jury reported.
The stagnation of food inspectors in Fresno
The EHD employs 75 staff members, of which only 22 are inspectors. The number of food inspectors in Fresno County has remained unchanged since 1990, according to the report.
While Fresno’s population and the number of restaurants continue to increase every year, so do the number of facilities that inspectors are responsible for inspecting.
Facilities that fall under the responsibility of the EHD’s inspectors include public pools, water wells, and above and below ground tanks. In total, inspectors are currently tasked with inspecting over 11,000 facilities on a regular basis. This number does not include mobile food units.
Though there is no set quota, EHD inspectors are expected to visit 4 to 5 facilities daily and to inspect food facilities in their respective census area at least four times a year.
The committee says that while these expectations are not unreasonable, the sheer number of facilities that a small number of inspectors are responsible for is overwhelming.
“An inspector would have to inspect 6.2 restaurant facilities each work day of the year (including holidays and no time off or vacation), to do the required four inspections a year,” the committee wrote.
“That expectation is unrealistic based on the current number of EHD inspectors.”
Other responsibilities that fall under the inspectors’ workload include:
- Reviewing blueprints for new restaurants
- Reviewing additional expansions to existing restaurants
- Reviewing remodeling done to restaurant facilities
- Inspecting mobile food units
- Inspecting cottage food industry facilities
- Regulating unpermitted food vendors
Due to the myriad of responsibilities and high number of facilities they are responsible for inspecting, the committee found that inspectors have not always been able to inspect restaurants four times a year.
Fresno County grand jury recommendations
The grand jury closed its report by recommending the following changes and improvements within 180 days of the report’s release to the Fresno County Board of Supervisors and the Director of the Environmental Health Division:
- Create a plan to have the software meet the needs of inspectors and implement the plan as soon as financially feasible.
- Implement a staffing plan to be able to meet the department’s mission to inspect restaurants at least 4 times a year.
- Sstudy salaries in comparable counties and commit to implementing competitive salaries for inspectors.
- Inspectors should be tasked with only inspecting food facilities, including mobile food units and cottage food facilities and not pools, water wells, etc.
- Create a fee structure that allows the EHD to support itself.
- Collect existing outstanding permit/re-inspection fees and enforce violations on restaurants.
- Implement a method to reduce subjectivity in inspections and increase consistency.
- Improve the EHD’s website to make finding inspection information online easier and more user-friendly.
- Make complete food inspection reports readily available and updated in a timely and regular manner on the website.
- Implement a policy so that inspectors are able to use county vehicles every day instead of on a rotating schedule.
