In the Program Policy Committee meeting on March 18, this topic was presented and discussed as an action item. During discussions, the committee recommended that additional information be provided to the Board regarding budget impact, which is now included in paragraph five below. Subsequently, staff recommended briefing the Administration and Executive Committees at their March meetings before bringing it back through committee as an action item in April.
The Environmental Health director would like to recognize that it is typically unusual to request changes in structure outside of the annual budget process. Due to COVID activities, efforts to fully understand and improve the division structure were not possible in the fall of 2020 in time for the 2021 budget cycle. Following removal from COVID activities, the division director identified certain inefficiencies and inconsistencies. In order for staff to effectively move forward with planning efforts for the future, decisions must be made regarding the structure of the division. The division will benefit from these decisions being made prior to the 2022 budget cycle. This staff report is being presented as a briefing for the purposes of gathering feedback from the Board of Health. The topic will be brought forward to all committees in April and to the full Board at its May meeting.
The EH director is requesting the Board of Health authorize the following three changes to the EH division structure:
- Restructure the Land Use and Safe Environments program into two separate programs, the Land Use program and the Safe Environments program.
- Place solid waste activities under the Safe Environments program, and offer specialty pay to an EHS II to lead solid waste and safe environments activities.
- Reassign the health educator position to report directly to the assistant director in order to serve the division as a whole, rather than just the Food Safety program.
An unknown number of years back, the Environmental Health Division was reorganized to combine the Land Use and Safe Environments programs into a single program – Land Use and Safe Environments. The EH director and assistant director have reassessed this move, and have decided it is not advantageous to the Health District for a few key reasons.
First, the projects and tasks contained within the Land Use and Safe Environments program are sufficiently different that cross-training and cross-utilizing staff is not efficient. Land Use requires a very detailed and in-depth knowledge base about complex liquid waste and drinking water systems. Safe Environments involves broad knowledge of several different types of work places, including pools, schools, and pollution prevention. It has been demonstrated through the past few years that staff members cannot effectively learn and be proficient in all of these areas, and that some specialization results in better customer service and more knowledgeable staff.
Similarly, the leadership in each of these programs is not overlapping in decision-making. The two programs are being effectively supervised separately. Attempting to combine them more effectively would require that many decisions involving the programs be made by committee, removing any individual autonomy from the supervisors. This would slow progress. Again, it seems evident that allowing the supervisors some discretion over the individual programs will provide better and faster service to our community.
As part of this move, the solid waste activities, which have been shared up until now, would reside in the Safe Environments program. Solid waste activities are well funded; however, they took a back seat in 2020 as they were not deemed as urgently essential as other Environmental Health activities, and the budget for solid waste showed a surplus at the end of the year. EH would like to place additional emphasis on these activities in 2021, and as such, part of this proposal would be to offer EHS III specialty pay to a staff member to lead these efforts and redesign and reinitiate solid waste activities. The collective bargaining agreement for environmental health specialist staff has a provision for EHS III specialty pay, which equates to a 10% wage increase for durations longer than six months. In this case, that would result in a budget impact of $4,946.40 to $6,629.40 (wages are 2020 rates), depending on the current step level of the EHS II selected.
As part of the restructuring, EH leadership would like to reassign the EH health educator to report directly to the EH assistant director. Currently, EH has one health educator and one health education delivery specialist that are part of the Food Safety program in reporting structure. The health education delivery specialist position is part time (10 hours per week) and focuses almost exclusively on English/Spanish translations and interpretations. That position is most needed in the Food Safety program, and would remain in its current place in the structure. The health educator position is a .5 FTE position, and has a broader focus. This position could be useful to all the programs in EH, and could be of great assistance going forward as the division focuses more on stakeholder outreach and public engagement. Placing this position directly under the EH assistant director allows for all the EH programs to utilize that resource equally.
This proposal has a limited budget impact. The Land Use and Safe Environments programs would retain funds they currently use with no changes in staffing. The EHS III specialty pay offered to a Safe Environments employee to perform solid waste activities would come out of the solid waste budget, which currently has a surplus from 2020. As stated above, the impact would be less than $7,000 to offer EHS III specialty pay through 2021. The health educator’s time would be charged to the program worked on, similar to how it’s currently handled.