The Snohomish County Board of Health passed Ordinance 23-01 approving the Environmental Health (EH) fee schedule in October 2023, which took effect November 1, 2023. As presented at the time, autumn is an undesirable time to be presenting fee adjustments for two reasons; first, it is too late to include the additional revenue in the budget process, and second, it can get confused with the budget process as it is traveling through the Executive’s Office and County Council. As such, it is preferable to review and adjust the fee schedule in the spring of each year, before the budget process has begun, in order to include the approved revenue in the budget for the following year. This briefing outlines a proposal for a fee adjustment that would take effect on November 1, 2024.
It was presented last fall that EH would do a more in-depth fee study in early 2024 to more accurately determine the cost recovery of the current fee schedule. A thorough examination has not yet been performed because the financial information for 2023 remains incomplete. It is still the division’s intent to do an examination of the data as soon as adequate information is available. In the meanwhile, staff in EH have performed an extensive study of the process that other local health jurisdictions undergo when they update their fees and several good ideas were identified as part of that process. Some of these ideas will require code changes, and therefore proposals will be incorporated as part of the code update later in the process. The Board will be briefed at that time.
In the absence of a thorough fee study, it is still important to adjust fees to cover inevitable cost increases. For the past several years, the Environmental Health division has proposed adjustments to the fee schedule to cover the cost-of-living increases of EH staff. Negotiations with all applicable unions for potential cost-of-living increases have not concluded for this contract round, therefore the exact percentage the adjustment would need to cover is still unknown. In addition, the pro forma budget has not yet been released. This budget informs the department how much it will be charged for services provided by other departments, such as IT, Fleet and Facilities, and the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. Without a full understanding of these expenses, it is impossible to know exactly how much EH fees would need to increase in order to maintain existing resources.
Unfortunately, this information may not be fully understood in time to inform a fee adjustment approval by the Board of Health. Therefore, this proposal includes an across-the-board 5% increase over all fees. 5% is believed to be within the realm of reasonable to cover a staff cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), and possibly also a portion of the EH pro forma. Additionally, select food safety fees exceed the 5% in order to fund the two permit technician positions that were hired in late 2023 as temporary project positions. These positions have already proven valuable and are resulting in an increased level of customer service and greater customer experience. The increases to the food safety fees have been selected in order to spread the cost over the greatest number of fee payors and reduce the burden as much as possible. It should also be noted that all fees were increased in 2020 except the food safety fees to give greater relief to those businesses for the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It's important for the Board to make fee adjustments at this point in the year in order for the revenue increase to be included in the budget. If it is approved after the budget process, the revenue will not be included, nor will any allowance for associated expenses. However, it is also recognized that as more information comes to the department through the budget process, data may show the proposed fee increase to be insufficient to cover costs. If this happens, staff will propose another adjustment to compensate. In the meantime, should the Board be amenable to this proposal, staff will present a complete ordinance to the Board of Health in April for action.
This proposed fee increase would take effect November 1, 2024.