By Diana Lambert, The Sacramento Bee, Calif. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Sep. 15--Faced with a huge budget deficit and the need to hire more inspectors, Sacramento County has cracked down on delinquent health permit fees.
During the past two months, the county's Environmental Management Department has given 188 stores, restaurants and nonprofit organizations 72-hour notices to pay the fees or be shut down.
The effort, dubbed 'Pay or Close,' has brought in $104,000 to the Food Protection Program, which issues health permits and inspects businesses and nonprofits that handle food. Each of the 188 establishments issued the citations has paid. One was closed for four days before the money was paid.
An additional 141 businesses are still behind in payments. But department officials said these are mobile businesses that aren't easy to locate and cite.
The citations have nothing to do with businesses' health inspections but are given solely on the basis of whether they've paid their annual licensing fees.
County businesses are billed on the anniversary of the day they first take out a permit, so the Pay or Close effort is continuous, said June Livingston, Environmental Management Department spokeswoman.
The fees range from $36 for a temporary facility selling prepackaged foods to $667 annually for a combined restaurant and bar. If the money is not paid, a $75 late fee is assessed after 30 days, and a Pay or Close notice is issued after 60 days.
Environmental Health Division Chief Richard Sanchez said that 98 percent of food facilities operators pay their permits on time. It's the 2 percent the department has now decided it can't afford to ignore.
'What we decided was that the facilities that were not paying for the fees were being subsidized by the facilities paying for the fees,' Sanchez said. 'So we decided to give them notice that we're not paying their fees.'
Sanchez says the department relies on the payments to function. The Food Protection Program has a $3.2 million budget, none of which comes from general funds or taxes. Nor is there any hope the county will contribute in the near future. During the summer, the Board of Supervisors was forced to make nearly $80 million in cuts to balance the budget.
'The funds allow the department to make regular inspections of the 5,500 sites in the county that sell or give away food,' Sanchez said.
The Pay or Close program was implemented at the same time the Food Protection Program is adding six more inspectors, bringing total positions to 18. The inspectors split their time between inspecting food facilities and swimming pools.
The Pay or Close program began in July. Some businesses and nonprofits say they now are scrambling to pay fees that sometimes run back three years.
A folded piece of yellow paper wedged in the aluminum door of the portable that houses the Elk Grove Food Bank might have gone unnoticed last week had it not been for the word 'important' scrawled across it.
Joe Ochoa, a food bank employee, was startled by the message -- the food bank had 72 hours to pay $506 in delinquent health permit fees or be shut down.
Food bank officials said they were surprised to find they owed the money, which included two years of health permit payments and a $75 late fee. They said they'd never seen previous notices that they owed the money.
Sanchez said the permits are required by state law, but the county charges lower rates for nonprofit groups than businesses.
'We offer the same level of service to our nonprofits. Homeless people deserve the same quality of food products that everyone does in the county,' Sanchez said.
One business owner who received a citation complained about the brief time given to pay back the money.
'Seventy-two hours for the small-business person is not enough time,' said Gerald Polle, part-owner of Red Carpet Catering on Franklin Boulevard. His business was shut down for four days over the Labor Day weekend before he could pay his $1,379 bill.
Other counties have their own versions of Pay or Close. San Joaquin County slams businesses with steep penalties for late payments. Permit fees are due 30 days after filing and delinquent after 60 days. That delinquency means a 100 percent penalty.
'The reason it's that large is historically it's better to have one large penalty than to give smaller fees and have people not pay,' said Laurie Cotulla, program manager.
If San Joaquin business owners haven't paid 30 days after the penalty is assessed, a hand-delivered notice informs them they have 48 hours to pay or be shut down.
Placer County has yet to implement such measures, issuing instead a series of late notices that eventually is referred to revenue services for collection.
Richard Brown, the county's supervising environmental health specialist, said that most of Placer's 1,300 food facilities pay on time. The fees cover 75 percent of the department's budget.
'I've not noticed that it's such a huge problem that we've had to knock on doors to pay the electric bill,' said Brown.
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(c) 2003, The Sacramento Bee, Calif. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
