Fishers board votes to adopt risk-based restaurant permits, raise select fees and reinspection penalties

The Fishers Health Department Board voted Thursday to recommend a shift to a risk-based fee model for restaurant permits, to separate the Indiana coroner continuing-education surcharge from the death-certificate fee, and to raise several permit and reinspection penalties before forwarding the proposals to Fishers City Council.

The board approved a motion to adopt the risk-based permitting framework, which aligns permit levels with the FDA Food Code risk categories and ties inspection cadence to those levels. Monica, a department staff member who presented the proposals, said the model ‘‘correlates with how much work we put in and how much oversight we have to have and how much risk it carries to the public.’’

Under the recommended model, most Fishers restaurants would move to lower risk levels if they sustain an A-grade history; new or lower-performing operations would be placed at higher risk levels and face higher permit fees. Monica showed example scenarios in which a well-performing, 31-employee…