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State College Board of Health reviews 2024 activity, proposes 2025 work plan
Summary
The State College Board of Health reported on 2024 inspections and enforcement activity, described a new operations tracking system called IWork, and previewed a 2025 calendar of speaker topics including a July presentation from the Department of Agriculture.
Jacqueline Gardner, chair of the State College Board of Health, told Borough Council on June 9 that the board met three times in 2024 and reviewed the borough’s ordinance enforcement and public health activity.
Gardner said ordinance and public health staff conducted 410 food safety inspections in 2024 and handled more than 1,200 ordinance-enforcement cases. “This has made staff’s processes more efficient and has made communication with the public and our licensees much easier and more interactive,” Gardner said, describing a new operations program called IWork that the department implemented last year.
The board plans to use IWork to track daily activities including ordinance enforcement, food-safety inspections, billing and licensing. Gardner said the system includes a public-facing component; when a council member asked where the tracker could be accessed, she replied it is on the ordinance-enforcement website and that she could follow up with a precise link.
Gardner and member Brian O’Donnell also described the board’s participation in the 2024 Mount Nittany Community Health Needs Assessment Program, a regional partnership that gathered surveys and convened local public-health partners to identify community health priorities.
For 2025, board and staff work will include reviewing borough ordinances related to peddling, soliciting and temporary-event licensing; the board intends to submit recommended ordinance changes to the Board of Health and Borough Council. Gardner said the board unanimously supported adding informational speakers to the final 15–20 minutes of future board meetings; she said speakers scheduled for upcoming meetings include a representative from the Department of Agriculture to discuss food inspection procedures in July 2025.
Gardner closed by noting the board’s outreach activities in 2024, including participation in the annual Line Bash Community Resource Fair and an event with Penn State University.
Council members thanked Gardner for the report and asked follow-up questions about access to IWork and the timing of the Department of Agriculture presentation. Gardner said she would provide more precise information on where IWork is publicly accessible.
