Environmental Health proposes multi‑year fee modernization, warns general fund currently subsidizes inspections

Jerry Oster, director of Environmental Health, presented a proposal to modernize Chapter 7 (the department fee schedule) that the department says is 13 years old and contains outdated line items. Oster asked the board to authorize a process to: reclassify some facilities to risk‑based categories (low/medium/high risk instead of seat counts for restaurants), remove laboratory and public‑water items the county no longer performs, define environmental drilling and other new activities (e.g., lithium‑related permitting), and adopt a burdened hourly rate that includes vehicles, IT, county indirect costs and travel time.