Board of Supervisors passes retail food fee adjustments by a split vote

The time it takes local food regulators to clear hot dogs, nachos, popcorn, and other snack bar sales at Little League games is not reflected in the current costs of those inspections, according to Santa Barbara County Environmental Health Services (EHS).

The department recently pitched an update to the county’s retail food facility fee policy—untouched for about six years—that puts some event hosts in a pickle when it comes to raised permit prices.

“We’re going to raise the rate for our snack bars by almost 200 percent as part of these fee increases here,” said 4th District Supervisor Bob Nelson, one of two supervisors who voted against the fee adjustments.

Increasing annual snack bar inspection fees at seasonal sports events from about $230 to $700 was part of the EHS proposal, which passed 3-2 at the board’s Aug. 26 meeting. Nelson and 1st District Supervisor Roy Lee dissented.

While the update included increases related to various types of retail food inspections including traditional brick-and-mortar restaurants, Nelson said the raised fees for nonprofits and temporary events “just doesn’t sit really well with me.”

“Businesses, they’re used to paying fees, right? … Those ones I have less of an issue with. It’s the ones that are only touching environmental health and food services on a rare basis. Maybe once a year. Maybe every couple of years,” Nelson said at the Aug. 26 meeting. 

Nelson asked staff about a hypothetical application for someone to host a one-time barbecue fundraiser under the current policy and the incoming fee adjustments.

“Right now, if I was to do that, it’s $196,” Nelson said after staff told him the increased fee for a one-time barbecue is set at about $340.

“So, this is proposing raising the fees on barbecues by 75 percent,” Nelson continued. “Is it worth it to us to disincentivize these activities, because that’s what it does.”

Nelson said he’s received calls from multiple nonprofits and other groups with concerns about food retail permit prices.

“I recently had a youth group call me that said, ‘You know, the first 50 sandwiches we were selling goes toward paying off the permit to be able to have the fundraiser.’ I just really struggle with that,” Nelson said. “We have these groups that are doing some public good, and we are pricing them out of it.”

Public Health Director Mouhanad Hammami told the board that the fee adjustments were calculated with EHS staffers’ hourly rates, the staff time regularly spent on each respective type of inspection, and a full cost recovery goal in mind for county services.

“If we exempt or reduce one side then we have to add that somewhere else,” Hammami said.

EHS Deputy Director of Operations Lars Seifert said that restructuring the new fee policy to move some or all nonprofit or temporary permit costs over to for-profit business permit costs would require additional staff research.

“Proposition 26 does limit what we can charge for the for-profit costs. So, we basically cannot exceed the cost of the service that we are providing,” Seifert said. “If you exempted nonprofits all together, … you would be looking at somewhere between $125,000 and $150,000 likely that we would have to make up somewhere else.”