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WC CWF Health District Board Minutes - 08/22/2008WICHITA FALLS - WICHITA COUNTY PUBLIC HEALTH BOARD MINUTES August 22, 2008 Wichita Falls - Wichita County Public Health District 1700 Third Street - Parker Conference Room Wichita Falls, Texas MEMBERS PRESENT: Richard Sutton, M.D, Chair Bryan Press, Vice -Chair Kathy Sultemeier, D.V.M., Secretary David Carlston, Ph. D. Tracy Hill, D.D.S. Lauren Jansen, R.N.C. Robin Moreno, M.T. Lou Franklin Amy Cone Ahmed Mattar, M.D. Matt Benoit Woodrow "Woody" Gossom Dorothy Roberts -Burns Michael Smith Board Members ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ Director of Health Assistant Director of Health Health Authority Assistant City Manager County Judge City Councilor ■ I. CALL TO ORDER & INTRODUCTIONS Chair Dr. Sutton called the Board of Health meeting to order at 12:00 pm after a quorum of members was obtained. Introductions were made at this time. II. APPROVAL OF APRIL 2008 MEETING MINUTES & EXCUSED ABSENCES Chair Dr. Sutton noted a meeting was in June but no business was conducted due to lack of a quorum. He called for the review and approval of minutes from the last meeting held on April 25, 2008. Dr. Hill introduced a motion to approve the minutes as presented and Ms. Moreno seconded the motion. Motion passed unanimously. All members were in attendance. III. HEALTH AUTHORITY APPOINTMENT Lou Franklin introduced Dr. Ahmed Mattar as the new Director for the Family Health Center. She explained the Health District has a contract with the Family Health Center to provide services as our Health Authority and Medical Director in which a recommendation is needed from the Board to appoint him as the Health Authority. Historically, whoever is the Medical Director of the Family Health Center has always been our Health Authority and we would like to continue that relationship. Page 1 of 4 Dr. Sutton asked for a motion to approve the appointment of Dr. Mattar as the Health Authority. Dr. Sultemeier introduced a motion of approval and Mr. Press seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously. IV. FOOD ESTABLISHMENT SCORE POSTING Lou Franklin advised the food establishment score posting is an ongoing issue that was brought before the Board in April of last year with the Board's recommendation to move forward with the issue. The newspaper had done an open records request and made partial postings of some restaurants they felt needed to be put in the paper some had done well and other poorly. Other restaurants that scored better than those posted were upset due to not being mentioned. Ms. Franklin suggested that this would be an appropriate time to go forward with this project. She met with the Restaurant Association last week and they are in agreement that we need to go forward with score postings. Many members on the Board then are not here now and we would like to bring our current Board up to date and solicit any additional comments and a recommendation to proceed. Previously the Board did recommend that the entire report be posted, not just the score, so the inspection report, including the score, could be easily understood. The Board had asked a year ago for research on whether it would be good practice to post a score at the establishment or post a numerical or alphabetical score outside the establishment. Fernando Tezaguic, General Environmental Administrator for the Health Department, presented his research on other cities posting scores. He discussed issues of concern with posting only the inspection score, including that it can be misleading without documentation to show why demerits reduced the score. The reports are typically one page in length and contain a list of twenty -six items to score as compliant, incompliance, out of compliance, not observed or corrected on the spot. Mr. Press with the Restaurant Association disapproved of the newspaper postings and agreed with the city website posting of the report in its entirety; he expressed his concern that the scores were meaningless without the details and information to go along with the score. Lou Franklin advised the information will be posted on the city website making it readily accessible to the public and the newspaper. The details of electronically posting the information still need to be worked out. The next phase in the process is to seek the Board's recommendation and then the information will be included in a memo to the City Council. Dr. Sutton asked for a motion to either recommend or not recommend the posting scores in their entirety on the city website. Mr. Press introduced a motion to recommend that the city post health scores in their entirety. Dr. Hill seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously. V. FERAL CAT ORDINANCE The final draft copy of the modified animal ordinance to include feral cats was presented to the Board for review. Susan Morris, Animal Control Administrator for the Health Department, explained that the Council asked that an ordinance regulating feral cats be developed, and in order to do that a substantial change of the current ordinance would have to be accomplished to include feral cats. Ms. Morris reviewed the various sections of the ordinance that would have to be changed, including the addition of the following definitions: animal foster home, animal foster home caregiver, cat colony location, ear tipping, feral cat, feral cat caregiver, fostered animal, member cat, microchip, neighboring land, and registered cat colony. She also discussed licensing requirements, including that a license will not be required for member cats or fostered animals but would be required for a feral cat caregiver to register a cat colony. A separate fee schedule would be setup and the City Council would approve or disapprove the fees. The requirements would be the application for the Page 2 of 4 permit and within 60 days of the application each animal would be trapped, neutered, micro chipped and ear tipped. All records would be maintained by the care giver and the owner of the property has to receive permission of the owners of the neighboring lands. Dr. Sultemeier requested that the vaccination and license requirement that was changed be changed to reflect the generally accepted practice of vaccination at 12 to 16 weeks. Dr. Sutton welcomed Ms. Terri Russell of Miss Fannie's Feline & Canine Friends, a non - profit organization she founded a year and a half ago. Ms. Russell provided information regarding her organization, including how she became involved in taking care of cats and how she contacted Alley Cat Allies, veterinarians, and people in the community to discuss various issues associated with feral cats. She also discussed that she approached Ms. Morris, Ms. Franklin, Councilor Smith and Councilor Elmore during the last year to propose having a feral cat program within the city. She also said she monitors 30 colonies with over 100 cats. Mr. Russell discussed her issues and concerns with the proposed modifications to the existing ordinance, including that the micro - chipping requirement would be an additional monetary burden. She currently has many expenses, including food, vaccinations, leukemia vaccine, testing; she stated that caring for the cats is very expensive and she personally spent over $14,000 in the last year. She was concerned that the micro - chipping would add significantly to those expenses and that ear tipping would be an easy form of identification that would not be as expensive. Ms. Franklin responded by stating that it is important to have an effective way to identify the cat so that the records for that specific animal, including vaccination information, could be located. The caregiver would be responsible for maintaining those records. Ms. Russell spoke of a second concern regarding the proposed fee associated with registering a feral cat colony. She spoke about cats that may not be within a residential section, such as those she feeds behind restaurants and in abandoned lots and how it would be difficult to track down owners of the restaurants or lots to request approval for the colony. She questioned where the money from the fees would go and whether the proposed restrictions and fees would make people continue what they are doing now, without requesting a permit, and force them to sneak around to avoid the fees and stipulations. She expressed the need to make it a common sense program that abides by the law and also had concerns for cats who are not being cared for. Dr. Sutton asked Ms. Morris if she would like to respond to the issues that were raised. Ms. Morris replied that the actual cost of micro chip is only a couple of dollars and if bought directly from the factory then it does not have to be installed by a veterinarian. Some companies do also require yearly registration. She stated that the goal of the Health District is not to make additional money for the program, but to try to cover the costs associated with running the program and reminded the Board that the state allows us to charge licensing and permitting fees. She clarified that local fees, which can be minimal, are set by the City Council. She also stated that the program will cost the city money if implemented: it will cost time and man power, gas in trucks and things like traps since we lend these out. We are not requiring the licensing and tagging of each cat, but asking for each colony up to 20 cats to be permitted which is much cheaper then paying $7 per animal. The job of a non - profit is to raise money and apply for grants. There are grants out there now that pay for free spaying and neutering or they can go to a low cost clinic for minimal cost and sometimes free. Ms. Morris also stated that she was unsure how cats would be appropriately tracked other than micro chipping for identification and maintenance of vaccine records. This ordinance was basically written for the neighbor that has a feral cat colony in their backyard and wants to be legal with it. Ms. Franklin discussed her search on Municode, an electronic registry of ordinances for cities within the State of Texas, which included looking at each ordinance for cities that had feral cat regulations. The proposed amendments to our current ordinance to regulate feral cats were reviewed by the city legal staff. Ms. Franklin also stated that we tried to meet the needs of citizens, including those who wanted feral cats to be included and those who many not like cats. The goal of the Health Department is to be fair. Ms. Franklin advised that the Board could either make a recommendation Page 3 of 4 to move forward so that the proposal goes to City Council or to not move forward and table the issue. Dr. Sutton requested to postpone action until the next meeting so that members could look over the information. She also requested that Ms. Russell submit her objections in writing to Ms. Franklin and Ms. Morris with sufficient time for them to prepare a response. Dr. Sultemeier also asked Ms. Russell to include suggestions on how to do things, how we could abide by the law, how we could charge a fee and what would be reasonable. Dr. Sutton asked for a motion to table until the next Board meeting. The motion was moved by Dr. Sultemeier and seconded by Dr. Carlston. Motion carried unanimously. VI. NEXT MEETING DATE October 24, 2008. VII. ADJOURN Dr. Richard Sutton requested a motion to adjourn. The motion was made by Dr. David Carlston and seconded by Bryan Press. The motion carried and the meeting was adjourned at 1:30 p.m. Richard Sutton, M.D., Chair, Bryan Press, Vice Chair, or Kathy Sultemeier, D.V.M. Secretary Public Health Board CITY CI 4RK'S OFFICE Date By Tim i� Page 4 of 4