Health board proposes new fees for food vendors

EPHRATA — The Grant County Health District is proposing new fees on for-profit businesses that need temporary permits to cook and sell food in venues like the county fair.

According to Todd Phillips, the district’s environmental health manager, the new fees will allow district health inspectors to scale back the number of visits they make to temporary, for-profit concessions by covering such facilities with a single permit for the entire year rather than requiring individual permits for each event.

“We want to put more resources into permanent food establishments,” Phillips told board members Wednesday evening.

Currently, non-profits are covered by such annual permits.

The new annual fees would be $202 for an operation cooking and serving high-risk foods (such as uncooked meat), $142 for moderate risk foods (such as fully pre-cooked meats), and $82 low risk foods (that require little preparation or handling) — double the current existing fees for non-profits.

The health district has identified seven locations — individual places “where commercial food organizations utilize permanent structures to serve food for multiple temporary food events.” Most of them are located at the Grant County Fairgrounds and the Gorge, Phillips said.

Right now, the county inspects each for-profit eatery for each event, meaning that many receive far more health district attention than some actual restaurants.

County health officials also addressed concerns from the public over the need for permits for inflatable water slides at public events.

According to Theresa Adkinson, the state legislature has unanimously passed a measure exempting water slides from needing health permits, and the measure is sitting on Gov. Jay Inslee’s desk awaiting his signature.

“If the governor doesn’t sign it, we will have to decide how to proceed,” Adkinson said, noting that the county will likely draft some regulations and have them in place by the end of May.

However, Adkinson noted, if Inslee signs the measure, then permits for water slides will be “a non-issue.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.