Staff still short 7 workers despite recent hirings

You won’t hear Pima County official Sharon Browning whining about the downturn in the economy.

After more than a year fighting a losing battle of attrition among county employees best known for conducting restaurant and swimming pool inspections, she filled nine vacancies in January.

“I think what’s changed is that the (current) economy has people looking for jobs that provide good medical insurance and benefits that they can get with a government job, as opposed to just looking for the highest salary,” said Browning, program manager for the Pima County Consumer Health and Safety unit.

Despite the hiring bonanza, Browning remains seven workers short of the 28 people budgeted for the unit, which is charged with inspecting more than 10,000 licensed restaurants, bars, grocery stores, trailer parks, schools and swimming pools. In addition to scheduled inspections, the unit also responds to more than 100,000 calls a year related to complaints, outbreaks, recalls and other health-related emergencies. (see accompanying story).

The backlog of work her staff has to catch up on can be readily seen in one duty her sanitarians perform – restaurant inspections.

State statutes mandate that counties conduct unannounced inspections of restaurants every six months.

Using the 45 locally owned restaurants that are members of the Tucson Originals as a random sampling reveals that 25 of them haven’t been inspected in the past six months and 10 more have gone at least a year without an inspection.

Thousands of licensed food establishments operate in the county, many with multiple licenses.

“I don’t feel that there is any cause for public concern, but hopefully the public will understand all the things public sanitarians do and the importance of providing the proper resources,” said Ben Stepleton, program manager for Food Safety and Environmental Services for the Arizona Office of Environmental Health, which oversees the county health departments.

Browning, whose sole job would be overseeing the division were it fully staffed, has since 2005 worn three hats: manager, supervisor and sanitarian.

A full staff would include Browning, three supervisors, 20 sanitarians and four sanitarian assistants. Right now she has no supervisors and is short three sanitarians and one assistant.

Like an overwhelmed emergency room at a hospital, the county applies the concept of triage in protecting public health by prioritizing inspections. Schools, assisted living centers and restaurants that have performed poorly on inspections have been bumped ahead of restaurants that have good inspection records or pose less risk to public health because of the type of food they serve or the way it’s prepared.

“We’ve tried to really focus on the trouble spots and inspections that are critical – day-care centers and assisted living centers, where you’re dealing with people that can get ill very easily,” said Erica Lopez, a Pima County sanitarian for six years. “And you obviously stay on top of any outbreaks and calls you get. You work a lot of late shifts and overtime.”

The extra work and stress resulting from understaffing compounds what is essentially the biggest reason for attrition – a less-than-competitive salary, Browning said.

“I lose them primarily because they leave for more money. That’s what they communicate to me,” Browning said.

The annual pay for Pima County sanitarians starts at $34,475 and tops out at $50,801, more than $10,000 below the salaries in Maricopa, Pinal, Coconino and Yavapai counties.

“One co-worker went to Pinal County, and we’ve had three go to Cottonwood (in Yavapai County) and another woman got promoted to a different position, and they’re all making more money,” Lopez said. “I like Tucson and I’m happy here, but I’m a single person. I think it would be really hard to support a spouse and kids on this salary.”

The lack of supervisors has a direct impact on approving new restaurants because they are charged with reviewing and approving applications, permits and building plans. So far, Browning has been able to ensure that restaurants open within state timetables.

For most of February, at least two sanitarians are unavailable to help the unit catch up on inspections because they spend all their time inspecting the temporary food vendors that set up for the Tucson Gem, Mineral & Fossil Showcase.

“With the gem show in town, for every four legal vendors that tell us who they are and go through the proper process, you have one wildcat vendor that just sets up and starts selling food. So you have to look for all of those and find them and then issue cease-and-desist orders along with checking all the legal ones for compliance,” Browning said.

Stepleton said Arizona is fortunate to have a close-knit collection of county managers that help each other.

“We have good, strong partnerships, even to the point that other counties help out with training new hires and helping with plan reviews or encouraging their own staff to take on part-time jobs (in other counties) on weekends,” Stepleton said. “I don’t have any doubt that they’ll catch up, but obviously Sharon has been in a very difficult position, and she’s been forthright about it and doing the best she can.”

Hiring nine new sanitarians is only the first step in catching up at Pima County’s Consumer Health and Food Safety unit: They won’t be able to independently conduct inspections until they’ve been certified by the state.

That certification requires passing a four-hour, 250-item test. Only about 35 percent of those who take the test pass it, said Ben Stepleton, program manager for Food Safety and Environmental Services for the Arizona’s Office of Environmental Health, which administers the exam every three months.

“The test covers a very wide range of topics, and that’s why it’s so difficult,” he said.

To be hired in Pima County as a sanitarian in training, you must be eligible to take the test, which requires either five years of military experience in the environmental health field, five years experience as a sanitarian assistant, or at least 30 hours of course work in physical and natural sciences from an accredited college, said Sharon Browning, unit director for Pima County.

The nature of the test is a reflection of the varied knowledge and critical thinking skills necessary to be a sanitarian, said Kevin Irvine, director of the Santa Cruz County Health Service.

“They’re jacks of all trades, and on top of that, they have to have excellent people skills,” he said. “You’re enforcing the laws and you’re in a lot of situations where you’re telling someone they’re not running their business properly.”

Lay people are often surprised to learn the scope of a sanitarian’s duties, said six-year Pima County sanitarian Erica Lopez.

“We do restaurants. We do grocery stores, markets, schools, day-care centers, mobile-home parks, pools,” she said. “We do compliance for the tobacco-free ordinance, we do mosquitoes, we do vectors, we get called in after a fire to inspect equipment and sanitation.

“We answer complaints. We do food recalls. We teach classes, and we do a lot of paperwork. On top of that, we’re training the new hires, and taking time out to educate them on what they need to know for the test.”

It’s not uncommon for sanitarians to take on a new task after the close of every session of the state Legislature, Browning said.

“For example, if the state passes the new ordinance on licensing body art that they’re considering, we’ll be doing that too,” she said. “We’re charged with ensuring the health and safety of the people in the county, and that involves a whole lot of things.”

Wide-ranging tasks for sanitarians

Photos by NORMA JEAN GARGASZ/Tucson Citizen

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SALARY COMPARISON

Their duties vary, as do their official job titles – sanitarians, inspectors, environmental health specialists, etc. – but here’s what people who inspect restaurants and carry out other aspects of consumer health and safety get paid in Pima and other Arizona counties.

County Salary range

Pima $34,475 to $50,801

Coconino $36,039 to $65,880

Maricopa $41,142 to $62,795

Pinal $40,456 to $64,875

Yavapai $30,912 to $61,613

Yuma $40,000 to $57,000

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RELATED

To check a database of Pima County restaurant inspections, go to the Citizen’s Knowledge Net.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Edge, Local, Taste. Tags for this post: Consumer, Edge-Consumer, Edge-Consumer-Local, Edge-Government, Edge-Government-Local, Government, page-a01, Restaurants, Taste-Restaurants, Taste-Restaurants-Local, Tom Stauffer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.