ORDER-2016-26 : Acceptance of FDA Grant from the Department of Health & Human Services; Fund #4506

Transcript (~16 min @ 6:55)

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▶ 6:53 Speaker 9: the minutes are accepted order 2016-26 acceptance of fda grant from the department of health and

▶ 6:57 Speaker 10: human services fund number 4506. yes other boys l chairman i'd like to have uh i'd like to make a

▶ 7:06 Robert A. Boisselle: motion for immediate consideration of order 2016-26 alderman Boisselle request for immediate

▶ 7:12 Speaker 1: consideration of order 216-26 is there an objection to immediate consideration of the order

▶ 7:22 Robert A. Boisselle: there is not the order is before you let's make a motion to suspend the rules to have to hear from the director of public public health concerning this particular motion second the motion alderman

▶ 7:31 Speaker 1: Boisselle moves to suspend the rules in order that we might have ruth clay address us relative to And to this order, the motion is seconded by Alderman Forbes on the motion to suspend the rules. All those in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? Motion passes, rules are suspended.

▶ 7:48 Speaker 1: Good evening. Good evening.

▶ 7:50 Speaker 5: Good evening. So thank you very much for taking up the motion. This is, yes, another grant, but completely different from the other grants that we've received. It's a federal grant, but from the Food and Drug Administration. This is the first time we've applied for a grant from this particular agency. It's a $350,000 grant over five years, so it's $70,000 a year for each of the next five years. And it is to address food safety for the public and for our restaurants. So, in 2012, the Food and Drug Administration, after many years of study and work, came up with a voluntary standards program.

▶ 8:46 Speaker 5: And basically, it's nine voluntary standards that addresses for local health departments and regional health departments to address pretty much every aspect of our food safety programs. Everything from which federal food code we use, to the type of inspection form we use, to the training our inspectors have, to actually spending time to write down every single policy and procedure we have. oh and a whole component one of the standards is for communication with industry and the public and getting more information out having an advisory group with local restaurants and food service establishments nine of them and so you start with doing a self-assessment which we did and like most places in Massachusetts we don't comply with any of them so that's pretty standard some of it is because we take our lead from the state health department and no offense to the state health department they are very very far behind with which code they're using and I've said they know this is not any big surprise they're using a 1999 food code which has been updated actually every two years till 2013 so we're you know and it's difficult I get it's difficult for the state to update regulations it's a lot easier for us to do this so what's happened is some communities in Massachusetts are going ahead and adopting the updated food code locally not waiting for the state although I think actually with a new governor we might actually see some movement on that so anyway like most grants I apply for now I apply for it on a regional basis so it's our usual group you know Medford Malden Melrose Stoneham Wakefield Winchester and the grant is for all six communities to try to reach compliance with most of these standards over the next five years the first year most of the upfront money is coming to Melrose and Wakefield because we have already started the process and a good chunk of it will go to replace our software we do electronic food inspections now but we need to update that so it'll it will pay for the software so it doesn't cost the city anything so there's no city funds

▶ 11:30 Speaker 5: involved in matching this no there's no matching funds actually you have to sign a caveat that we won't supplant any budget funds with federal funds so really exciting really excited about doing it our inspectors have already started the very extensive training program process the reason we were asking for immediate consideration is because the first expensive training which is $250 a person happens on October 5th which is your next meeting so if you didn't approve it till the night of October 5th then we couldn't pay for the training and I don't have $500 in the budget for two people to go to this training it's kind of one of the reasons for the grant so again with the

▶ 12:25 Speaker 1: feds it's a timing issue so okay Alderman Mortimer Alderman Inferno then

▶ 12:29 Peter D. Mortimer: Alderman Boisselle no matching funds three hundred fifty thousand dollars great news I'll make a motion for passage second well the motor moves of

▶ 12:37 Speaker 1: passage motion seconded by Alderman Lemmerman Alderman Inferno thank you I

▶ 12:45 Gail Infurna: don't have really a question I just want to commend you for doing this Melrose is getting well known for its restaurants and this is a direct public health issue with the regulations in these restaurants and whether the state's behind whether the feds of this or whether that it's it's great that you've taken the initiative to work on this public health issue so thank you very

▶ 13:11 Robert A. Boisselle: much other boys out in your software upgrade does that encompass the use of notepads or iPads for your inspection format we were actually using laptops

▶ 13:20 Speaker 5: right now which are a little big and cumbersome we may switch to tablets the new form is kind of dense in words and on a tablet gets a little crowded so depending on which software we get we may switch to tablets or we may continue with the laptops which we've been buying all along so that we could use them in the field and they do use them in the field with wireless printers so the

▶ 13:54 Robert A. Boisselle: person gets a form in the field even some of your notepads now we're getting almost about eight to ten inches and I think it's it's all touch operation so for it very good thank you Thank You mr. chairman you Alderman Mecca chair

▶ 14:08 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Margolis Thank You mr. president thank you miss clay and your office for really showing the initiative in these areas and going after these grants I just wondered if there will be part of this will include like training for our restaurants and school cafeterias or is it pretty much all within the Department

▶ 14:32 Speaker 5: of Health no it's it's training specific training in very dictated training for our staff and for the restaurants and for the public a more informal approach we will probably be holding some specific classes for the restaurants we'll be doing an informational we plan on doing an informational meeting for all the restaurants jointly with Wakefield beginning in November talk about the grant talk about upcoming changes ask to see who might be want to be involved on the advisory group thought maybe we would do the advisory group on a regional basis that way we can take advantage of not as much pressure on each community and Malden has a lot of very interesting ethnic restaurants we could take advantage of and Melrose and Wakefield have very strong farmers market so you know kind of take some of the strengths from all the different communities and put it all together I hope that we'll be able to

▶ 15:33 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: to and I don't know if there's any piece of this that addresses like disposal of restaurant waste but I know that we have a couple of local groups that are working on like second helping right or recycling food that's not used in restaurants as opposed to having it thrown out and if there was a way to incorporate any of that in absolutely because that's one of the policies the

▶ 16:00 Speaker 5: State Health Department has because people have a lot of questions about what they can donate what they can't donate I think that will I think that's a great idea of one of the issues maybe to bring up at our first meeting because they may have questions like that yeah I just I mean I know this is not the place

▶ 16:19 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: or the time to get into the specifics of it but I was just hoping that there would be a strong component that would involve outreach to the food services

▶ 16:32 Speaker 5: themselves you know oh yeah that's the whole point of this grant is to help the restaurants what they call active managerial control but basically do a better job at paying attention to the issues that actually get people sick not dirty floors walls and ceilings but time and temperature and things like that and just for your information about food waste there is a state law regulation right now for restaurants that have a certain volume of waste they have to compost it none of our restaurants or even the school soup school food service trigger that amount but I would expect over time that volume ceiling is going to come lower and lower so that's a pretty active component for food that's not used whether it can be recycled reused and if it can't be reused to be

▶ 17:33 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: recycled great well thank you we look forward to hearing more as it goes

▶ 17:39 Monica C. Medeiros: forward Thank You mr. president Alvin Medeiros thank you thank you miss clay I know you said then this is going to go over six communities and in the beginning most of what we'll see will be through software here in Melrose will there be staff that's new additional hires well we anticipate hiring a

▶ 17:58 Speaker 5: temporary part-time person to help coordinate a lot of these efforts and do the actual sitting down and writing Newton is the only other community in Massachusetts that has this grant well until this round was the only one that had this grant there were three awarded the other two are Franklin County in Berkshire County so that other part of Massachusetts so I've been working a lot over the past six months with Newton because they've already been working on it and they found it very helpful to hire they hired a full-time person full-time person just part-time person while we have the grant I am glad to

▶ 18:46 Monica C. Medeiros: hear that this would be a temporary person so we stuck with what do we do with this person and their salary once they're gone and oh I mean we have so many regulations that we have to meet that we often don't have the funding to get there so I applaud you for doing this and I'm glad that hopefully this will help us reach the federal standards without with some funds to pay for it it

▶ 19:13 Speaker 5: also actually I included some small money to hire interns because we have so many great universities right near us including Tufts which is down the street and has a community health program which of course I graduated from so I have to give a plug and be you we've had some great interns from and when you offer a small amount of money not lots of money but some money for the interns you know we get a lot of interest and we've especially Kara showers has done great work with interns so definitely plan on taking advantage of that too thank you

▶ 19:51 Robert A. Boisselle: thank you anyone else I'll voice out you said a lot of training who's doing a training these outside contractors or these federal contractors or who are

▶ 20:02 Speaker 5: they well will they be part of the training is an online FDA online course that takes about 60 60 hours to complete both of our inspectors have complete completed that the next part is a four-day classroom training that is put on through not through DPH but it's a group of agencies that get together and put it on and that actually starts next week and they're signed up for that then they have to do 25 joint inspections with a trained inspector there are only five in the state so and one of them is in Danvers and one of our inspectors just completed that she's been spending every Thursday in Danvers after that they have to do ten independent inspections and then they have to do five standardized inspections and that's with a federally standardized inspector of which there's one in the state so the short answer to the question is there's a bunch of different agencies that provide the training now you mentioned

▶ 21:12 Robert A. Boisselle: in your opening that you're using your own coding system where some of the cities and towns are using their coding system for the food reports and so forth

▶ 21:23 Speaker 5: their own coding system no we're using the state form but the coding was

▶ 21:29 Speaker 5: different you said no it's the it's an electronic software package that we have that does the standard form but an electronic form okay and we're going to change it to the federal form oh so it is going to be true it's going to be a different software because the current company that we use doesn't have that

▶ 21:45 Robert A. Boisselle: option does the state health department change it or does the locals change how

▶ 21:51 Speaker 5: does that work you say change whatever we want I went to a conference last week where there were seven national vendors they're flying their wares so to speak and so I was able to get exposed to you know the seven of them and there's I'm gonna try to narrow it down to a couple and then have our IT people and all the health directors get together and have like the two or three come and give a presentation and then make a decision very good okay thank you thank you mr.

▶ 22:20 Speaker 1: chairman thank you so miss clay any any part-time staff that's hired will be

▶ 22:26 Speaker 5: funded by the grant funds is that correct yeah no benefits just no no city

▶ 22:34 Speaker 1: expenditure totally funded by the grant it is a motion that's been made for passage of this order that's been duly seconded if there's no further discussion ms o'shea could you call the

▶ 22:54 Speaker 11: role please yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

▶ 23:03 Speaker 1: Yes, that order passes, thank you, Ms. Clay.