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MINUTES ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF HEALTH April 21, 2010 Board of Health Minutes Transcription completed by Anne Miles Cassell 10 April 21, 2010 Chris Harlan replied that she recognized that the whole issue is about the level taxes are at in Orange County but it doesn’t recognize the whole picture. She emphasized that paying taxes is a part of being a citizen of this world and we should willingly pay taxes if it makes life better for everybody. There is no point living in a society with a huge number of people who have everything they could ever want and a whole other portion that has very little. That is not quality of life for anybody. And this whole premise of taking a stand that “we’re not going to raise taxes” is in her opinion unethical. To make the cuts the way we have to make them at the level of health and human services is not right. We are no longer living in an ethical society. Anissa Vines said that last year the Board did put Carr Mill on the table and that it would be helpful for her to hear from staff why that wasn’t put back on the chopping block for this year. Christopher Cooke asked to briefly respond to some of the comments. He stated that he is not sure what the difference is between accepting a 15% cut and then shaping what we propose to cut or in saying no we don’t accept it, having it cut anyway and shaping what we do with the cut. It seems to be the same thing. This is where public health usually finds itself in these kinds of discussions, which is fighting over the scraps. What he suggested is if there is an opportunity to take this discussion to the next level, maybe we should be doing that. With no pushback how can we expect to have a different conversation next year? There’s no reason to do that because Commissioner Yuhasz is right. The Commissioners know what they have to do. They’re looking at numbers; they are required to do certain things. As important as it is to be cognizant about the pain that is across the community and how we need to be on the team, etc, he stated he has no problem with that. There is also the advocacy side of the coin which is at some point we have to argue with the status quo if we think the status quo is hurting the community from the public health point of view. If we are at the minimum level for services, why aren’t more alternatives on the table? That’s my point. Anissa Vines said she had concerns about the Social Worker II position that was eliminated after listening to the Child Fatality Task Force report and knowing that last year we had to make some major changes to the family home visiting program. One of the reasons why we had advocated for keeping that position was because it was providing services to at-risk families. The chair also said she had concerns about Environmental Health. Currently the Office Assistant position has been eliminated, but prior to that an Environmental Health Specialist position was frozen creating a further backlog in critical food and lodging inspections. Steve Yuhasz commented that he has heard people come out and say “raise my taxes so we can put more money into the schools” but he has not heard people come out and say “raise my taxes so we can put more money into public health.”