BOH minutes 102298 - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

MINUTES ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF HEALTH October 22, 1998 Board of Health Minutes Transcription completed by Patsy L. Bateman 4 October 22, 1998 and it took some doing to get them there. It was Ron Holdway’s and my constant urging to get that out of the political arena and let the Health Department do what it does, making factual determinations. As far as the remedies, the remedies right now will be decided through the zoning regulations to fix the problem. So it is an adverse public health condition for purposes of looking at the zoning remedies available. It wasn’t envisioned by that group that it would become a new thing that the Health Department would do like declaring public health nuisance or declaring imminent health hazards. Gledhill’s Summation: I don’t know what to advise the BOH about whether to adopt these rules. I think you have the power but, I don’t have a recommendation. Ives -- From my perspective, I would suggest we defer this until next month. The one person I would love to hear from is not here, Rick Marinshaw and he has the greatest expertise among Board of Health members to make a determination. Crowder-Gaines -- You said that adopting these rules would be in opposition to the elected officials? Gledhill -- Not exactly in opposition. If you adopt these rules you (the Board of Health), you will put yourselves, the Board of Health/Environmental Health will be regulating what is not envisioned to be a regulatory matter in the Water and Sewer Boundary Agreement. You will be regulating adverse public health condition and right now you’re not. So you will be elevating your level of regulation to say that failing septic systems is an adverse public health condition that must be remedied and that presently is not the case. The present case is you have to do the best you can. The rules would say you have to fix it and that will not only raise your bar, it will be brand new in N.C. This is worth another meeting at least. The tool box piece is the step that the Water and Sewer Boundary group took after coming up with this Adverse Public Health Condition idea and it has not yet been adopted by anybody, but it probably will end up being an appendix or something to the Water and Sewer Boundary Agreement. Does the BOH have that tool box? Summers -- I can get it to them. Gledhill -- I should talk about that after the Board of Health has received it. It is a matrix of solutions and it relates land use / zoning categories with remedies. The idea is the more sensitive the land use category is, the less restrictive the remedy is so that you don’t make a bigger problem than the failing septic system. B. SMOKING CONTROL RULES (Gledhill Transcription) Summers -- The Board has been working on revising or cleaning up the rules for a number of months. The concern was that as we conduct a more active clean-air campaign, there may be additional complaints turned in to the Health Department regarding rule violations. Mr. Gledhill has looked at the rules several times and we have talked through potential weak areas on the phone. The rules in the Board of Health packet contain strikethroughs that would clarify some of the confusion for people when they read the rules, because the rules have differential dates which were necessary when these rules were adopted, but are no longer necessary. There may be some prohibition around even doing this. Gledhill -- The General Assembly that preempted local smoking regulations left a window of about 3 months. After that, any regulation that gets adopted after the window is closed has to conform with the State law. The State law says you have to make a certain percentage of public places or regulated places available for smoking. As opposed to limiting smoking it sort of preserves smoking areas in public facilities. The concern that’s raised has to do with the way the law was written. There are some people who think that the law was written in a way that if you amend any smoking rule after the window is closed, that the whole law has to conform to that [the State law]. My guess is that it would not be interpreted that way. One of the risks we run in N.C. with any smoking rules, is that our courts tend to have a smoking agenda too. There is some risk associated with any amendment. I think the better interpretation of what the State law is that if you were to amend a rule/law and then a set of smoking rules, that anything you do with the amendment would have to conform to