FAIRFIELD — Solano County Environmental Health officials are reviewing the 2015-16 grand jury’s assessment calling for the update of policies and procedures to its citizen complaint process.
Bill Emlen, director of the Department of Resource Management, said in a telephone interview that the Environmental Health staff is conducting a detailed review of the report, but his initial impression is the grand jury is referring more to the department’s procedures than its actual responses and work with the public.
“We get a lot of (complaints) . . . any give year,” Emlen said. “I think if we were not following up and were not responding to those complaints, we would have heard more about those things.”
He said the people who issue the complaints do not always agree with the department’s assessments or final determinations, but Emlen insisted each complaint gets reviewed.
The grand jury report, which was released last week, was in general terms supportive of Environmental Health Services.
However, it offered six recommendations focused around what it contends are the department’s need to update its Policies and Procedures manual, and specifically the Complaint Investigation Records section, which was last updated in the spring of 1993, the grand jury report states.
“The grand jury found no procedures for processing complaints received in person, via electronic mail, postal service or by the division’s online complaint form,” the report states.
The division also fails to “address computer technology” or the program that is used to record complaints, and there was some confusion about personnel involved, the report states.
“. . . There is no clear understanding of procedures and persons responsible for entering complaints into (the computer program),” the grand jury said.
The report noted that the manual refers to the Department of Resource Management under its former title of Department of Environmental Management. The name was changed in 2004.
The grand jury further recommended the need to update the manual to “reflect changes in environmental laws, regulations and advancements in information technology which affect how the division performs its required services.”
Finally, the grand jury said the department needs to develop a field inspector recusal policy, which would “require field specialists to recuse themselves from investigating complaints.”
June 3, 2016
Daily Republic
By Todd R. Hansen
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