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Health Department Services Status Quo For Now
The state funding just may not be there, but some of the services the Knox County Health Department provides will still be provided, at least for the time being.

Knox County Health Department Administrator Greg Chance told the Board of Health Thursday night that some of the environmental health services provided, normally paid for by the state health department's Local Health Protection Grant, will continue as normal for now, with no increases in fees, or implementation of fees where it would have been necessary.

Chance says now is simply not the time to implement or raise any fees. "Our recommendation is, let's make this a total package and wait until next year, and give us some time over the early months of '09 to develop a methodology of giving (the Board of Health) the data to make informed decisions, and then make some changes in the fee schedule as we then go into 2010," Chance said. "It would be permit fees and some other service fees attached to our Environmental Health Programs."

Specifically, Chance says that might include food service permit fees, which he says are not only much lower than some other county health departments, don't even begin to cover the costs of implementing the services.

The Health Department lost $52,000 in funding in the Local Health Protection Grant in Fiscal Year 2009, and Chance says that's a grant that is significantly underfunded anyway for all health departments in the state.
11 14 08 by Newsroom
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