Hill County still looking for sanitarian

The Hill County Board of Health Wednesday discussed its ongoing search for a county sanitarian as the situation in Hill County is quickly becoming dire with inspections remain undone.

At the meeting, Hill County Public Health Director and Health Officer Kim Berg said a tremendous amount of work in the county isn’t getting done, including food inspections, which is a duty of the county laid out in Montana Code Annotated.

Berg said the situation is becoming a serious public health issue and is putting her department in danger of losing one of their major grants.

“Hill County deserves a little bit better than what we are doing at this point,” she said.

Former Hill County Sanitarian Clay Vincent, who was at Wednesday’s meeting, has been doing some work to help the county, but he is retired and a stipulation of his retirement is that he can’t work more than half time, and between the county and being a volunteer bus driver he’s already at that line.

Vincent said the county is supposed to have a sanitarian at derailments like the one that happened Friday of last week, but they couldn’t.

Berg said she’s been coordinating information with BNSF to make sure that all the perishable food spilled in the derailment made its way into the landfill and none of it made its way back into the stream of commerce, which is required by law, but not having a sanitarian makes these jobs incredibly difficult.

She said she’s reached out to the state and other counties and can’t find anyone that can help them.

She said she’s changed the name of the position from sanitarian to environmental disease specialist, which is actually more accurate anyway, to try to attract people.

She said she’s also considered the possibility of hiring more than one part-time sanitarian which may be a more attractive job prospect than full time, but at this point she’s just spitballing, having exhausted practically every conventional option she can think of.

Vincent said contracted sanitarians tend to be more expensive, but if they can just get a few people doing the essentials a few weekends a month that would help the county significantly.

Berg said they are advertising the job at $28 an hour with benefits, which is about the state average, but they still aren’t getting any bites.

Vincent said the entire state was having a problem getting sanitarians not long ago, but they’ve since had an influx of them. Unfortunately, he said, they all went to work in the cities, instead of small communities like Havre and Hill County.

The group discussed a number of potential avenues to explore, but came to the conclusion that they’ve exhausted any option for help from the state.

Hill County commissioners and Health Board members Jake Strissel said Mark Peterson said they would reach out to the state’s congressional delegation to see if the federal government has anything that could help them.

“It’s beyond a concern at this point,” he said. “We’re in a dire situation.”

Berg said they should also reach out to the Montana Association of Counties.

She said even if they can’t help them, they should be told how serious the situation is so they at least know about it and know that the county is trying its best to solve it.

Vincent said there is a national organization for county sanitarians, but, overall, Montana isn’t doing nearly as bad as a lot of other states, so he’s not sure if they will actually consider helping when others are in seemingly worse situations.

The group also discussed trying to recruit from environmental science programs at the state’s universities, but Vincent said they effectively need to get someone who already has their degree, is motivated enough to do the training, and won’t just leave for greener pastures once the training is done.

The group also discussed adding bonuses for someone who decides to stay with the county for a certain number of years.

Eventually the group settled on their most promising possible lead for the immediate future, reaching out to someone in Liberty County to help.

Berg said they do have someone from Liberty County handling inspections of pools and tattoo parlors who was interested in helping with other things in January before her workload increased and she had to reconsider.

Peterson said the commission could call her and see if anything’s changed while they reach out at the federal level and at this point that’s the best lead they have.

Another subject of discussion at the meeting was a request by Clay Vincent for some enforcement of regulations he said are being flagrantly violated by a Hill County resident.

Vincent said the resident is continuing to refuse to hook a house he built on a subdivision into the public sewer system despite being required to, an issue that has gone on for nearly three years.

He said the resident built a septic tank on his property instead of hooking into the system.

On top of that, he said, the resident built on his subdivision despite not having the proper permits and being specifically told not to.

He said this is clearly an ongoing and intentional disregarding of rules and regulations but he needs help enforcing the matter.

Vincent said the matter has caused many people to complain to him and say that he isn’t doing his job, and he’s at the end of his rope.

“I’m sick and tired of hearing that,” he said. “... I need you guys as a health board to decide what you want to do, because I’m not getting anywhere on the enforcement on this.”

The board said they can’t discuss the issue as it was not noticed in their agenda and they decided to hold a special meeting on the matter, tentatively set for noon, Wednesday, Aug. 16.

Board members and health department staff also provided updates on their respective programs during the meeting as well.

Berg said West Nile Virus has been detected in mosquitos in Montana, including in Blaine County and she’s been advised that it’s only a matter of time before it’s found in Hill County.

She said mosquitoes are most active at dawn and dusk and the best way to prevent mosquito-borne illness is to prevent bites.

She said the county may also be getting an additional grant for childhood lead poisoning prevention and screening.

As for the county’s Women, Infants and Children program, she said, they will be getting a breastfeeding peer counselor soon, one who will work Monday and Thursday afternoons advising local mothers about best practices when nursing children.

Berg said she is also planning some immunization clinics at local schools.

Board member Erica McKeon-Hanson said she would like to say, for the record, that she supports the work that the department is doing to offer vaccinations at these schools and so does Havre Public Schools.

McKeon-Hanson said there were school vaccination clinics set up this spring that didn’t happen due to raised concerns, but she sees no issue with the events and thinks doing them helps children be protected from disease.

Lead Public Health Nurse Bridget Kallenberger said testing is still being set up at the water treatment plant for COVID-19 but when it’s completed the data will be available online.

Kallenberger said the department is also working to make more of its forms available to fill out online.

She said the department is also doing outreach to local schools and daycares about the reporting requirements for communicable disease.

Unfortunately, she said, Hill County, like Montana broadly, is seeing an increase in syphilis cases which they are trying to keep up with as well.

Family Planning Coordinator LeAnne Hanson said her department is also doing outreach and increased testing for things like HIV, utilizing their rapid testing capabilities to do as much as they can on the local level.

Hanson said Montana Family Planning is also adding more testing capabilities to their remote sites, which will be helpful.

She said the program may also get a local provider soon which will help them move away from doing so much telehealth work.

She also said her program is providing feminine hygiene products to Havre High School and Havre Middle School, though they may consider providing similar products to other schools at some point as well.