Concerns that money for Allegheny County public health programs is inadequate were brought up recently during hearings held by county council's budget and finance committee.

As the council works on the 2007 budget, managers at the Allegheny County Health Department expressed fears that problems could arise in the future, said spokesman Guillermo Cole. Among the areas of concern are food safety, housing and the state of the department's buildings and salaries.

Food safety

Last month, Harry Rhodes marked 16 years as a health department inspector. He has looked over everything from swimming pools to landfills, and most recently has been in the food safety division.

A few years ago, he watched over about 350 restaurants, groceries and other food establishments, and was able to see all of them at least once and often twice each year.

Now, the geographic area he covers has increased and he is responsible for about 600 facilities.

"I think morale is lower because we have more areas to cover and we're not covering them as well," Mr. Rhodes said. "We're not doing as many inspections as we used to."

An on-site food safety education program was dropped, and job openings go unfilled. As the inspector put it, "There's no career ladder in the health department."

According to food safety division chief Glenda Christy, the department currently has 14 inspectors checking on nearly 7,500 facilities, including restaurants, grocery stores, processing plants and convenience stores.

Two-thirds don't get an annual inspection, she said. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends that facilities be inspected four times per year if the food is made mostly from scratch and there is a high volume of customers.

"We would like to get them twice a year," Mrs. Christy said. "We're doing these presently once a year, unless their history is bad. If it is, we try to do them twice a year."

Restaurateurs have also been concerned about the infrequency of inspections.

"They felt that gave them a certain confidence they were doing the right things," Mrs. Christy said. Foodborne illness "can be a very big problem for them and it could put them out of business. They look at our inspections positively, as an educational experience."

In the 1980s and in the 1990s, the department's food safety division won national awards for its inspections and programs, and its Brownie the Burger and handwashing poster campaigns.

"Now it's hard to do anything innovative because we're just trying to get the normal stuff done," Mrs. Christy said. She added that with three more inspectors, 71 percent of food facilities could be inspected annually.

Housing

The county's 170 personal care homes and 64 nursing homes used to be inspected twice every year and now are inspected once a year, said Dan Cinpinski, chief of the department's housing and community environment program.

The physical plants of schools are inspected about once every three years, he added, although the cafeterias are checked annually. There are 13 inspectors in his program, with two positions to be filled.

"We field about 3,300 complaints a year from tenants who live in substandard housing," Mr. Cinpinski said. If the problem doesn't appear to be serious, a pre-inspection notice is sent to the landlord. Unless the tenant complains again, the matter will end there. Staffing constraints have kept inspectors from checking every situation that arises.

The program also handles about 2,500 environmental complaints, such as rat sightings, each year, and inspects 700 public pools.

Dilapidated buildings/salaries

It's ironic that an agency responsible for public health and safe environments is housed in dirty buildings that have cracked plaster and peeling paint, said Mike Diskin, assistant chief of the food safety program and management committee member.

Inspectors would likely issue citations for such terrible working conditions, he added, and to make matters worse, the public gets health department services in these settings.

Not enough money is being spent on staff salaries either, Mr. Diskin noted. Managers have received four raises, of about 3 percent, in 11 years.