City suspends food inspections amid pushback

When the inspectors are at bay, the roaches and rats can play.

Our cover story this week could be a little unsettling, depending on how often you dine out.

And it will hopefully be an answer for the dozen or so emails I received last week because we didn't run the results of the city's restaurant inspections in Outlook like we do each week.

There are no restaurant inspections. The city isn't doing them.

City officials, as you will read later in the edition, said it's only temporary. And the suspension is part of a broader city effort to update its policies that is affecting restaurants and food truck owners.

The city earlier this year made changes to its food ordinances that affect all food establishments, including food trucks. Those changes went into effect Aug. 1.

Some of those changes were updates to rules and protocols that restaurant inspectors follow when inspecting a restaurant. Those food inspectors are currently being trained on the new protocols, hence, no inspections.

Congratulations, mice.

The city is also changing the software is uses to produce those weekly reports. It's not entirely clear when that will happen, but city officials said the reports should start being published in the not-to-distant future. We'll start publishing them as soon as the city does.

Another big change the city made was to increase the cost of the annual food inspection fee that restaurants have to pay. That was set at a maximum of $900, up from $700. Food truck vendors have pushed back on the change. Their fee was to go up to $900 from $120.

That means food truck vendors are seeing their fees go up more than a whopping 600%. We talked to a vendor who has put on hold plans to purchase additional food trucks.

City Environmental Health Department officials said they've heard the feedback loud and clear. The city suspended collecting those fees and are considering changing policies.

As for the food trucks, Mark DiMenna, the deputy director of Environmental Health, said that the $120 inspection fee that food truck vendors were paying had been set years before the rise in popularity of food trucks.

We're going to continue to keep an eye on what changes the city makes to food ordinances, and the effect those changes have on local eateries and food trucks.

In the meantime, what's for lunch?