Okay, we're going to call the Health and Human Service Committee meeting to order.

We want to welcome the people who are here from the county, Board of Health, who do so much to help us here in Lakewood.

We appreciate your services so much.

So I'd like to approve the minutes of the May 5th 2025 meeting.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Those minutes are approved.

And I believe there's communication from Law Director Vargo.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Yeah, I uh drafted the communication to inform council that we have a renewal agreement request.

The renewals with the county board of health for the regulatory work they do and the registration work they do with the retail establishments in various sectors.

And we invited uh representatives of the county here tonight to answer any specific questions this committee would thank you, Director Recover.

And just for a little background in history, for those who don't who may not know, uh the City of Lakewood used to have its own Board of Health, which was um disbanded many years ago.

And now those duties are assigned to the county, so they help us out with many, many different areas within the city.

And they're going to give us some background on that and some statistics on what they do.

That's right, madam chair.

Thank you for that.

And just for more background, um when you get the cities uh of our size and similar size state statutes allow the city to have their own board of health or to combine with other cities with the county.

And we have found that that synergy with the county is far more efficient for our city.

And uh that is the norm across Ohio of cities of our size and smaller.

Right.

Thank you.

That's very true.

We spent a lot of money that we didn't need to.

Well, or that they're doing a better job than we could do on our own, so we appreciate the county.

So I'll turn it over to the county.

If you want to introduce yourselves or not, good evening.

My name is Suzanne Rush.

I'm the director of external affairs for the Cuyahoga County Board of Health, Madam Chairperson, um, other chair people and members.

Thank you so much.

Um, Mr.

Rugger, thank you for having us.

Um, I'm here with our um I can't even legal counsel, sorry, John Mills and our director of environmental public health, Mr.

Matt Johnson, my partners, um, and they work with me at the Board of Health as part of our senior leadership team.

We appreciate your kind words and the fact that you recognize that combined we are doing a fantastic job serving the 58 communities other than the city of Cleveland.

They have their own Board of Health that serves them.

But we handle the other 58.

It is no easy task.

We're about 188 people strong at the Board of Health, and three people, their full-time job would be working in your city, and that would be in the environmental public health.

The rest of us work in the periphery little bits and pieces of our job.

But um a few communities combined for a person who works in food, a person who works in district, and a person who works in water, and I'll explain those briefly.

The food protection person does anything that sells food, whether it's a bowling alley, a grocery store, a school, if they sell food to people, they would be in there doing that inspection.

A water person does everything watershed protection from anything to do with a beach or stormwater or sewage or septic or a complaint about any of those things or um anything to do with groundwater being contaminated.

We know you're a very sustainable city, and you have a lot of programs that coincide with what we do on the watershed protection type thing, including things around trees and things around green space.

You guys are phenomenal.

You're kind of our goals.

You and Cleveland Heights are our gold standards.

We we point your two cities out all the time and brag on you guys for the great work that you do.

The other person that works in district does pretty much everything else.

Like just today, we received a complaint about a street, um, a Bayes Avenue residents having sewer rats.

So our district sanitarian uh Mr.

Johnson is uh already on it.

He's already referred that to a district sanitarian who'll be out to serve.

So those are just in the environmental public health.

And before I leave today, I'll want you to all have and we'll leave these with you.

Brochures that talk about all the service areas.

Environmental is just one of the programs we do.

We have population health, which works more towards chronic disease prevention, things like heart disease and sedentary lifestyle, things like healthy farm to school initiatives to get kids eating healthfully as young children so they learn it all the way out.

We used to work closely with Nature's Bend when they were here.