Vincent, Berg butt heads over sanitarian issue during Board of Health meeting

A meeting of the Hill County Board of Health became contentious Wednesday as Hill County Public Health Director Kim Berg, also the county's health officer, repeated her request that the Hill County sanitarian be brought back under the Hill County Health Department, a request that received significant resistance.

Berg said the duties of the Hill County sanitarian - a position now filled part-time by Clay Vincent, who has been retired as the county full-time sanitarian and planner for some time - fall under the supervision of the county's health officer and she receives almost no communication from Vincent.

She said she has no idea what he is doing and not doing, and does not have easy access to information from his office that she needs to do her job as health officer.

"We aren't working together anymore, that is the big problem," she said.

Berg said the sanitarian's office is full of documents that aren't just needed for public health, but contain private information that is not supposed to be seen by anyone that isn't a public health official, so having those documents in that office instead of at the public health department is very problematic.

Vincent disagreed with Berg's assessment and said there is crossover between the two jobs when it comes to subdivisions and said his work has little to do with Berg's work.

"It's really not part of Kim's stuff, with the nurses and all of that. It should be in a different office," he said.

She said she agreed that there is some crossover when it comes to subdivision approvals and environmental health, but the job of planner/zoner and sanitarian clearly don't need to be combined, because they weren't before and aren't now, and the sanitarian is a public health official so it should be under public health, as it was years ago.

She said she's not asking Vincent to spend all of his time in the health department's building, but she needs to know what he's doing and needs access to his files.

Board member Erica McKeon-Hanson said Berg needs to oversee public health and it doesn't seem like she's able to do that under the current model.

Vincent said he doesn't understand why the health officer would "have their fingers in everything."

"The commissioners don't know what my job is, you don't, Kim doesn't know what that job is," he said. " ... Kim has her own job, I have mine."

Health Board Chair Mark Peterson, also the chair of the Hill County Commission, agreed with Vincent.

"All of a sudden it seems to me the health department is becoming more and more demanding," Peterson said.

Vincent said he keeps the commission up to date on what he does, but Berg said she needs to know what the sanitarian is doing and all she hears is secondhand information which Vincent then contradicts.

"I've been told by the commissioners that you're doing septic tanks but you're not doing inspections, now you tell me you're doing inspections. It's all very confusing," she said.

McKeon-Hanson said Berg should know what Vincent is doing and it doesn't seem right that the commission is being told these things, but the health officer isn't.

She said the county will eventually have a new sanitarian and they should be making it clear to them that they are part of the health department.

She also said she disagrees with Peterson, and she doesn't think the health department is overreaching at all, that they are just trying to do their jobs efficiently.

Hill County Attorney Lacey Lincoln said that she agrees with Berg, that the documents in Vincent's office need to be in the health department.

She said her office deals with a lot of confidential information and she knows exactly who has access to the places she stores that information and Vincent needs to do so as well.

Eventually the board agreed to have relevant documents moved to the health department and Vincent was asked to try to communicate with Berg more closely about his activities.

Another point of contention at the meeting was ongoing conflict over alleged violations on a property managed by Lodestar Land and Home owner Mike Winchell.

Vincent has said that Winchell since 2020 has repeatedly and knowingly violated regulations with one of his properties which he initially refused to connect to the public sewer system despite being required to by law.

During previous meetings over the years, Winchell has said that hooking into the sewers would be economically infeasible based on how the property was built and that he should have been exempt from that requirement based on the circumstances that led to that.

The property was eventually connected to the sewer line earlier this year, but Vincent said Friday that that was done far later than agreed upon and done improperly.

At Wednesday's meeting Peterson said that, after requesting documentation about how the property has been hooked into the sewer line, they were sent a drawing of what was done by an engineer, but no photos or documentation of the work.

Vincent said this would never have been approved had the plans been submitted to the county and he went on to talk about numerous alleged problems with the situation.

Lincoln said the board is getting too ahead of itself and needs to focus specifically on the plans submitted and what the next part of the process is, before discussing any other potential problems.

The board also heard updates from the health department about their recent activities.

Berg said waste water testing for COVID-19 has been put on hold due to logistical issues.

She said the state hasn't been able to get the necessary materials to the county's local water treatment plant so they haven't started testing yet.

Peterson asked whether testing could be done at the same time for other things, like opioids.

Berg said it can but, especially with testing wastewater for opioids, data needs to be interpreted carefully, as increases and decreases can be a result of legitimate opioid use, and is not necessarily a good gauge for measuring opioid abuse.

She also talked about COVID-19, saying she only has three active cases that have been reported, but she doesn't think that's a good indicator of the virus' pervasiveness in the community.

She said cases seem to be widely mild or asymptomatic, which is good, but means people aren't reporting, which makes the virus more difficult to track.

She said the department is also doing work tracking sexually transmitted ailments and are trying to amend their data gathering process to be more comfortable.

She said it's a sensitive subject and people are often uncomfortable talking about it, so they are setting up ways to report over the phone and online that will hopefully make the process less intimidating.

Public Health Nurse LeAnne Hanson said in addition to testing for STIs they are also distributing feminine hygiene products to local schools and are also providing them at the department for free.