Public Health Director Paul Pettit took a deep breath before launching into his annual report for Human Services Committee members Monday, covering everything from lead and radon poisoning to drug and virus wastewater analysis, skyrocketing preschool transportation costs, and some good news for Genesee and Orleans counties’ accreditation progress.
The GLOW-based health department will be working from a $1.3 million grant for the next five years to detect homes with radon, mold and lead and remediate them for safer, healthier places for families — children in particular — to live.
That program adds to a heavy advertising initiative to educate folks about the potential presence and dangers of lead in older homes. The department uses technology that can evaluate paint layer by layer — even six and seven layers deep — to sense if there is lead present, Pettit said.
“Do you get a lot of calls to do this?” Legislator John Deleo said.
“We do,” Pettit said, underscoring that by telling the group there were 31 cases of children this past year with elevated blood levels of lead.
The warning level has been a five, which the Centers for Disease Control just lowered to 3.5, he said. New York State has yet to catch up with that rating.
“New York State has not adopted that yet. But that is under discussion and consideration. If it does, that will increase the potential action in need, you know, for kiddos that may be poisoned, and we’ll need to go in and do more work within the homes,” he said. “So basically, if it's above five, we provide education information, but we don't really get involved from the action level on the environmental, the home side.”
Other funding measures have included a $10,000 grant for radon education, homeowners were reimbursed $145,857 through 2023 for a septic repair program, and a $250,000 grant will go toward a GLOW region interactive healthy neighborhoods program that runs through 2028.
The department also received a federal HUD lead educational and remediation grant of $2,455,000 to be used through 2028, and $248,266 from the Centers for Disease Control for lead education and assistance to homeowners, to be used through 2026; a $95,514 annual Healthy Neighborhoods grant for the city and town of Batavia through 2027; and $131,738 from the CDC for infrastructure, namely for staff retention and development.
The department has been collecting data from wastewater for analysis about the types and amounts of opioids and various drugs used here and has been doing the same for viruses of COVID, flu, and RSV. The public can actually go online to the health department’s website and see the results of the virus collection to see a resident county's current status.
When it comes to finances for the department, preschool transportation is taking much of the heat. The bill was $862,000 to bus those kids this past year, and “we will probably be pushing $1 million for busing preschool” this year, he said. Costs for transportation and center programs have been on the rise as an "underfunded mandate," he said.
“One of the drivers that’s really expensive is that more kids get referred. You probably saw on the governor's proposal, she's proposing a 5 percent rate increase across the board. And then there's a 4 percent rider for rural counties, which we would fall under that bucket. So that'd be a 9 percent rate increase for early intervention,” he said. “And this is one of those programs that, again, we don't have a lot of control over the services that are provided … we do sit at those meetings, we send someone to all the meetings to have a voice, but ultimately it's a full committee decision on what services are provided, and then we are the payer. That's the way the system is set up in New York. You don't get full decision, but we pay the bill locally.”
He shared enthusiasm for this year’s push to get the department nationally accredited with the Public Health Accreditation Board. (See also GO Health pursues national accreditation.)
“So it's national standards. We haven't been accredited. We have not. We had about 93 percent of all of our measures fully and partially met in the initial push last fall. So they just want a little bit more,” he said. “We're close. Staff, I think, wants to get there. I want to get there. It's been a long ride. COVID slowed us down. And we're close, I think we'll get there pretty soon.”
