Emmet County approves board of health guidelines for representatives
PETOSKEY — In a 4-3 vote, the Emmet County Board of Commissioners approved a list of policies and positions on Monday to help guide the county’s two representatives on the Health Department of Northwest Michigan Board of Health.
The list was first discussed at the May 18 meeting when commissioner Matt Koontz suggested they craft a set of guidelines after reviewing the board’s code of ethics, which states that “county commissioners shall represent the official policies or positions of the board of commissioners to the best of their ability when designated as delegates for this purpose.”
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The proposed seven-point list included:
Support the Health Department of Northwest Michigan in its endeavors that comply with the Michigan Health Code.
Serve in a way that honors the stated mission of the Health Department of Northwest Michigan, that is part of the compact between the four counties.
Follow the bylaws of the board of health to allow regular monthly meetings to take place.
Heed legal advice from health department and Emmet County attorneys regarding health department issues.
Honor and respect the contributions of Health Department of Northwest Michigan staff as they perform their duties.
Take the time to learn about services, funding mechanisms, health code requirements and value to Emmet County residents, and consider these factors before making policy decisions.
The board of health should vote on and decide items of Health Department of Northwest Michigan business, not subcommittees of the board of health.
“Looking at the policy, I would have no issues with items 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6,” said commissioner Brian Gutowski. “But my past experience when I was at the road commission, we did have on two occasions my board at the time didn’t appreciate some of the legal advice we were getting from our attorneys and we got rid of our labor attorney and our general counsel attorney and hired new ones and they are very happy with those. I can understand why maybe the current board of health may be a little apprehensive about taking advice from a specific attorney.”
Gutowski said he would support the resolution without number four, and also said he disagreed with the language used in number seven.
“It just seems spiteful to me, the language that is currently on number seven,” he said.
Koontz suggested rewording number four.
“There’s been two cases I’m aware of where the board of health has not heeded advice of attorneys and it got expensive real quick both times,” he said. “One of the public commenters mentioned that heeding means to take under consideration. So, if we were to change the word from heed to take under consideration would you be able to get behind that? Because I certainly think you’re going to have to take under consideration your attorneys.”
Commissioner Don Mapes, one of the county’s two board of health representatives along with Rich Ginop, said he believes number seven falls under health department business, not Emmet County business.
“I don’t think we need to be micromanaging the health department,” Mapes said. “This whole deal right here, last month you (Koontz) and I had a good exchange of ideas and thoughts and stuff like that. I agree with most of what you have to say. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is the difference between an ideology between us, not just operational points of view.”
Mapes said he questions the need for the resolution, and Koontz responded that their code of ethics states they need to have official policies or positions in place.
“We don’t have positions,” Koontz said. “So there’s this very broad set of positions here that gives you a lot of leeway to serve in the best way that you see fit as you have already done, and it codifies it. And it can also, hopefully, give our public some confidence as we feel like our public is missing confidence in this.”
Mapes responded that unless they’re in violation of the code of conduct, “I don’t see an issue and I don’t see a need for a resolution.”
“If it comes back to the code of conduct it should have been done long ago,” Mapes said. “The only reason it’s being brought up, in my opinion, is because you didn’t get appointed to the health board.”
“That’s a personal attack and it’s not true and I’m not even going to bother to defend it,” Koontz replied.
Commissioner David White suggested they withdraw number seven from the list if that was a point of contention for the commissioners.
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Commissioner Neil Ahrens also noted that new policies and positions are adopted regularly by boards of governance and businesses as the need arises for them.
“Policy is our friend. Policies enable things to move forward and to be refined. Policies are not the enemy,” he said. “They support you and all your actions and they’re generally a very good idea to have. And if we don’t have one, we probably need one.”
Ahrens added that in the almost seven years he has sat on the board, “there were a lot of policies missing that we should have had in this modern age.”
“And we didn’t have them, so we passed a lot of policies,” he said. “We’ve been doing it for years to kind of catch up to where we should have been. The fact that we may need another policy doesn’t surprise me. It’s going to happen again in the future, believe me.”
Ultimately, the board voted 4-3 to approve the resolution with the wording changed on number four and number seven removed from the list. Ahrens, White, Koontz and Gutowski voted yes. Ginop, Mapes and Charles Laughbaum voted no.
The next Emmet County Board of Commissioners meeting will be at 6 p.m. on June 15.
— Contact Jillian Fellows at jfellows@petoskeynews.com.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Emmet County approves board of health guidelines for representatives
