Sulfuryl fluoride - CAS No. 2699-79-8
MINUTES. Structural Pest Control Board.
Austin, Texas. February 12, 2002.
Part 2.
 
 

Return to
Vikane News Stories
Index Page

Return to Part 1

Part 2
due to length

MINUTES

STRUCTURAL PEST CONTROL BOARD

FEBRUARY 12, 2002

JOE C. THOMPSON CONFERENCE CENTER
2405 EAST CAMPUS DRIVE
AUSTIN, TEXAS

(page 17)

Item Number III Requiring Training/Experience Before Licensing (i.e., Fumigation), Section 593.5(b)1.

Just a minimum of background on that, we, this is the item selected by the Board last time in our potential new agenda item discussion, and it comes about because of what we've just heard, and that is the potential risk to the public and to the fumigators themselves from the products that they use, and how to balance that off with the needs for additional training and/or experience either before or after a license is gained. And the problem in the past has been exactly what our I tried to clarify a while ago and that is how do we require additional training and/or experience of people without keeping them out of the business all together which I don’t think it's something that this Board would have an objection to doing. I, when we brought this up, I thought it would go fairly quickly and it would be fairly simple and things would go smoothly and based on the information that I've gotten, we asked the staff to provide us with information for this Board meeting so that we could discuss the whole topic. That information has become voluminous, and I wonder if we are even at a point right now to propose a regulation. I'd like for us to take today at least to learn and maybe give an opportunity in the next few weeks for those of you who are fumigators to communicate in writing more of your, of the great information that you've provided this morning to us on a solutions to some of these things. But first I guess we need to identify if a problem exists at all. I hear this morning from fumigators that we may want to limit either increase the educational requirements before licensing or increase the training after licensing or both. And before we propose a regulation, I'd like for us to discuss in the future as a Board whether or not existing regulations through better enforcement might be able to solve some of these things that we've talked about this morning or is a new regulation warranted? We asked the staff to prepare the information for us, and I know that Mike Buchanan who is the most knowledgeable person in fumigation that we have on the Board has prepared quite a lot of material for us. A lot of that is included in your Board book, the green sheets, and once again we're really not going to have time to absorb all of that during this Board meeting, but maybe between now and the next one. But I'd like to turn it over to Dale at this point to talk with Mike.

(page 18)

Mr. Burnett: I have a few comments. As Dr. Stone has brought to your remembrance, you did ask the staff to prepare some documents. We sent the Board five or six pages two weeks ago and as you might guess we didn't stop working. We continue to gather information so you have several documents that are green. As you start gathering information, you start talking to pest control operators, as that dialogue has increased as we've mirrored this as information continued to flow. I think it will continue to flow, so my recommendation to this Board is to proceed cautiously. Take, I think it would be good to deliberate on the things that were said this morning. I wanted to listen to the comments myself, and I will be going back over the comments that were said this morning in the minutes. I want to be able to collate and dissect, and I suggest that the Board consider that also. There's been much said. I appreciate the eight people who have spoken this morning. They, you took the time to travel from Corpus and from southeast Texas, from Dallas, and I very much appreciate you taking the time to do so. But, I think there was some consensus but yet there was not exactly one accord, and I think why we don’t have enforcement listed on our topic today it may be something you want to consider next time. As we try to identify a problem it's best to be sure we identify the problem in its entirety or to its limited scope before we decide on a solution, so I appreciate you doing that. Mike is going to make a presentation this morning. Mike if you would as you come to various sheets of paper that you have given to the Board, either today or in recent weeks, you may need to be sure to clarify the time periods. I don't know that was totally captured in the statistics that were given.
As we prepared for this and started looking over the material, I probably had as many questions come up as questions that were answered, and I think that will still be the case after Mike makes his presentation. With that we'll turn it to Mike. Is that okay?

Chairman Stone: You bet.

Mr. Buchanan: Thank you Dale. If the Board doesn't mind, I'm going to stand, I talk a lot better when I stand up. I get bogged down when I sit down, I might go to sleep. I usually start off pretty slow when I'm giving any type of presentation, but as I give it, I get excited so I'll probably end up going faster and faster, so if I get too fast please stop me and ask me any questions that you have. Helping me put some of this information and statistics together was Murray Walton from our office in Austin. He is a Project Manager there in Austin so he helped me with quite a few of the statistics. What I'd like to do first of all, and I know from most of the audience here today what I'm going to talk about first, is very, very preliminary. It's probably below Fumigation 101. But I know that a lot of the Board Members sitting here today really don't have much knowledge about fumigation at all because they're either not involved in it or never have been involved in any type of poisonous gas that's been applied. What is a fumigation…

See Mike's presentation attached.

Mr. Burnett: Thank you Mike, appreciate it, I know the Board may have questions, or the audience, or for themselves. Dr. Stone that's our report, we'll be glad to bring, we'll try to answer questions from the Board, and we'll be glad to bring the Board information back. Once he got on a roll, he found a wealth of information out there, so we can bring back more if that's the pleasure of the Board.

SU: Can I make a comment about what the industry is doing that we haven't discussed, quickly just a real short one? As a distributor, what Dow has done this year and 2001, is they've gone to all fumigators, everybody who's doing structural fumigation and hiring an independent contractor with a list and he goes out and individually call on the fumigator, goes to a fumigation site, and critiques his fumigation, and that's turned over to Dow. Last year it was not mandatory, 2002, it's

(page 19)

going to be mandatory. So those things are also (unclear), along with the stewardship program, so there is a level that's it's going up. It is just a small handful of people who are doing fumigations and for the most part they should be qualified fumigators.

Chairman Stone: Phil, we can now start your question that you asked for.

Mr. Tham: I think everybody nodded their head that it was going up.

Ms. Aguirre: I'll disagree with that. There's a lot more limited treatments going on with the use of borates, which is another issue. Dr. Gold, and in the past I brought to the Board's attention that, we were hoping at one point in time in the future would get resolved. But I think that the trend in fumigation is going down. It's a costly way to rid a structure with destroying insects, and you see a lot of people looking at alternatives from spraying. As Bryan was saying, aluminum siding with borates which isn't going to do anything to rid the structure of the insects. But your seeing a lot more of that going on, and I just wanted to come back on Bill's remark there are stewardship program does require QARs which are quality assurance reviews for fumigators. Unfortunately, what happens if for example when they called our company, we invited them and said when can we do it and we made everything possible to accommodate Dow's representative and the industry person that they hired was exceptional. He really, really knew his stuff. Unfortunately, a lot of my competitors fled the country that week. They were (coughing) all of a sudden, they had no business when they were doing two or three a day, which is a little bit startling because all of a sudden they're busy and the next day Dow's in town to do QAR's and they're not there. So hopefully, one of my biggest problems has been through Dow is to insure that it is being mandatory, and then taking enforcement action by not selling the product if their not going to follow through on the stewardship policy and in turn making that information available to (unclear) what good is it to do a QAR if the enforcement agency that enforces the regs doesn't have privileged information to it. They should be able, the investigator should be able to look and review that documentation and know who's not following the rules, who's not following stewardship. So going back on that

Chairman Stone: Let me make a point here. I've been reminded by our legal authority that if you're going to ask a question that involves the audience, you need to address them specifically by name for the legal record.

From here forward, speakers were unknown since they did not address themselves and hard to pick up due to not being in front of the microphone.

Chairman Stone: Mike, have we ever had a death in Texas?

Mr. Buchanan: Yes.

Chairman Stone: Under a licensee?

Mr. Buchanan: One of our licensee's? I don't believe so.

Mr. Walton: There have been several deaths in the past from private applicator use but there was some other wrongdoing involved other than just fumigation.

Mr. Buchanan: And there has been some incidents with sickness from fumigants in Texas. We have found a lot of this stuff if it's not detectable(unclear) it does not get reported because it was wrong.

(page 20)

Mr. Burnett: For the record, Dale Burnett, I was reflecting back just this past week. I think I was on the phone with Vern, and I reflected back to my early days at TDA in the 70's, and I didn't report my sickness. But again that was a TDA application that made several of us ill when we were checking grain warehouses. In the 70's we had a different mentality than we do today. We were going to tough it out, while we threw-up yet I got sick, I didn't report it. My supervisor didn't follow up, so I'm adding that as an example what Mike's talking to. I think we have some statistics. A lot are unreported, so it's a guess as to how many people get ill, whether it be TDA's licensees or our own.

Chairman Stone: Phil is it legal, we talked about while ago a man that was injured by a TDA licensee. Is it legal for a TDA licensee to do structural fumigation?

Mr. Tham: (Shakes his head no.)

Chairman Stone: Okay.

Mr. Tham: No, unless the structure is associated with producing an Ag commodity.

Chairman Stone: Okay. Mike how do other states, Mike or Murray, how do other states handle the issue that we're dealing with right now in cross-licensing and/or required training

Mr. Buchanan: I'll speak to that, and I'll let Murray finish up where I miss out. There is different ways, different states and some handle it one way and some handle it the other. Some of the states have a split license where you have a selling license and an applicator license. Some states require to even be in that business to be associated with or to have a business that is licensed. You have to have so much experience before you can even have you own licensed business. Some have the experience, qualifications. We did not have enough time to dig into other state regulations to give a good comparison on how different states did this. We have some of the regs from some of the other states but have not had time to dive into that and come up with some comparisons, and plus, we really didn't know exactly what comparisons the Board may want. We didn't want to bring a lot of data that the Board would not be interested in specific areas of that.

Mr. Walton: The majority of states have all their pesticide regulations at one agency. So we're somewhat unique in being one of the few states that's different along with California, Arizona, Florida has a separation for their structural as well, and Florida is probably the most stringent in their requirements until a certified applicator and they require a certain number of fumigation jobs in Florida to qualify to take the test to become a certified applicator. But we're probably one of the more stringent states now, and we do have a line of demarcation between us and the Department of Agriculture. Their's is raw agricultural commodities and ours is any other commodities. So we do have a demarcation under which one license should apply to the other, plus the cases that have in fatalities in some cases a private applicator was working as a noncommercial applicator but they generally involved smuggling people from Mexico and putting them into a boxcar that was fumigated rather than ?? and if you want some information, we've got some information on this.

Chairman Stone: The information your summarizing in the near future would be available to mail to the Board.

Dr. Gold: Mr. Chairman how do we do business with this issue? What are we allowed to do today?

(page 21)

Chairman Stone: To me we are just in the learning process Roger. I think we have all this expertise out here. That's an incredible amount of expertise to have in one room, and I would hope this Board that we could learn with them what questions come to our mind. The basic question that we're attacking is how do we, or do we require additional training and/or experience, or either existing licensee's or new licensee's, and I had hoped that we could get a lot of information.

Dr. Gold: Dale, if we were to deal with this situation of eliminating everyone that doesn't do an active fumigation within the three year period, they lose their license, would that, what impact would that have on our income to the Board and/or our general operation?

Mr. Burnett: Well from the testimony I've heard today, I think I heard twenty to thirty people certainly less than fifty active people, and I had a number of people that were licensed. My guess is that it wouldn't have as big an impact as we might fear because as Vern said a lot of 'um , a lot of people this is an add on category. So my guess is it would have minimal impact on our budget. But a very good question, and one I need to follow-up more to get comfortable with that. But I doubt, as I did I too was licensed in fumigation. And never did one hands on because I was wanting to be tested and licensed in all categories because that in itself seemed to be a worthy thing. So to use my own example, it was an add on, and I think that's the case with many people.

Dr. Gold: I would also think that we may want to look at the situation of being able to market a fumigation service versus to perform it, separating them out. That might also take care of part of these problems.

Chairman Stone: I was going to ask Mr. Walter if during your year as Chairman of the Board and all that, did ya'll ever discuss splitting the fumigation into a selling versus an actual fumigation type license?

Mr. Walter: No, we felt that if you're going to sell it you need almost as much knowledge or probably as much knowledge as the person applying it otherwise you may sell it inappropriately and possibly in a dangerous field and selling a fumigation next to a school is an example or something like that. So, no, we actually did look at putting it into several categories, ship fumigation and fumigation and food (unclear) two other categories that we did consider at one time.

Chairman Stone: One other question of you Mr. Walter. We struggled with the problem of pretreats for a lot of years and during your presentation I wondered too if we reached a point where we required Board notification (coughing) fumigations, just like we do for pretreats, would that help in our regulatory capacity?

Mr. Walter: I think it would help in the regulatory capacity, and Bill, do you see that that would be a problem for the fumigator?

Mr. Cohen: We're having to notify the authorities already so it's not.

Chairman Stone: We have it set it where there's an 800 number for the Board that they call. A person doing a pretreat calls and says we're going to be doing a pretreat at a certain time, which gives the Board the option to say we have the manpower available we're going to go watch this thing which means the sheriff is at the gate of any pretreat, and I wondered it that type impression.

(page 22)

Mr. Walter(?): I would certainly recommend it. I can think of one fumigation that's coming up that is a very large fumigation, and Bill, I know is going to go personally down to take a look at it just because he feels there's a certain amount of risk involved. And I think, if the Board was notified ahead of time, that would be red flagged immediately. It was such a large fumigation there is so much gas present the chance of leakage is severe (paper shuffling) in a public area and (cannot pick up for paper shuffling).

Chairman Stone: Other Board? Madeline do you have questions? Would you have an estimate Mr. Walter of, we've been friends for so long I hate to call you Mr. Walter. A number of total fumigations per year in Texas?

Mr. Walter: No I don't, Bill or somebody like that would have a better hold on them then I would.
Chairman Stone: Bill

Mr. Cohen: We have distributors. We have to each month, we have to notify Dow, we've sold for that particular month, so those number are on file with Dow.

Chairman Stone: But that's not necessarily the number of jobs.

Mr. Cohen(?): You could divide it and figure it out.

Mr. Burnett: I think what our interest is, I know my interest in having talked to Dr. Stone some last night, is a ballpark. We're not looking to see if there's 342. We want to know is it if there's a way, maybe Debbie or someone else depending who you want to call upon, is it 1,000, or is it 10,000? Because as we start looking at remedies for what we may perceive as a problem or problems, if sending in faxes, or emails, or whatever the mechanism is, if that is something of choice that the Board chooses to impose. We need to know volume, and I don't have an idea.

SU: As I recall.

SU: We can get pretty exact. Just I can get the Dow rep (name unclear) to look it up and give you the last couple of years what the total

Chairman Stone: Okay surely your experience gives you an impression though Bill. Is it 500 a year?

Mr. Cohen(?): It's probably more.

Chairman Stone: Is it 2,000 a year?

SU: Yes.

Mr. Cohen: (unclear).

Chairman Stone: You don't think it's 2,000. 1500?

Mr. Cohen(?): Probably 1,200 or so.

(page 23)

Chairman Stone: 1,000 to 1,500 in that range then.

Mr. Cohen: Possibly.

Dr. Gold: That's a number when we did a survey a few years ago. That's a number I think we were around 1,500 back then. That's been eight years ago.

Mr. Burnett: For structural?

Mr. Cohen(?): In California, they do more in one month than we do in two weeks than we do all year long

SU: Sure.

Mr. Burnett: Mr. Chairman, may I ask Otis a question?

Chairman Stone: Sure.

Mr. Burnett: Otis, you had mentioned you "lost a guy". He is deceased?

Mr. Woods: Yes.

Mr. Burnett: If I could ask some follow-up questions to you with that. What kind of training had the deceased received?

Mr. Woods: Really the training that he had was just for putting the tarps up. Knowing how to roll the tarps, you know, and sealing the house. He didn't deal with the gases at all.

Mr. Burnett: Okay, and how long had this person been on this type of work?

Mr. Woods: Couple of years.

Mr. Burnett: Couple of years.

Mr. Woods: About two years I believe.

Mr. Burnett: Among the things that have been suggested today, they've ranged from, you've heard'em. Are any of these remedies do you think that would've prevented that?

Mr. Woods: I think the inspections, if there was a way that we could do that, the Board could be notified of when the fumigation was and be able to be there. I think that would be a start because it puts the person on guard that someone will be there, and you don't know when, but someone may be there.

Mr. Burnett: Okay. I don't have any other questions for Otis, thank you.
Chairman Stone: Mr. Walter another question for you. The comment was made by a couple of people that there are very few new people coming in to fumigation. Is that your impression as well?

Mr. Walter: That's my impression, yes.

(page 24)

Chairman Stone: So our, the task that we originally started off on. Which was to identify additional or possible additional training needs for new fumigators may not necessarily be the problem we should be looking at?

Dr. Gold(?): No that's just the point I'm trying to bring out. I think your aiming at the wrong thing. The majority of your headache is in the people that already have a license, and even if some other people do come in, if we work on having good training and good enforcement that the (place to go? someone sneezing)

Chairman Stone: A few years ago, when I first came into the pest control business, we had a requirement for all the people licensed in termite control to go to special schools. We said we're going to have to upgrade our termite people. Is that feasible with all the fumigators to require that they go to some one day or two day school in order to maintain their license?

SU: I think so. And I think the schools need to be specialized. I think that a day or so just on fumigation (unclear) is going to be warranted. With the fact that Sulphuric Borid will soon be available, and it's a very different chemical same way even people that's been doing tent fumigation with Sulphuric Borid will find, it's a very different thing when they're working in food (unclear) that Dow has found out.

Dr. Gold: Could I make a comment generally on that? I think industry does a very good job in their stewardship program. We have two companies that represented and spoke to that issue today. Three with Bill obviously representing the Dow side. I have some concerns, a little bit about the industry, the manufacturers getting in the regulatory side of the business. They can begin to use, theoretically they can begin to use those powers which they usurp from the Board to collect bills and to punish and so forth. And so I really have some concerns about that type of an issue. However, I think that perhaps we could accept the Board may want to consider accepting their certificate as proof of training toward this end with some involvement from the Board in saying that there are specific standards that have to be upheld, and one of them appears to be on the job or actually hands on type training, more than just sitting. Dan Ayers said for example their training goes from one hour. If they get the time to three hours well that's not enough quite frankly. So I think maybe we can come up with a standard of what the training would entail and then they present, like you do when you renewal your license with your insurance card saying, here's my card from the fumigation stewardship program saying that I'm on record of having completed this. For ten or twenty people, quite frankly, Texas A&M University isn't going to set up a training, a fumigation school, it's just not economically feasible. And it may not be economically feasible, I don't know, to send people to Florida to the existing ones. Although that would be a good thing to do, and so I don't know what we're going to do for training in Texas.

Chairman Stone: Somebody mentioned Oklahoma. Is there a school in Oklahoma?

Dr. Gold: No there's not.

SU: (Mr. Cohen?): Commodity schools, grain elevator fumigations, I know that all the structural (unclear) Gulf Coast and Louisiana.

Chairman Stone: So, Bill tell me then, where are the training school that would be more comprehensive? We were talking about one.

SU: (unclear) or commodity or structural?

(page 25)

Mr. Cohen: The only school that Dow helps put on, and Browder County Junior College puts on, is a four or five day course they offer a couple times a year. California has the distributors do their own training program so they have schools.

Chairman Stone: Dr. Gold don't you think if we require a school like that to maintain license we would get more than the fifteen or twenty that actually, if you threaten all the rest of' em with the loss of their license, your probably going to increase your attendance?

Dr. Gold: Well, and I'm not even implying that Texas A&M has the experience, but certainly a faculty could be put together from the industry to teach a school.

Chairman Stone: I would think so too.

Dr. Gold: But again we're learning from the termite school that's it's very difficult to cover your cost and so forth. I'm just saying I wish that there were another way to do this. In other words as we consider it, we ought to consider that if they wanted to send their people to Florida, we would accept that certificate. Or if they wanted to do an on the job training, where they would go out with a licensed fumigator for six months or something that that would satisfy the requirement. I think we just have to have a number of options that people can look at.

Chairman Stone: Les did you have questions?

Mr. Hoyt: No actually a couple of comments. I made a couple of notes that weren’t mentioned and that was one on existing licensees. I agree that looking at all those that are just holding licenses limiting the time period you can hold that licensee without having some kind of certification. And I like the notification idea that was discussed to make the Board aware of when fumigation's going to occur.

Chairman Stone: Tommy (unclear), Phil

SU: Do the manufacturers of these gases have the liability? And they're conducting the schools and their programs. Would they feel confident to sell to those people who are using it? And they're refining their programs, and each year they refine a little bit more, and it's sure extra added education would be great. I don't know where we'll ask them to do something beyond over and beyond what their already doing.

Dr. Gold: Mr. Chairman, one of the thing's I would like to have the staff, if it's to your agreement, look at is our relationship with TDA, and see if we need to be looking at this situation again. I don't know that it's been visited for several years. Phil, I don't know how meaneable people are to looking at that.

Mr. Tham: That's an option.

Dr. Gold: Okay, well, but this is a fairly important issue, and I don't think ought be dissuaded by the amount of work that's involved.

Mr. Tham: We sat down since the 911 incident. We've sat down and gone though our regulations and the law and outlined some things that should, tightening up of things that need to be done, here's where the opportunities are. So we've gone though that, or in the process of going through that exercise anyway. Some of these issues have come up in that, in that realm.

(page 26)

Chairman Stone: Phil, tell me, not being in fumigation, this is a new world for me. How did we wind up with a split in the Structural Board? That seems to me, the logical split would be TDA for commodities and in structural for structures?

Mr. Tham: That's basically the way the split is. The only, the exceptions are structures that are associated with the ag stuff. Which when folks around here in this building, in this room, think about structural applications are structural applicators, they're talking about folks that are going to residences and doing applications. Which is not, not what we talk about when we talk about structure.

Mr. Burnett: Your talking grain bin itself?

Mr. Tham: Right. That's the difference between. And a lot of it has to do with keeping agriculture as a business able to take care of itself. And they've got a strong lobby to do that.

Chairman Stone: Are there a lot of licensees with the Board that also are licensed in fumigation with TDA?

Mr. Tham: Now that I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question.

Dr. Gold: Can a person who's licensed by this Board, can they do on farm fumigation of grain vents with a commodity fumigation license? I would think they can.

SU: Yeah.

SU: If you lump all fumigants together, 80% of them or more, 80% of the fumigants used in Texas are used with a TDA license.

Mr. Tham(?): Grain warehouse are probably the majority of the use of methyl bromide.

SU: I'm a distributor of all those products and, by far, most of my fumigants go to TDA.

Chairman Stone: Mr. Walter mentioned ship fumigation, does that come under TDA or Structural?

SU: A ship is considered a structure…..(Too many people talking at the same time)

Dr. Gold: I guess after all of this, is this really an issue? I mean your talking twenty companies, talking twenty-two violations in seven years, is this a problem?

Chairman Stone: That's what I asked yesterday when Mike went through some of this information. We had a grilling session yesterday, and I came down with the same question, does the problem exist? If we've never killed anybody, I know the potential exists to kill somebody, but potential exists that you're going to die on the way home in your car or a plane's going to fall out of the air and hit you. What does the Board believe? How do the rest of ya'll feel about this?

Mr. Tham: I see all things being equal given that we are have the presence out there that we need to have where these things are concerned, and the bad outcomes are the ones that nobody's going to be able to hide. Those things we are going to find out about. The statistics don't say there's a huge problem here in my opinion.

(page 27)

Chairman Stone: When Mike and I were talking yesterday he showed me a video tape that he was talking about showing this morning. And we were of course discussing this additional training for new licensees that was what we started out with anyway. After I looked at the videotape of this really horrible thing that happened with fumigation, my questions then were is this man licensed already? How long has he been licensed? Has he met all of our Continuing Education Unit (CEU) requirements? Turns out, this is a very long experienced fumigator and he really blew it on this job, caused a lot of problems. So all of our deliberations about additional training for a new licensee were for naught. I mean we're not dealing with a new licensee, and if we're hearing that there are very few new licensees coming in the field then maybe we should be looking more at current licensees.

Mr. Burnett: It's one thing. Add a caveat to that last statement. It's the, it's not a lot of new businesses, but there is turnover in their commercial applicators. So we do have new people, but the companies are relatively the same. That's my understanding.

Dr. Gold: Now, there and then, I really promise to be quiet after this. I kept a record of everyone that spoke here and the general comment that they made and almost to a person with just one exception everybody wanted a higher standard for licensing and continuing education units and so I think we ought to hear that message that the test ought to be more difficult. There ought to be a higher standard for continuing education units, and I think maybe industry that the suppliers are going to provide that if we would ask them to do it, give them some ideas on what we want. The other thing I hear is that we probably ought to be getting notification of when the fumigations are done in advance and get our inspectors more involved in this. And maybe that would help. And we need to give them the equipment that they can go and independently and monitor the amount of gas in the structure, and I think maybe part of these problems might becoming, be handled by that.

Chairman Stone: That's what we talked about that a little bit yesterday. That as long as we know the sheriff is at the gate, as Dale's illustration, we are always going to be a little better on the job that we do. And if the Board knows about those fumigations, that would seem to me we have the capacity to be at the gate.

Dr. Gold: Right.

Chairman Stone: Any time.

Dr. Gold: Last comment then is my philosophically. I still don't like the concept that you can sit for an examination and go on the properties of another person without having had any practical experience when you hang your shingle in any category, not just fumigation, and I'd like to be on record for that. In other words, we have to get your first license, you have to serve your time. Well shouldn't that be the same for each subsequent license as well? It just makes sense that you should demonstrate your ability to do the work.

Chairman Stone: Okay. Madeline do you have a comment?

Ms. Gamble: Yeah. I was just going to say I like the idea of having an investigator on site, but we also need numbers of the fumigations because having an opportunity of seeing a fumigation last year it's a time consuming process. I mean it's more than just a day when it's done right, and that can take a considerable amount of time of the investigators.

(page 28)

Mr. Tham: Just responding and keeping track of where their occurring is going to take somebody's office time at the very least.

Chairman Stone: That comes in to the Board by fax or email or?

Mr. Burnett: It's by fax, right?

Mr. Crull: Fax or voice.

Chairman Stone: Fax or voice. (unclear) in line right?

Mr. Crull: Yes.

Chairman Stone: The Board can choose to do what they want to with that information. So if they don't have the manpower all the time, but anytime Debbie called in with a fumigation, she would be on alert that he may show up.

Ms. Aguirre(?): Are you Okay?

Chairman Stone: No, no offense.

SU: Mr. Chairman are all the field investigators licensed in all categories?

Mr. Burnett: I don't believe that's the case and of course common sense would have us

SU: In trying to check levels of gas they're going to have to know how to use the equipment?

Mr. Burnett: Agree, agreed. That we would, that would be a must.

Chairman Stone: Debbie.

Ms. Aguirre: Jay, I just have, one of the things that and I'm going to use this as an example because I did this last week, last Thursday. We had always been taught in the industry if we want to keep regulations down we need to regulate our self. If something is going wrong in the industry, then it's my responsibility to pick up the phone and call the Board. If I know that somebody's doing or making performing an illegal fumigation, it is my responsibility to call the Board. You know, if I'm doing a fumigation and my local investigator shows up, I hope and pray that he's knowledgeable enough to know if it's being done incorrectly. You know, just because the investigator shows up doesn’t' mean that he knows what he's doing. I cannot reiterate how important it is to train the personnel and insure that they carry the equipment to be able to take out the hose, plug it into a monitoring device and know how to work it and how to read it. He should also be as familiar as the fumigator is in knowing how much gas he should inject into that structure based on the humidity level, the wind speed, the temperature, the average temperature. There are so many variables that go into a fumigation including the type of soil or the type of insect that your trying to remedy. So that's where the investigators really, really need to be trained cause if you were to get me one of those newer investigators, I could tell them a thousand stories and he wouldn't know the difference, you know (two people speaking at the same time).
For example, last week I called and I asked to have my local inspector to call me back because I knew of something going on that shouldn't be going on but I (unclear) and said go check it out. Unfortunately, he was in Houston, I know manpower is shortage, but here we had the perfect opportunity to finally catch a fumigator that had repeatedly been doing things that he shouldn't be

(page 29)

doing, and the opportunity was lost because he was covering somebody's else area, and I really don't know how to attack that because they cover such a wide area that it's like they know when the investigator's not in town, and doggone if that's not when most of the fumigations are going on, it's like everybody tells everybody else. Just like when everybody knows Mike's coming to town, all of a sudden everybody's wearing the right equipment. You know

Chairman Stone: Debbie you pushed a button over here, I felt the shifting in the seat.

Mr. Burnett: Well actually I totally agree with Debbie, everything that she's said. But I wanted, I think it's important that you know that we agree. I think it's important that we not agree and walk away agreeing with no remedy. As a matter of fact, we'll talk about it later in the program when we talk about Strategic Plan. Strategic Plan reflects a 39% turnover rate, and so while we can say we ought to do this and that, investigators ought to be trained and our investigators ought to be this, I think the problem doesn't lie in our efforts to train. I think it lies in our effort to retain. And so we can agree I think to accomplish a mutual goal which is a separate problem. We'll talk about that later, but it's not that we don't agree with training, it's just that Mike Buchanan is the exception to our retention so…
(Did not pick up.)

Mr. Burnett: I very much appreciate that comment. Might could use you in a year from now Debbie as the Legislature convenes.

Ms. Aguirre: Been there, done that, and that's just as frustrating.

Chairman Stone: At this point, would, is the Board comfortable with me trying to compile some or all of this testimony and the information we have and come back next time with another set of questions to you about existing regs or adding to the regs or would you allow me to do that? I'm not sure we can solve anything today. I'm not sure we want to solve anything today. But I'll get the additional information from the staff that we requested and try to get all that disseminated to you early enough that you'll have a chance to go through it.

Dr. Gold: But that's two months away, and if this is an issue, I'd like to see it addressed so that when we meet again we do work.

Chairman Stone: That would be my intention is to bring something that we can actually begin to vote on or shoot down or support, one or the other.

Mr. Burnett: I would hope the Board found the information we brought useful.

Chairman Stone: It's exceptionally useful.

Mr. Burnett: and I believe that that's part of what I would call work is being informed before we move forward. Is it the pleasure of the Board that we add an enforcement component to the title of this topic?

Chairman Stone: Yes. That would be my preference.

Mr. Burnett: I think, as we prepared, we saw that as a component, but we didn't talk a lot about that. We just touched on it today, but we will add that component. We will try to collate this Dr. Stone with your assistance. There's been some of the same things said which I think are quite

(page 30)

valuable. But we, I, like Dr. Stone, identified probably ten themes that came up and we will certainly add those up.

Chairman Stone: Okay. Are there any other questions or comments from the Board?

Mr. Cantu: I actually have a question for Dale, and or, maybe Mike. How close are we, close to accomplishing what Debbie is asking, and are we that far off. I understand there is somewhere between twenty, twenty-five companies that operate on a regular basis doing fumigation. Most of them along the coastal bend. So it sounds to me that if we have work to do, it's with a handful of inspectors to start off with, and we graduate further north into the areas as needed. But, are we close where we can send inspectors if we're going to add enforcement to this?

Mr. Burnett: It's my understanding that four out of your seven have less than two years experience, is that correct?

Mr. Buchanan: Yes, and what has to be considered, I mean what Debbie Aguirre had to say has a lot of truth in it, but you have to break it down. There is knowledge in a different ? of doing or performing an effective fumigation than something that isn't dangerous or it's performed in a manner consistent with the label so it would be safe and not a danger. Those are two different items. To perform a really good effective fumigation, you need a lot more training in some areas than you would on a safety end of it. To perform one safely, the investigators do need to be trained to recognize a lot of different things. But the main thing is to recognize when a fumigation is not being performed in a safe manner, or consistent with the label, where there is an endangerment. That is a lot easier training to give an investigator than the part if fumigation is an effective one. In other words, the consumer is not getting ripped off because the fumigator is not applying enough gas to things like that.

Mr. Burnett: I think to sum it up Tommy, is that I don't feel like we have the people trained at this time to do it, Mike's it. So the answer, so if you were to say implement notification tomorrow, start putting your field inspectors to do more use observations in this category, I'd say we're a long ways away from that.

Mr. Buchanan: I got one in Houston.

Mr. Burnett: So, we have one in Houston, and Mike. We're a long ways away, months and months away from, maybe over a year, before we have some level of confidence in being able to follow-up.

Dr. Gold: But we need to start that process I think.

Chairman Stone: Of course, if we don't have the notification in place, if we put the notification in place then the fumigators that are running for the hills that your talking about will not be hidden anymore and it may be

Ms. Aguirre: If their calling in…..their required to calling now and I feel they don't. They'll call two minutes before their injecting the fumigant. That's always been a problem, and it'll take the following day before the investigator knows that they had a fumigation the day before. Some of us call a day before. Those few that if they do call, are calling as they shot the gas, if they shot gas.

(page 31)

Chairman Stone: Right now though we don't have a regulatory requirement for them to call the Board, and if we had that in place, if Mike was available, then at least we'd know where some of those guys are going to be. Any other questions?

Mr. Tham: I just want to make one comment, and don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that this is something that the Board shouldn't do, but you start doing something, there's an expectation that or you start gathering information, there's an expectation out there that you're going to do something with that. So, if you start having folks call in now and it's two years before you start doing anything with that, somebody is likely to raise an eyebrow between those two timeframes. It's just an observation.

Dr. Gold: We can obviously inspect some immediately, but there's another issue related to fumigation that Debbie brought up, and that was that we took action on heat and there are some of us feel it probably goes under the fumigation category. So I need, would ask, that staff take a look at how we're going to handle another form of fumigation of heat.

Mr. Burnett: So you would like for me to add heat to this discussion like we're adding enforcement, add heat?

Chairman Stone: What is the question about heat?

Dr. Gold: Well the heat is, heat is a commercial pest control practice that this Board approved. And we didn't assign it to a category that a person has to be licensed in. And the closest one on record is fumigation because of the tarps and ceiling and I don't care which category you put it in. But there are people who want to use the technology, and they need to know what categories they need to hold, and we need to know pretty soon.

Chairman Stone: Is that an item that needs to go on the agenda or does it need to?

SU: It's being done in Texas right now.

Chairman Stone: Does it need to be interpreted legally or does it need to go on the agenda?

Mr. Crull: Needs to be a Board item.

Chairman Stone: It needs to be a Board item, okay it'll be on the next Board meeting. Any other comments by Board Members?

Mr. Burnett: Dr. Stone, I think that it would be wise if I called or reiterated one thing, is that there has been an interest in raising the categories or raising the bar in several categories. There has been an interest expressed by several in past years and since the last Board meeting. I think that as we look at fumigation there might be some lessons learned about how that may or may not apply to other categories. So I'm trying to not only look at fumigation, but are there some lessons learned from this effort that may apply to other categories.

Chairman Stone: Okay. Okay were going to move to item number four, it being ten till twelve.

Agenda Item IV. Proposed Amendments to Change 591.21(9) - Definitions.

Chairman Stone: This item comes on the agenda because we have members of our industry who have decided that it is not illegal to submit a disclosure document and/or other documents

(page 32)

completely blank because our regs do not specifically say that the items within the document have to be filled out. It merely says the document has to be presented. These companies are doing this and saying they have a legal position to do this, and what you see here is an attempt to close that loophole. I would never of even thought of that myself but could of saved myself a lot of time if I had. So the document that came under question was the termite treatment disclosure document. Most commonly put, in looking at this the recommendation from staff was that we try to fill this perceived loophole in all of our documents at the same time, and we can do that by changing the (unclear) of document. So that is where this came from.

Mr. Burnett: Would it be okay with the Board if Frank said a few words to this issue.

Chairman Stone: Yes, you bet.

Mr. Crull: I don't really have anything to add beyond what Dr. Stone's added. I would point out that the situation that was occurring was as Enforcement staff saw it. As a case of people following the law, but clearly breaking the spirit by getting (unclear) documents out and meeting the rule that that particular document. Dr. Stone discussed at that point. We went back and examined our documents and discovered that not all are completely defined as the law would like them defined. This definition that we proposed basically went to almost every document that the Board has and indicates that this has to be filled out when it's presented to either the consumer or to the Board in that regard. I've drafted part of the definition based upon case law that's been provided by the Texas Supreme Court in the later half of the definition.

Chairman Stone: I can argue either side of this issue. I just, I have real reservations about us defining a document like this, but I don't see how else we can close the loophole. Comments or question from the Board?

Dr. Gold: Now there's a problem. I think your're creating another set of problems when you write it down like this. What does the word entirely mean? In other words, and does it have, I thought the issue was more or less was really whether or not they were signing the disclosure sheet?

Mr. Crull: No, that was not the issue on that particular one. As I said, we didn't rely just on the one particular document. I've gone back and started examining other cases that we had, and it showed they were complying with the regulation, but they were slipping through because in a similar manner. They were like skirting the edge and not going over the line and that not being a violation at that point. As for definition entirety, that's a definition taken from Webster's Dictionary or legal definition in that regard.

Mr. Morrison: I have a question Mr. Chairman. Your interpretation is to arrive from (unclear)

Chairman Stone: In talking with Dale, I told him that those of us who work so hard to obey the law don't fear the Board. What I fear is the attorney who has me on the stand and says Dr. Stone, doesn't the law say that every part of this document has to be filled out? Well, here's a blank space right here. Haven't you disobeyed the law? You've violated the law. Well technically I have violated the law, which really puts me in the dumps as far the case goes that he's got against me. So I fear that this can be, we're trying to take it to, we know what we want to do with it, but the wording says it's going to be filled out IN IT'S ENTIRETY which scares me as far as there are certain areas of these documents that I don't fill out either because their not appropriate necessarily for what I'm doing.

(page 33)

Mr. Burnett: Would it be better, is there a way Frank, to deal with this issue when certainly there are times when there are blanks on a form that are not applicable?

Mr. Crull: I think the legal definition entirety reflects that concept.

Mr. Burnett: Okay.

Mr. Crull: If you're not supposed to check off a box, you're certainly allowed to leave it blank and move on.

Mr. Burnett: If it's not applicable?

Mr. Crull: If it's not applicable.

Dr. Gold: The other question was, what about the signature? Do we need to address that as a different issue or is that part of the same issue?

Mr. Crull: I think signature is covered by this definition that's proposed by the staff.

Dr. Gold: Okay.

Chairman Stone: Do we have a motion before us?

Mr. Hoyt: I move that this be proposed, 591.21(9) is that correct?

Mr. Crull: And renumbering.

Mr. Hoyt: and the renumbering.

Chairman Stone: Is there a second?

Ms. Gamble: I second.

Chairman Stone: Now it's legal for us to discuss it.

Dr. Gold: Yes, I'll second.

Chairman Stone: Any other observations, questions, (unclear). In that case, then I guess we will call for a vote on this. All in favor of making this proposal a go forward raise your right hand. All opposed, no opposition so we'll proceed forward.

Dr. Gold: I just hope that this is inclusive. I mean we really haven't spent a lot of time studying it, so

Mr. Crull: I've spent a lot of time.

Dr. Gold: Okay.

Mr. Crull: And I'm satisfied with the definition.

Dr. Gold: Then that's fine.

(page 34)

Chairman Stone: I'm going at the risk of offending ya'll, the rest of you on the Board, I'm going to ask the staff to send a blank copy of the disclosure document to each of you to see how much time it takes to fill it out. I don't think we as a Board pay any attention to that whatsoever, the amount of time that we're imposing on people out there trying to do this work. You can fill it out if you want to or not. But I'm going to ask the staff to send it to you anyway. All right, we'll go forward with that. The Strategic Plan is next are ya'll open to continuing? Does anyone object to continuing through to get this done? First of all, I want to thank Les and Phil and Lee for all their work on this thing as well as extraordinary work by the staff, and ask if the three of them have any comments that they want to make about the Strategic Plan that's presented in this book?

Mr. Morrison: Mr. Chairman, I first of all I want to commend Dale and Dianna and Murray for the work involved on some of the revisions and some new ideas I want to really commend them all the staff (cannot pick up his voice) really had a change couple of occasions.

Mr. Hoyt: The only thing I would like to reiterate something that Dale's already brought up, and that is as we were going through this to note the turnover rate that we've been experiencing in the agency. And I understand the impact that has on the industry and our part of our responsibility to the consumer's out there also . (unclear) in the future to be looking at that benefit all.

Chairman Stone: With that, Phil did you have any comments?

Mr. Tham: I just want to point out we do have an additional goal in the document that you might want to pay attention to when you're looking through there.

Chairman Stone: What we need is a motion to adopt this so that we can discuss it.

Mr. Hoyt: I move for adoption.

Chairman Stone: Is there a second?

Ms. Gamble: I second.

Chairman Stone: Motion is second. One just bit of information on this. We are, thanks to the hard work of this committee and the subcommittee, we are well ahead of the curve on this since in proof we don't even have the format from the LBB that this is supposed to be in yet. So we're a little bit ahead of it, but we still need to take, yeah this is last year's format Dale just pointed out to me. But now is the time to make suggestions and changes or ask the questions of the group or the staff.

Mr. Morrison: I have a comment on that Mr. Chairman. I certainly concur with Les's concern about the turnover. We will continually face issues that the public (unclear) is today in terms of enforcement issues and just a myriad of other admin issues with the turnover rate. I think we need, as a Board, we need to collectively look at what we can do to minimize the turnover rate on that. To me, as we went through this Strategic Plan, that was the most striking main issue that really creates a problem for the operational side of the Structural Pest Control Board, is the major amount of turnover.

Dr. Gold: Dale are we doing exit interviews with these people to find out why they're leaving?

(page 35)

Mr. Burnett: Yes, we are now. We have not done so on a methodical basis in years past. But we're doing so now.

Dr. Gold: Okay good.

Mr. Morrison: It's just really hard to operate (unclear) when field investigator turnover rate 39%. The learning curve by training someone to do that position, and the fact the turnover rate is high is certainly a very tainted position to be in .

Mr. Burnett: As I said, currently Mike's four out of seven are less than two years. He has one opening he needs to fill. We've been hesitant to fill it because he's been so busy training the first four and don't have time to train the fifth new one. But when we do fill that one, hopefully this spring, he will have five out of his eight with less than two years, and they take high supervision so they don't get hurt.

Mr. Morrison: Part of that, I'd like to go on record, that on the pay issue we need to break down the components of why the turnover rate is so high, and I think whether or not reviewing some of the pay structure on the investigators certainly would lend itself towards being one of those issues.

Mr. Tham: I'd like to add just one thing to that given the turnover rate and stuff that the Board is experiencing and the already thinness of the staff. That's one thing that we as the Board need to keep in the back of our mind where implementing new things or things, new directions for the staff to be going in. But they already are stretched pretty thin and we have a high turnover rate so those play into the equation there, so.

Chairman Stone: Is our turnover greater in the investigators or in the office?

Mr. Burnett: It's across the agency. It's pretty much, well we don't have a nitch. It's between Licensing, Accounting and investigators we've had in each area. So it's not like we have a nitch problem.

Chairman Stone: Is the rate similar now over the last six months?

Mr. Burnett: We've had four since August, so that would put us at 10% for seven or eight months. Which is 10 and 12%. I based, I'll base a comment on year old data. But year old data the average turnover in private industry was around 12% in Texas. So you're going to have some turnover between marriage and children and various things that are unavoidable and people advancing their careers. But I think the Legislature is recognizing that 30 & 40% is outside the real of normalcy.

Mr. Morrison: Yeah, if I'm not mistaken the state of Texas was at 17% last year.

Mr. Burnett: The State of Texas year old data. Again, I'm referring to year old data, was at 17%.

Mr. Morrison: And with the Structural Pest Control Board being at 39% that's quite disturbing.

Chairman Stone: Are these people going to other agencies or private business?

Mr. Burnett: Both.

(page 36)

Chairman Stone: Mainly?

Mr. Burnett: I can't tell you, Rita can you?

Ms. Martinez: Mainly other state agencies.

Chairman Stone: Mainly other agencies. So it's a matter of more pay being offered in other agencies.

Mr. Burnett: We've lost several to TNRCC.

Chairman Stone: Those people over there (several people talking) We got one from TNRCC. Other comments or questions about the plan?

Mr. Morrison: No. Yes sir, I, I've a comment I think we recognize the problem as error and how can we break it down in components to resolve that instead of one we recognize we have very high turnover rate and versus the state being at 17. And the Structural Pest Control Board being at 39%, how can we go about resolving that?

Chairman Stone: Is this legislative?

Mr. Burnett: Partly. If I may go ahead and make a short presentation, is that okay with ya'll?

Chairman Stone: You bet.

Mr. Burnett: Okay. We've actually talked about one piece of the Strategic Plan, and for the audience hearing that term, if I were in your shoes, I would start glossing over real fast, because that sounds like a very boring term. But actually when you realize, and I think the Board does, the Strategic Plan is our blueprint, and we don't get to order our building materials without a blueprint. So we're anxious I think sometimes to beat ourselves up, or beat the legislature up about we want more money, more money, and more money. But without a plan you have zero chance, with a plan 50-50. So, we go about looking at the Strategic Plan in a very serious manner. And I want to compliment the committee members who had to pour over page after page, after page with us. I began the process with members of the staff, Murray, and Rita, and Frank, and others, and we ask ourselves a very basic question: why are we here? I started reading the law book again one night, and I found out why we are here. It's pretty obvious. We're here to license people. That's our first reason for existing. We're not here to give people raises, we are not here to make their lives perfect, among the staff. We are here to license people. Now part of accomplishing licensing people may include that secondary part, but our first part is to license. So as we looked at that, I asked myself and the staff: how are we doing? And broke it down, not just into noncommercial, commercial, or weed versus fumigation or weed versus termites, broke it down into how do people come to us? And most of the answer I was delighted to say I'd say give ourselves an "A". But not in everything, and not an "A+", but an "A". When I looked at commercial people who voluntarily came forward and wanted to license with this agency were we making ourselves available? Did we have a process in place by which to license those people? And given our past, we used to only test in Austin four times a year. Now we do it a couple dozen times across the state. I would say, good improvement. So if the people voluntarily come forward commercially, we're there. Good job. Now when we start using TDA facilities, but they have said they would allow us to use their electronic mechanism where you could test in Corpus whenever your ready Debbie. And we can scramble those tests and make them what they ought to be, we can go to "A+". But we're not there yet, but we want to go there.

(page 37)

That's not in the plans for next week or next month, but an "A". We'll look at the noncommercial people that want to come forward voluntarily, same thing. When I look at either commercial, or noncommercial who involuntarily come forward, they don't want to come forward early. But someone calls and complains, we're out there in one to five, six, seven days. We're trying to hunt the people down. And I would say we do a pretty good job at that. So for the people that are first go around involuntary, we do pretty good because once we catch'em, we put'em back in the first system I talked about. Then those that continue to be recalcitrant, I'd probably give ourselves a "C", or Frank may argue a "B-" . Those who continually don't want to come in, after we catch'em, and catch'em, and catch'em, Frank has utilized many tools that he's had available to him, and would also include referring them to the Attorney General's Office where you try to collect a fine and require them to be present and if they don't you get a default order, not bad, good job. Is there something else we can do with that small number? Yeah, we can take those people criminally, and we're doing so. We have two active cases right now. That's a small volume, so we're not going to, it's not a huge volume. We're not looking at thousands of licensee's. So we want to improve on that. We don't, I don't believe we need to have a whole ten people working on that, but we can do more. What I saw, and I think the committee members agreed, where I saw a real weakness was when Murray ran some numbers for us in the noncommercial arena. So it's not when we started looking at the noncommercials, it wasn't the people who were voluntarily coming forward, it wasn't the people who were involuntarily coming forward, it was the people who we didn't even know about. It's an unknown universe. And so we looked at the seven types of. Murray ran some of our numbers. And the audience I know can't see all of this, but most important for the Board but I think the audience can follow. In the mid 90's, I want to say '95, the legislature said if you’re a warehouse, an apartment complex, hotel/motel, or lodge, food processor, nursing home, day care, or hospital, you either have to contract with a pest control operator to do your pest control work, or you have to be a noncommercial applicator. Well, as we ran the numbers of the non-government, non-licensed people we had less than three hundred. Flags went off, and a hundred questions flowed. We don't know what this universe should be. We may not know next month, or in six months, but we want to know more than what we know today. There is all sorts of opinions about this, but as we looked at this, we saw this as a potential weakness. These people have not, have they come forward? We couldn't answer that question. Have these voluntarily come forward, or contacted you members that are pest control operators? Have they contacted you so you could send a technician to go do that work? How many fall into that category? Our hunch is, nursing homes, day cares, hospitals or at least nursing homes, and hospitals, have contacted you from a liability issue. Nursing homes, and day cares were probably first in line of those that contacted you, and probably were doing so before the laws changed. Many more questions came up as we looked at warehouses, and apartments, and perhaps some of the smaller motels, and lodges. What does all of this mean? Well, we're in the Strategic Planning process. We have to say this is a potential weakness. Maybe it's not a weakness. But it's at least one we don't know enough about to because we typically have not spent time inspecting this group of potential noncommercial licensee's. We have spent our time trying to play catch-up with School IPM because it was given to us without a lot more resources. We spent time trying to get around to every commercial applicator twice a year. But I think the information, well the information I get from our field staff or the reports I see, is we're inspecting many commercial applicators more than the minimum, and we're inspecting these often times. So rather than visiting Debbie, or Bryan, or Ron, or others in this room twice a year, now if it's not complaint driven, if it's complaint driven, we'll see you, we'll be there, but if it's not complaint driven, why should I inspect many of the pest control operators that are commercially licensed two or four times in a two year period and some of these zero? It makes sense, from a planning side, to inspect some of these, redirect some of those resources to check some of this unknown universe. If they're not inspected, certainly that would raise the risk. Now, having looked at that, we did it, I think, I did it from a pure standpoint. And

(page 38)

I think the Board did too. As we said we shouldn't separate this out as a separate goal. To make sure that we look at this universe and to answer these questions, but by default, by doing what I think is right. And what I propose to you as part of a good plan, by default, we may answer another need and that's what we've just talked about. It could be that there's universe of licensees out there that we need to bring in, either as noncommercials, or by them calling the pest control operators you add technicians. Either way licenses should go up some. If that is the case, and if we can define this range over time, we might be able to go to the legislature and say: We think we're going to be able to raise another five hundred, or another thousand licenses, and that could in turn be applied to our career ladder. And maybe we solve by doing the right thing, maybe we're going to get to do another right thing. How to define the universe is not going to be a one month project. It's going to be a tough project even under the best of circumstances with a year. We won't have solved all that we would like to know, we won't have learned all. But I would suggest that when we put someone on this task, or more than one person on this task, we start with the universe, look at the state Comptroller's Office. They have a code for everybody if you're in business, they give you a code. Well then they say there's ten thousand warehouses, that's probably not our universe though. If you store bricks, you probably don't do a lot of pest control work. So we start working with the associations and doing surveys, talking to our field people, talking to pest control operators and try to whittle down these universe's into what might be in our universe. This will take time. Again, this is not an easy project but what I would suggest in leading into the next into May's agenda, which we may bring you a legislative appropriation request draft. I hope over the next eight weeks we can start at least getting a range, our best guess. Because as we move into the summer time, our legislative appropriations request should follow what this range is. And we are going to have to continue to find this universe all the way through next year at this time. But we could be coming back to you in May and say there's a potential that five hundred more licenses, or a thousand more licenses, or there is some amount. If it's a thousand, that's 80 grand, just for not counting the test, so eighty grand could go a long ways to some of our other needs. There are other things in this document, and we could spend hours on it if you chose. This is probably the biggest thing that jumped out at me. And I think it, and also if it's a large number, they could reduce our dependency on the EPA Discretionary Grants. Thank you

Chairman Stone: Do you want to discuss that a little more later on?

Mr. Burnett: Yes, I will. But that's my summary.

Chairman Stone: Excellent. Comments from the Board? Are we ready for a vote? What are we proposing this to do? We're bring the draft forward to adopt…

Mr. Burnett: Since this is just a draft, I had a question to Frank and to Rita. Since it's just a draft, and there may still be some reformatting, I wasn't real clear that, is it okay, to approve the draft? Is that legally necessary?

Mr. Crull: Where is the timetable?

Mr. Burnett: Actually, the what throw's us a curve is that between now and the next Board Meeting, we're going to have to submit something that may change only slightly, or not at all from this. So the reformatting itself may require that I put the new goal back together or the comments we get back from the Legislative Budget Board may say: No don't split this, yeah you can achieve what your going after here, but put the goal together.

Mr. Crull: Well that is the answer to your question.

(page 39)

Mr. Burnett: Go ahead and say it out loud.

Mr. Crull: This notes here, the Board is going to review it, and approve it at this time this initial draft. It'll be forwarded on to the LBB, and we'll begin to work on the LAR at that point.

Mr. Burnett: So, I guess.

Chairman Stone: We need to approve the draft.

Mr. Burnett: You can approve the draft, but I think that you should have a caveat that says you know there may be minor changes.

Dr. Gold: I would note that we accept the report in principle and that it be submitted.

Chairman Stone: We have a motion already on the table (lots of voices at once)

Mr. Hoyt: I wasn't sure the motion, how it needed to be worded.

Chairman Stone: Word it for us now.

Mr. Hoyt: Well I would move, my motion to move approval of this draft Strategic Plan.
(talking could not pick up)

Mr. Burnett: Is that a friendly amendment?

Dr. Gold(?): I'm not sure you need the amendment. You need the principle I think in there, so you have some legal (unclear)

Chairman Stone: Can we not now word his conventional motion?

Mr. Crull: (unclear) He can make a friendly amendment at that point, but he can't change his motion.

Chairman Stone: No I'm not talking about amending his motion. I'm talking about rewording his original motion.

Mr. Crull: Yes.

Chairman Stone: To include this caveat.

Mr. Crull: Yes, anybody can do it but Les.

Dr. Gold: Well yeah it's an amended motion. So, I will amend the motion, that we accept the plan in principle and that it be submitted.

Chairman Stone: Okay so we will vote on the amendment first.

Dr. Gold: It if gets a second.

(page 40)

(talking could not pick up)

Mr. Cantu: Second.

Chairman Stone: Tommy is a second. All in favor of the amendment?

Dr. Gold: No. No. You have to accept the amendment first and then it's the motion as amended.

Chairman Stone: That's what I said, all in favor of that amendment

Mr. Hoyt: And I accepted it.

Dr. Gold: Okay.

Chairman Stone: All in favor of the amendments say "aye".

Everyone: "aye".

Chairman Stone: Opposed? (No opposition.) And we go to the motion. All in favor of the motion as amended say "aye". Everyone "aye". Opposed? (no opposition) The next agenda item is hopefully a simple discussion of whether or not you want this on a future agenda. As you may or may not remember, legalities have resulted in us coming down to this proposal for future agenda topics which, as Frank will remind us, if we violate this, we're not allowed to discuss remedy's or solutions. Simply whether or not we wish to address this topic in a future agenda. This comes from a discussion that Dale and I were having once upon a time about proof of financial responsibility and insurance and whether or not there were less expensive alternatives to the insurance that we currently require that might fulfill the same financial responsibility obligations.

Dr. Gold: Well, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Stone: Roger.

Dr. Gold: I think that I would like to see that discussion. But I would also like to have us look at the extent of the insurances that are required by the Board, both in terms of limits and types such as liability versus errors and omissions. And I'd like to open that up when we have this as an item.

Chairman Stone: I'm sure if we adopt this as our, or want to have this as an agenda topic, there will be a lot of background accumulated.

Mr. Morrison: I would be in favor of not (unclear) nor discussing the other financial responsibilities.

Chairman Stone: So you don't want it on the agenda?

Mr. Morrison: No sir.

Chairman Stone: Okay, anyone else, Tommy?

(page 41)

Mr. Cantu: I don't. Well let me ask a question. Has it become an issue where operators that carry insurance have fallen in a spot where it's an insufficient amount?

Chairman Stone: No it is not.

Dr. Gold: Ahh, Mr. Chairman that's not exactly true.

Chairman Stone: Well that's not what brought this issue forward at least. It may be an issue out there then that we can talk about if it's on the agenda. That's not what originated this coming up. Madeline.

Mr. Gamble: Can we say what originated this?

Chairman Stone: We were just talking. A simple discussion that Dale and I were having about the nature of responsibility and the insurance that we require of the industry which is certainly not required in many industries. So how do we meet? The legislature tells us we have to have proof of financial responsibility. We were discussing what options there are for meeting proof of financial responsibility and decided the Board may want to look at this or other alternatives that would save the operators money and yet provide the same proof. If ya'll don't want to deal with this, not a problem.

Dr. Gold: I would like to deal with it because I get a number of calls from consumers that are alarmed to find out that their person that they have hired to do the job really doesn't have the insurances that they need to cover them. For example, errors and omissions is not held by the majority of companies operating in Texas, and so therefore, they really don't have insurance.

Mr. Morrison(?): Let me rephrase that then. On the reinforcement of the insurance, I would agree with Dr. Gold on discussing that topic. To make sure that with the insurance that is in place making sure that there's mechanisms to assure that PCOs are in compliance with it. I'm opposed to discussing other financial responsibilities means. I think that, I certainly, there is a lot of other hybrids that I think really gets confusing other than insurance policies.

Mr. Burnett: We, just as information, not for decision making as to the where this solves a problem or doesn't solve it, but just information you, say you want to have a longer discussion. I've made contact with the Department of Insurance, and made calls to one of the attorney's I know there with regard to the errors and omissions topic. And we're going to pursue that with the staff level at a minimum so that is ongoing now. Because I think we need to know more than we do. So we're going to do that with or without the Board because we need to know more about what we're receiving, so I thought I would add that in.

Chairman Stone: For ? again.

Ms. Gamble: I'm for having it on a future agenda.

Chairman Stone: Speaking for Elias.

Mr. Johnson: Sure.

Chairman Stone: Okay we'll put it on there. We'll ask the staff to begin the background preparation and background material that we would need.

(page 42)

Mr. Burnett: And the topic should read as it's written? Okay. Thank you.

Chairman Stone: Okay, move from that to the next agenda item. If ya'll are content with going on? The next agenda item is the enforcement report, which I can turn over to Dale.

Agenda Item VII. Enforcement Report.

Mr. Burnett: I will turn it over to Frank.

Mr. Crull: Mr. Chairman, going to the State Office of Administrative Hearings, you need to ask if Dennis Lary is present here today.

Chairman Stone: Okay, is Dennis Lary present in the room? No.

Mr. Crull: At this time you may go ahead and sign the order presented by the State Office of Administrative Hearings

Chairman Stone: Okay, I will handle that part. Proceed

Mr. Crull: (unclear) Most of the fairly winter months…only about twelve in here…(too much paper shuffling to pick up Frank clearly)

Below is the summary of the administrative penalties and consent agreements reviewed by the Board

Fine No. Name Violation Identified Amount
02-02 Hoppers Pest Control Making a pesticide application inconsistent with the label. $1,000
02-03 Bugtime Failure to notify four to twenty-four hours prior to termite pretreatment. $3,000
02-04 At Home Pest Service Failure to maintain continuous liability insurance. $3,000
02-05 Terminix International Failure to provide a complete/accurate treatment inspection. $500
02-06 Seven City Lawn & Landscape Making a pesticide application inconsistent with the label directions. $1,000
02-07 Terminix International

Failure of business licensee or certified noncommercial applicator to register employees or failure to pay license fee for employees.

*plus revocation of the $1,000 suspended penalty for complaint 11-0644-500

*$2,000
02-08 Ameritech Termite & Pest Control Failure to adequately supervise employee(s) and failure of business licensee or certified non-commercial applicator to register employees.

$1,000
paid
and $1,500

(page 43) suspended for 1 yr

(page 43)
02-09 Bosque Pest Control Intentional misrepresentation on an application for licensure. $1,000
02-10 A Team Termite and Pest Control Failure to keep pesticide use records; failure to adequately supervise employee(s); failure to register employees and failure to make
complete/accurate termite disclosure.
$2,300


Administrative Refusal to Issue, Revocations and Suspensions FY 2002

02-12 Keith McMillan Apprentice application was revoked after failing to provide information on a criminal background check request.
02-13 Arturo Molina Technician license was revoked after failing to provide information on a criminal background check request.
02-14 Jason Abbott Technician license was revoked after failing to provide information on a criminal background check request.
02-15 Jeffrey H. Dunn Technician license was revoked after failing to provide information on a criminal background check request.
02-16 Margarita Orozco Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-17 Michael Galicia Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-18 Darren Smith Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-19 Christopher Chatham Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-20 Corey Glenn Graves Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-21 Brandon Duncan Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-22 Russell Finney Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-23 Jose Carrillo Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-24 Pablo Velazquez Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-25 Daniel Fondren Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-26 Jeremy Person Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-27 Richard Rodriquez Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-28 Felix Carlin Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.

(page 44)

02-29 Bryan Grimes Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-30 Jerry Miller Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-31 Ronald Morris Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-32 Norris Brown Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-33 Nathan Porter Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-34 Edward Mata Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-35 Fidel Tijerina Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-36 Robert Crandell Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-37 Matthew Edwards Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-38 Robert Terry Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-39 Gregory Sanchez Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-40 Michael Morrill Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-41 Ricky Armour Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-42 Joe Willmon Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-43 Corey Davis Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-44 Patricia Tiemeyer Denied a technician's license after a criminal background check.
02-45 John David Cervantes Apprentice application denied after failing to provide information on a criminal background check request.
02-46 Rene Mejia Apprentice application denied after failing to provide information on a criminal background check request.
02-47 Rene S. Silva Apprentice application denied after failing to provide information on a criminal background check request.
02-48 Israel Pineda Apprentice application denied after failing to provide information on a criminal background check request.
02-49 Reyes Sauceda Apprentice application denied after failing to provide information on a criminal background check request.
02-50 Robert Newman Apprentice application denied after failing to provide information on a criminal background check request.

(page 45)

02-51 Robert Barlow Apprentice application denied after failing to provide information on a criminal background check request.
02-52 Timothy Walker Apprentice application denied after failing to provide information on a criminal background check request.
02-53 Michael Duenas Apprentice application denied after failing to provide information on a criminal background check request.
02-54 Florentino Cantu Apprentice application denied after failing to provide information on a criminal background check request.
02-55 James Gonzalez Business license and commercial applicator's license were not renewed for failure to maintain the proper insurance required by law.

Mr. Cantu was asking earlier about 599.4. He's asking if there is a pattern to it and my answer back to him is no there's not. There's not like one particular consistently violated and a spectrum in that regard (coughing) label not really (coughing) Does that answer your question you were asking earlier?

Mr. Cantu: Yes.

Mr. Crull: There's also in the report the Office of Attorney General, permanent injunctions (paper shuffling). The amount of the administrative penalty is small main element that comes out of this (paper shuffling) permanent injunction against this individual who (unclear) my understanding after talking with the Office of the Attorney General this individual has no interest in doing this service anymore, so, it should not be a problem.

Mr. Burnett: That's it, that's all for Enforcement.

Chairman Stone: Well we need to deal Dale with this, do we need to vote on this final order of the Board is it not to vote on?

Mr. Burnett: Just for you sign it.

Chairman Stone: All right I'll sign it then.

Mr. Crull: It raise (unclear).

Chairman Stone: Are there any other questions about the Enforcement address? If not, then we will go with the new Executive Director's Report.

VIII. Executive's Director's Report.

Mr. Burnett: Okay. We've touched upon staffing earlier, we lost one staff member since our last report, since our last meeting. We've lost four since August, but three this fiscal year. I think I want to move to "c" before "b" because that will lead me into "b". Let's talk about the good things, the House Appropriation's Interim budget hearing and then we'll move into the bad things.

(page 46)

Chairman Stone: Skip the bad things.

Mr. Burnett: I'd like to, or the "not so fun" things. As is customary between legislative sessions, the House Appropriations Committee has a subcommittee named Regulatory Sub-committee. And we're asked to present kind of the "state of the agency" and how we're doing between sessions. And we did so about two weeks ago today. And we described to the committee that while we had a tight budget, and one that challenged us greatly, we thought we had been able to accomplish many things and that included being able to take care of a 23% increase in travel allowed by the legislature, without increasing out actual budget for travel. In fact we reduced it. That, and things like that, led the legislature to tell me that they would like for me to meet with some other agencies and while I thought they were joking, they were not. They sent me an e-mail, well they sent an e-mail to the other agencies, telling them to meet with me within a month. And to send a letter to the Committee telling them what they learned. So I don't thing I’m going to make any friends with my peers in other agencies. But I will take the compliment and go forward with that. So generally the good news from the interim budget committee was that they were pleased with our handling of the budget. They knew we were stretched. They knew we had to do some juggling in August and this fall, but that we were on track. Then we moved from the budget to the office relocation status, and that's where we got some "not so fun" news. Just to remind the Board, what we've done with the office relocation efforts. The legislature told us in a rider that we needed to move outside of Austin, and their intentions were for us to save money, and everything points to that still being the case. Everything points to us moving outside of Austin would save money. All of the information I have received. The process started last fall, excuse me last summer, by reading the law and trying to reduce our staff turnover. We asked the staff, what is your preference? The consensus, well not the consensus, but the majority of the people voted for south of Austin. I had some input from some Board Members saying it would be nice not to move any farther away from the airport. We had some input from Board Members saying don't get too far off the beaten path when you move outside of Austin. Please stay close to a major artery. With that kind of input, we looked south of Austin. The verbal comment we had from people who owned existing buildings, and who were looking to build, indicated that we'd be in the $13.00 range. The newspapers, Comptroller's Office, magazines indicated that Austin was in the $20.00 category. So we thought that we were right on course. We met with the, what used to be called the General Services Commission, I'm still learning their new name, but General Services Commission gave us some guidance, helped us with our specifications. We moved forward with the bids of November and the bids closed December 13. Our lowest bid, and this brings us to at least what you could of known through last Board Meeting, the new information is this: our lowest bid was $16.98. We received two other bids, the highest of which was dismissed for some technicalities. We had a bid of $16.98. We have, we're aware of where the site was going to be. It was a build, to build site. It was in a favorable area new Buda. We were ready to move forward. General Services said: "Wait, we think Austin is cheaper now". And we said re-read your law as we have, it said "move out of Austin." We had silence for a while. And I said do you want to contact the legislature or do you want me to? I'm not going to bid in Austin unless I'm told to by the legislature cause they wrote us a bill saying "move out". We were contacted by Shannon Sneary, an aide with the House Appropriations Committee. And she gave our information, I wrote a two page letter stating what I just said, all the background and she provided that to the Committee. The Committee, at the House Appropriation's budget hearing two weeks ago, said they wanted us to expand our search, try to get a better price. I then commented that the three examples that the General Services Commission had given us I thought two were totally irrelevant because one included 115,000 square feet at a price of $15.20. I said I didn't get took on this deal, I think the people with 115,000 square feet got took. I came in $1.50 higher for twenty times less footage, I think you should be questioning their bid, not my bid. Then the next bid was 16,000 square feet. Again we're looking for 4600. I said that bid is

(page 47)

irrelevant. It too was in the $15.00, close to $15.00. So the one that had some ability to be compared was 6900, and that was still 30% higher than us. They came in at $16.20. Ours is only 5% higher. That was the closest evidence that I had that said Austin might be cheaper. But really 5% difference, for 30% less footage, sounds like we did our job and yet the legislature has told me to look farther. Do another round of bids. So we will do another round of bids. That, did I put that very diplomatically?

Chairman Stone: You were so polite. We got snookered guys.

Dr. Gold: Is the bottom line is, we're not going to move on schedule?

Chairman Stone: Right. I don't see how we can.

Mr. Burnett: It's possible we may not be on schedule. It's going to be my best guess is May or June before we'll know.

Dr. Gold: Do we have a present contract that allows you to stay in your present place?

Mr. Burnett: Yes, month at a time. One of the things that we brought up to the General Services Commission is that if they have any inclination about us staying at the present site, first of all, I need a legislative approval because the law was very clear to me and secondly when it rains we get wet. And so we are now compiling that documentation to show that when it rains we get wet. That occurred in November and you know what wet rugs look like and wet sheetrock. We think we have a nonperformance issue even if we weren’t required to move out of Austin by law. So we do have the ability to stay month to month.

Chairman Stone: The, it seems very clear, the rider says we'll move out of Austin and it was very clear to all of us except the Representatives on the Committee who said you have to move out. So this Committee just really just threw everything that we had done up in the air and said start all over again.

Mr. Burnett: I'm preparing. I drafted a two page letter with a number of documents summarizing what you've heard. I'm asking for additional guidance from the Committee and Representative Junell and Senator Ellis. Cause I don't want to go through the bid process again and still have questions left over. So if they apparently are choosing to micromanage this effort, so I'm going to have a number of narrow questions.

Ms. Gamble: Is that month to month lease going to affect the balance for the new place?

Mr. Burnett: I'm sorry Madeline.

Ms. Gamble: Is the month-to-month lease going to affect the dollars you have for the new place?

Mr. Burnett: It should not have a negative impact, it should not.

Chairman Stone: It's a mess. The area that we bid was the most likely area to bring in a suitable bid. And is a place where the fewest number of employees would leave the agency when we move. We know we're going to lose some, which is going to increase our turnover, or the appearance of our turnover. But this is the area where we were close to I-35, fairly close to the airport and we're going to lose the fewest number of employees. And that Committee at one point said "just bid the whole state".

(page 48)

Mr. Burnett: They did make that comment, "look all over the state", and I have since clarified that comment with them. And I've gotten a call back saying "no you don't need to look all over the state." I did say if we go more than sixty miles, we will have 100% turnover, including me if that's of any value, but, Murray, Rita, Barbara, Frank if we go more than an hour or…

Chairman Stone: If that's a threat Dale, we're taking it very seriously.

Mr. Burnett: Well I don't think I really needed to say that. But now I'm getting upset. I tried to be nice. But the good news is I think we can live with 20 and 30 miles. But if we go 60 miles, I think we'll have 100% people looking for change. And the good news is that the legislature told me "no you don't have to look all over the state", yeah we said that in the Committee but never mind. I'm going to put it in writing back, and I'm going to say, so your telling me I can look within 20 miles or so. So I can have something in writing. So this has become we didn't list this as a project this year. We just thought we would we had ten projects this year. This has become the 11th one that is taking it's own life. And we really felt good going into the bidding process that we had accomplished what the legislature wanted, what the staff wanted and some guidance from the Board. And we felt pretty good about it. And so we put our thinking caps back on. That's, that update. Any questions?

The budget, I made a presentation to the Board at the last meeting with regard to discretionary money. I provided a handout that showed that we have been fortunate to receive a good deal of legislative, excuse me let me back up, we have been fortunate to receive a good deal of EPA discretionary money, emphasize discretionary money, cause we do have a base grant of slightly under 200,000 our base grants right around 193 and we gladly take that money from EPA as TDA takes theirs. But over the years this Board as I mentioned in November, this Board has become dependant on paying the bills with discretionary money, so we have a, if we have a vacancy come open in the fall, we're likely to hold that vacancy open until the springtime when the discretionary money comes in and we know that amount. Now the good news is, I've already touched on, we get our share and there is some good news for this year, once again we got our share probably more than our share and that's a big credit to Murray, to Rita, to the field staff, I'll take some. There was $215,000 being offered by EPA to be competed for by five states. But if you just do the math that leaves us with a little over $40,000. We have received verbal confirmation that we will be receiving $99,000 of the $215,000. That's three different projects, one being some water sampling for pesticide runoff in Travis County or Austin specifically, another one for spending more time and effort on our repeat and serious violators, and the other one is some School IPM work we would probably be doing anyway, so that was pretty much it's not an EPA driven mandate on the School IPM, it's Texas driven, so if EPA wants to give us money for what we're already doing for the state that a win-win. A fourth item has come up not under the guise of discretionary money, but under the auspices of training money came up right immediately after the last Board Meeting, so in addition to the $99,000 that we're soon as the ink has dried we will get for discretionary money. There's another $90,000 that we will receive for training people in other states, the Murray's, Dale's and Frank's of other states will be coming to Texas next summer, and we're going to receive $90,000 for that. We will probably spend at least half of that putting on the course and the other half will be in staff time, but we still think we have more staff than we do cash and so we're going to take the money. One of our long term goals we mentioned today was closing the turnover gap, but the other gap we need to close I feel like to make this a health organization is to close our dependency on the discretionary funds, and as long as the war effort doesn't take that discretionary money away we survive. We're glad to report today we got it again this year, and we got substantial amounts, but I think some of the things we talked about on the Strategic Plan might be a long term plus. Even if we solve it with some long range

(page 49)

planning, we're still going to take that discretionary money, we just don't want to be dependent on it.

The last item I have on my Executive Director's Report is our fee collection status. Ya'll had to raise fees, and you had to begin raising them in August, and you finalized that in September, and it became effective I believe October 8. Ya'll cut us close, it is still close, because no reason for alarm. I will pass around a green sheet, Rita having been doing two jobs for the last four or five months not only services as our Deputy Administrator but also she's been our main number cruncher because we've held a position open. We came to you last summer with about a 3% cushion, it was the Board's, the Board said cut it closer, make it about a 1%. Our, down in the middle of the page our collections from September to January which is five of the twelve months we collected $818,000 that's in the middle of your page. With the remaining seven months our calculation is that we will bring in one million one hundred ninety eight thousand that is based on last year's income with an average increase of 22% that you did. Giving that projection based on last year's with your 22% increase, we are within about 2% of, we have a $30,000 cushion which can evaporate in a blink but I will tell you that we have no, my report to you today is that there is no room for alarm. Either way we are not collecting a whole lot extra, we're not collecting a whole lot under what you tried to do in August and September I believe you've done. We will continue to monitor this where we have an error of under collection or over collection you have two-year period to make the adjustment. I see no room today to make an adjustment. That's my report.

Chairman Stone: That's great. In order to express my opinion to Dale and I appreciate the hard work that he's put in on the budget. He's really pulled us out of some rather serious problems, and we're thankful. Murray thank you for writing all those grant proposals and you and Rita bring in all that money.

Mr. Walton: I have a vested interest.

Chairman Stone: Like your job or what?

Dr. Gold: Does focus a fellow.

Mr. Tham: Murray, one of those grants doesn't involve translations does it?

Chairman Stone: Are there any other comments before we call for a motion to adjourn.

Mr. Hoyt: One comment, I had May 16.

IX. Next Board Meeting Tuesday, May 14, 2002.

Mr. Burnett: Thank you for bringing that up. This, I believe this building is unavailable on May 16, so it probably would be worth some discussion. Dr. Stone if you want it on the 16th we can find another building, if you want this building we do need to be on 14th. So, whatever the Board's pleasure is.

Chairman Stone: Do you have a preference?

(page 50)

Mr. Hoyt: No, I just wanted to make sure the 14th was correct.

Mr. Cantu: 14th is good.

Chairman Stone: 14th is good. Okay, consensus if the 14th, I maintain a motion to adjourn.

Mr. Morrison: I motion to adjourn.

Mr. Cantu: Second.

Chairman Stone: Second. All in favor say "aye", Response "aye", Opposed? No opposition. We are adjourned.

The Structural Pest Control Board meeting of February 12, 2002 adjourned at 1:50 p.m.

 

___________________________________
Dr. Jay Stone, Chairman
Structural Pest Control Board

 

 
Fluoride Action Network | Pesticide Project | 315-379-9200 | pesticides@fluoridealert.org