The St. Louis County Council was busy on Tuesday night hearing about new legislation regarding upgrades to the county’s FDA food model regulations, voting procedure and a proposed time change for the weekly meeting’s starting time.
One piece of legislation introduced by Councilman Sam Page, would accept and appropriate a grant for $20,000 from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for completion of a New Food Code Implementation Project to efficiently manage the environmental health programs of regulated facilities by adopting the most updated food code.
According to the FDA’s website, the food code “a model that assists food control jurisdictions at all levels of government by providing them with a scientifically sound technical and legal basis for regulating the retail and food service segment of the industry (restaurants and grocery stores and institutions such as nursing homes).”
The legislation would also subcontract with Accela Inc. in order to upgrade the county’s current system at a cost of $10,000.
In addition to the FDA bill, Page introduced a piece of legislation that would allow St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger to accept a grant of $170,000 to make improvements on to the county’s election process.
The legislation hopes to improve the way the county handles elections by hiring temporary personnel for specified projects, purchase of equipment and supplies for polling place improvements, performing routine list maintenance to update voter record status, maintenance and programming cost for voting equipment, purchasing certified voting equipment and replacement parts and improving polling place accessibility.
But Tuesday’s meeting wasn’t all about introductions of new bill ideas.
Since last year, Councilman Mark Harder has tried to pass legislation that would move the County Council’s weekly meeting’s starting time from 6:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
On Tuesday, Harder re-introduced the bill and hopes it will receive support from his fellow councilmembers.
Harder said that residents from outlying regions of the county struggle to make the regularly scheduled meetings and that wanted a chance to express their concerns during the council’s public forum.