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EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) - In this week’s special edition of Restaurant Roundup, we’re following up on our report that uncovered nearly half the food trucks in El Paso County were far overdue on health inspections. It appears the health department has cleaned up its act. Since that story aired, public health inspectors have made a huge dent in the backlog – bringing that number down from 150 to just 40 in a matter of a month. “Our team has been working diligently, including after-hours and weekends, to get those inspections done,” Sammi Jo Lawson with the El Paso County Department of Public Health told us. With that said, we noticed a surprisingly low number of violations in most of the new inspections, so we followed up. “Our primary goal is to see all facilities, including mobile units, as they are operating,” Sammi Jo explained. The word operating might not mean what you think. According to Lawson, food trucks don’t necessarily need to be open for business at the time of inspection— they just need to be running. “Units are indeed plugged, turned up, and on, we have to verify that they have hot and cold running water - so we do view them to the best extent… If they’re not indeed serving food,” Sammi Jo said. Lawson says the reason at least some of the food trucks inspected over the last month weren’t actively serving customers is because the county waited until after peak season to tackle the long list. “Given that we’re at the end of the operating year, there were some situations where we may not be able to see everything,” Sammi Jo said. It can be challenging to spot handwashing and food handling violations, among other negligent violations, when food truck employees aren’t serving customers. So, why didn’t the health department address the problem sooner, like over the summer when food trucks were busy? We asked if the reason the health department hit the ground running was because of our records request. Nope! Sammi Jo told us they recognized the problem during their annual review at the end of the summer, which just so happened to be right around the time we filed a request for this information. “As we get to the end of the year, we always have to do a programmatic overview of where we lie with our required inspections,” Lawson explained. “So, things were in motion to ensure that was addressed.” It’s unclear if the number of overdue food truck inspections has reached such a substantial number in years past. Regardless, Sammi Jo Lawson admits the county needs to do better. “We recognize that there are some areas that we can improve upon for having better proactive planning so that we can ensure that we have more early and timely inspections,” Sammi Jo said. The El Paso County Department of Public Health told KRDO it does prioritize inspecting food establishments with complaints or a history of non-compliance.
