Even Bonanno remembers a day when his dealings with the city were far from hostile. "When we first opened Mizuna in 2001, our relationship with the health department was fabulous, and there was even an inspector who would come in for dinner at Luca with his wife and eat the salumi plate," says Bonanno. When that investigator visited one of Bonanno's restaurants to conduct an inspection, he was always "thorough and fair," Bonanno insists. And when a violation was documented, a restaurateur "was allowed the opportunity to fix the infraction on the spot."
But while restaurants might have liked the old system, there were complaints, too. "The department received a great deal of input and, to some extent, constructive criticism from the media and citizens about the lack of enforcement for repeat violations found in regulated facilities," Bob McDonald remembers. And so he worked with restaurants to create a new system for the 3,000-plus brick-and-mortar food establishments that the city is responsible for inspecting. In 2000, Denver began requiring a restaurant that had been cited with a critical violation to post a "public notice of enforcement" on its windows or door.
Frank Bonanno
Pete Meersman
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But since what was considered a "critical violation" could range from a lone ice cube in the hand-washing sink to a true threat to public health, restaurateurs had problems with this new system, too, likening the in-your-face paper postings to the "death penalty, or, as one person called it, 'a scarlet letter,'" recalls Meersman. And often those signs would be posted "long after the violation had occurred, and long after the violation had already been fixed."
By 2010, restaurateurs were beyond fed up, and the CRA began to advocate for change. "We worked with the Denver Department of Environmental Health and Denver City Council to get rid of the postings, because they were misleading — except where an imminent danger to the public existed and a restaurant had to be closed immediately," Meersman explains.
McDonald was involved in those discussions. "We were asked by the CRA and restaurateurs to take a look at the enforcement model that had been in place for ten years, and we agreed to modify the process to reduce the number of postings," he says.
But there was a tradeoff, Meersman recalls: "The department wanted to step up the fines."
Previously, Denver policy had mandated that a restaurant was subject to a $300 penalty after three consecutive critical violations in the same category within an eighteen-month period. A fine of $2,000 — the maximum allowed — would be assessed to restaurants that were closed by the health department if, says McDonald, "they presented an imminent public health risk, either because of the operator's negligence or something like the hot water heater going out, which isn't necessarily the fault of the restaurant, but still presents an imminent food-safety danger to the public."
On January 1, 2011, the policy was changed to allow a $250 fine for the second violation in the same category during a twelve-month stretch; a third violation would command a $500 fine. "We all worked together to get to this point," Meersman says.
Unlike most of his colleagues, though, Bonanno went ballistic over the new plan. "Everyone thought it was great, but they were being hoodwinked by Bob," he insists.
"Bob McDonald is fucking lying to you," Bonanno told a gathering of health-department reps, restaurant operators and chefs at a meeting held in 2011 at the CRA offices. "All this is doing is giving the health department free rein to fine us without the public knowing what they're doing behind closed doors."
Bonanno recalls telling the meeting's attendees that the new fine system was "nothing more than a cash stream," pointing out that "if the mission of the health department is really public safety, then why were they so willing to remove the postings, which would have continued to allow the public to be informed? It's clearly more about generating revenue than public safety."
Larry Herz, a veteran restaurateur who owns 730 South, a busy neighborhood restaurant in Bonnie Brae, agrees with Bonanno. "I'm an advocate of Frank, and the fact that he's standing up for what's right," says Herz. "I feel the same way that he does — that it's a money grab. It's so obvious that it's just another revenue stream. It's like the police giving speeding tickets to people going 56 miles per hour in a 55-mile-per-hour zone."
Although Bonanno and Herz were in the minority in preferring public postings over increased fines, all of the parties agreed that twelve months after the new system was introduced, they could review how it was working. "We wanted to revisit its overall effectiveness, so we started having discussions in early 2012," Meersman says.
By then, it was clear that while inspections might not have increased, the amount collected from fines had. In 2008, there were 9,003 food-service inspections conducted in the City and County of Denver, and the total fines collected amounted to $122,335; in 2009, the department inspected 7,811 food-service establishments, collecting $157,690. In 2010, the health department conducted 8,211 inspections, generating $118,995 in fines. But in 2011, when the Denver health department conducted 8,090 inspections, it managed to collect $731,900 in fines. And 677 restaurants were fined in 2011, compared to 315 in 2008.
