Inspections online for Davis eateries

Wondering if your favorite Davis County restaurant is a safe place to eat? Chances are that if it's open, you're good to go.

But now that the county's health department has posted all of this year's restaurant inspections on its Web site, residents can read exactly what inspectors see.

It took longer than expected to get the programming in order, said Davis County Health Department director Lewis Garrett, but the inspections have been available online since Monday evening.

"I think it looks pretty good," Garrett said Wednesday. "It meets the requirements, and direction we got from the board of health on this project."

During its September 2006 meeting, the county's board of health voted to make restaurant inspections available online.

"In the end, the board felt like this was public information anyway," Garrett said. "We ought not to make it difficult for the public to see it."

Before this week, residents who wanted to see a restaurant's recent inspections had to go to the health department and make a records request.

That still has to happen for records before 2007, Garrett said, because it would take too much staff time for inspectors to retype previous reports into the database from which the Web site automatically compiles its information.

But now, a simple trip to www.daviscountyutah.gov/health/inspections will get residents to the reports, which can be searched by city, restaurant name or restaurant type.

"I think most people would appreciate this," Garrett said.

The move to an online report has ushered in new technology for inspectors, Garrett said.

This year, the health department will purchase tablet computers that inspectors will take to restaurants. When inspectors return to their office, the computers make it easy to upload reports instead of entering data by hand, Garrett said.

Garrett plans to include more tablet computers in his budget request for 2008.

"Ultimately, we want to have all of our inspections done on these tablets," he said.

The health department is responsible for inspecting school cafeterias and safety, licensed day-care facilities, public swimming pools, tanning facilities, body-art facilities and dog kennels.