A recent grand jury report found the Santa Barbara County Coroner’s Bureau facility and equipment to be hazardous and called for the facility to be demolished and rebuilt. 

The Board of Supervisors disagrees. 

The grand jury report released in June was the fourth report in 10 years calling for health and safety improvements at the Coroner’s Bureau facility at 66 S. San Antonio Road in Santa Barbara. It found the facility to be dangerous to the health and safety of the staff. 

The grand jury called for new roofing, mold inspections, an exterminator and a new ventilation system. The group recommended that the facility be demolished and rebuilt. 

First District Supervisor Das Williams, who appeared at the meeting via Zoom from Germany, said that while the board agrees that the facility eventually needs to be replaced, it will take time. 

“Everyone agrees the facility is run down and needs some replacement. It may not be the first one replaced, but the plans are there to replace it,” Williams said. 

The facility is planned to be replaced as part of the Calle Real master plan, but that likely won’t happen for another 10 to 15 years. During the past nine years, the county has spent $390,000 on improvements for the building.

Lt. Jarrett Morris, who manages the Coroner’s Bureau, said that while the building does need to be replaced, it is not a safety hazard. 

“It is a very antiquated building. It does need to be replaced. However, General Services has done a superb job and has been very responsive on getting a lot of the needs met for personnel,” Morris said. “We have no health issues. We have nobody getting hurt because of the state of the building.”

Gail Osherenko with the League of Women Voters of Santa Barbara spoke during public comment and said the county should prioritize replacing the facility. Osherenko said the facility isn’t large enough, pointing to the fact that autopsies were conducted outside after the 2019 Conception boat fire because of limited capacity inside. 

Kirk Lagerquist, the director of General Services, presented the county’s responses to the report at Tuesday’s meeting and said several of the jury’s recommendations have already been implemented. A new roof was installed earlier this year, and mold abatement work is underway, he said.

The county also implemented the jury’s recommendation to hire an exterminator earlier this year, and tenting will occur at the facility in a few weeks. Some wooden beams damaged by termites have been repaired, according to Lagerquist.

The county will not be implementing the jury’s recommendation to install a new ventilation system because they said the existing ventilation system was installed in 2016. 

The grand jury report found that there had been no independent safety or health inspections conducted at the facility and recommended that OSHA or Cal-OSHA do inspections.

The county disagreed, saying county and state entities already do inspections.

Lagerquist said the facility was inspected by the county Public Health Department’s Environmental Health Services in June 2023, which found the facility to be in compliance. 

General building inspections were conducted last October and will be conducted again later this year. 

The California Department of Public Health also does regular inspections of the facility and found it to be in compliance, Lagerquist said.

The jury also recommended that the facilities maintenance division of General Services hire a safety officer. The county said this role is not needed since other county entities provide safety oversight. 

The board approved the recommended responses to the grand jury report in a 4-0 vote. Fourth District Supervisor Bob Nelson was absent from Tuesday’s meeting.