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PENNSYLVANIA STATUTES
TITLE 53. MUNICIPAL AND QUASI-MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS
PART V. CITIES OF THE THIRD CLASS
CHAPTER 81. THIRD CLASS CITY CODE
ARTICLE XXIII. PUBLIC HEALTH
(A) BOARD OF HEALTH
Date:
08/31/2009
Document:
NOTICE: As to repeal of this section where inconsistent with Act 1990, Dec. 19, P.L. 1343, No. 209, see § 2 of said act.
§ 37308. Powers of board of health
The board of health shall have authority:
(1) To employ agents and employes at such rates or salaries as council shall approve.
(2) To establish and staff emergency hospitals, with the consent of council, in case of the prevalence or threat of any contagious or infectious disease or other serious peril to public health, and to provide for and regulate the management of such hospitals.
(3) To enter upon any premises whatsoever within the city as a body or by committee or by its agents or employes, which premises are suspected of infectious or contagious disease or of any other nuisance prejudicial to the public health, or of the danger of them, for the purpose of examining the premises or of preventing, confining or abating public nuisances.
(4) To conduct investigations and to hold public hearings in the performance of its duties and powers, wherein the president and secretary of the board shall have full power to administer oaths and affirmations but shall receive no fee therefor. For such purposes, the board of health may require the attendance of witnesses and their books and papers.
(5) To establish a force of sanitary police for the enforcement of its rules and regulations, whenever in the opinion of the board the public health of the city requires. To fix the number of such police and the duration of their service and to have the exclusive control and direction of them. The mayor shall detail police from the regular police force or make new appointments in order to provide a sanitary police force, and upon the expiration of the need for such a force the members thereof shall be returned to duty as regular policemen, or, if newly appointed, be dismissed as the mayor may direct, but no permanent increase of the police force shall be made thereby unless council so ordains.
(6) To publish and enforce its rules and regulations.
(7) To provide for or cooperate in providing for general and gratuitous vaccination, disinfection and other public health control programs, and likewise to make available medical relief in such ways as in its opinion will benefit the public health.
(8) To certify to council expenditures in excess of council's appropriations therefor, necessarily incurred by the board by reason of an epidemic, or upon approval of council, for any other immediate and serious peril to public health. Council shall thereupon appropriate sufficient money to meet such additional expenditures.
(9) To prevent, abate or remove conditions found by it to be detrimental to the public health as public nuisances, or to declare and certify to council such conditions and the premises or ways or places harboring them to be public nuisances.
(10) To prescribe regulations for the erection or operation of bone boiling establishments or of repositories of dead animals in the city, and in accordance therewith, to permit or refuse to permit such erections or operations within the city. Any person who shall erect or operate any such establishment or repository in the city without the permission of the board of health, or in violation of its regulations pertaining thereto, shall forfeit and pay to the city the sum of three hundred dollars for every such offense, and the like amount for each month's continuance thereof, to be collected by an action before an alderman of the city, and shall also be subject to indictment for the common law offense of creating and maintaining a nuisance. Nothing herein shall limit the remedies of injunction or abatement as to any such establishment.
(11) To determine whether or not the keeping or slaughtering of stock animals or fowls in or about any dwelling or part thereof, or in the yard, lot or adjoining property of any such building within the city or parts thereof, is or may become detrimental to the public health. Council may prohibit any such keeping or slaughtering which the board certifies to it as detrimental, or the board may issue permits in accordance with regulations adopted by it for the keeping of such animals or fowls within the city or parts thereof. No such permit shall extend beyond the calendar year within which it was issued, and the fee for each permit shall be one dollar.
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