Sonoma County Weights and Measures Department

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to live, work and play as we move into the 21st century. Led by the forward looking philosophy of its governing bodies. Sonoma County's 340,000 residents are a harmonious, successful blend of ethnic and economic backgrounds. We invite you to take a closer look at Sonoma County in

the nineties with your host Rich McGlinchey, How you doing everybody? Welcome to Sonoma County in the nineties on this program, We're gonna be talking to Ray Sandretto and Ray is the chief deputy stealer of both Sonoma County and for the time being napa county and he'll

explain a little bit more about that a little later. I've known Ray for a long time as our member of the Sonoma County weights and measures department and he has been the chief deputy sealer for many years. Um, before we actually start talking to Ray Sandretto

and the importance of weights and measures and believe me it is really important. Let us call your attention to the artwork on our set today. Give you a little background about that. The work is by pencil master Sherry Warburton. Now Sherry was born in santa rosa

and attended local schools. She studied art but she's also self taught and she continues to seek additional training with private artists and teachers. She has shown her work extensively throughout Sonoma County and is rapidly gaining a reputation elsewhere in the state for her fine work and

Sherry. We thank you for sharing these great pieces of work with us. Ray, how on earth are you? Haven't seen you for a while and you've undertaken additional duties. You're not only the sealer for Sonoma County, but you also the senior for napa county chief deputy

sealer, but right. But yeah, we have a contract with napa county to provide sealer duties over napa county. You know, going way back with you when you worked with jean, the late gene bologna and we had gene visit with this many, many times and when I

gained out of that talking with him or those visits, I guess I should say was the extreme importance of weights and measures and all of our lives and something that really very few people realize. And I think maybe we get into the questions and answers is

today we'll be able to show a little bit what exactly does the office of weights and measures do? Um, it sounds like a long story. Just sounds like a large storage facility for weights measures or something like that. But what do you really do? Well, our

office has the primary responsibility for equity in the marketplace, ensure equity in the marketplace and, and we do this in a number of ways. Uh, first of all, we'll check all commercially used weighing and measuring devices used in the county. In addition to seeing it there

correctly used? We will test packages for quantity statements, proper quantity. Uh We'll check over the counter transactions, verify that those are correct. We have uh we monitor all the way masters in the county and and also we test the petroleum products and we do this in

in in uh we have several different programs. We have four different programs actually Device program where we test some 7000 devices annually for uh accuracy and we ensure that they're used properly on the quantity control side. We have a quantity control program that includes a test

purchase program where we go in and and make over the counter purchases to make sure those transactions are proper. We we test scanners to make sure that they're correctly used. Uh and the results are proper. We also um test packages for the proper content. And we

checked many thousands of packages on the petroleum program. We actually checked petroleum quality in addition to uh price signs and labeling. Um How often are the weights and measuring devices checked? First of all, I think it's very, very important that we comment on what you just

said. And then ladies and gentlemen, I address this to you. You stop and think of the things he talked about testing a few moments ago. You realize that those are things that we are dealing with buying every day and if somebody doesn't make sure that we're

getting a fair measure, we're going to get scheduled a little bit and these people make sure we don't. One thing here. How often are you weighing and measuring devices tested for the most part? They're tested annually. Uh, there are a few exceptions with, uh, utility meters,

gas and electric meters have a 10 year test frequency and prescription scales have a two year test frequency. But for the most part, they're tested annually. Now we'll go any time on complaint and or a request from a interested person and in addition to the routine

and testing now, when you go in there to test these things, must those devices be perfect? Know the regulations recognize that nothing in this world is perfect. So they allow for slight deviations in the form of tolerances. Um, generally the tolerance are 2/10 of 1%. As

a rule of thumb, there's a, there's exceptions to that, but it's tradition, This is about as close as you're gonna get because there'll be nebulous and many other circumstances that would contribute to maybe being off just a little bit right. Yeah. All right. What kind of

penalties are imposed for violations of the things you've been telling us about? The majority of the weights and measures violations are misdemeanors and that involves a penalty of the maximum penalty of $500 or six months in jail. In addition to that there are violations of unfair

business practices, which could bring civil penalties of many hundreds of thousands of dollars. It can be really, well, that could be really expensive. Yeah, it could be better in here to the right Electric and gas meters. Do you check PG and E meters? No, we don't

test PG and E meters, but we test the electric sub meters and that's in primarily mobile home parks and, and marinas where the master meter is the meter that the park buys over and then they submitted to each individual location and we, it's those locations that

we test for accuracy. Let me ask you a question aside from, I didn't have it written down, but why would you not check PG and E meters? Is that done some other way or when the legislation went through years ago, it was approved that we had

the jurisdiction over that. But PG and E has their own testing facility and, and they do a fine job. And, and so it wasn't necessary that you don't need additional work if it isn't necessary. If they're doing a, you know, a reputable and honest job. Why

should you put your oar in there? We don't have the facilities to do all there. So yeah, I can believe it in the manpower. Well, you're, you, you both Sonoma County and napa County, the fact that they've joined and they're asking you to serve in both

capacities indicates the lack of funds to some degree, I think, doesn't it? That's part of it. Yes. Yes. That the uh, the financial condition that the counties are in nowadays, uh, it's it's beneficial to both counties to, to have have Sonoma County assist over there and

sealer services. Ray, tell me about these scanners. We mentioned this. Uh, what do you do with them? With the, with the, with the scanners? Uh, well with the scanners, what we do is we go into an establishment and uh, either randomly or specifically zero in on

certain commodities, run them across the scanner and find out if they're, if they're properly priced. Now, if they're, if they're not, then we, in addition to taking proper enforcement action, we will put that establishment on an increased frequency of inspection and and check them more frequently.

Uh, keep in mind that scanners aren't only used by grocery stores but they're used by many types of establishments. And at one time or another we will get to all of them to check them all. One of the kind of places would use scanners. I'm not

familiar. What do you use use stores like department stores or video stores. Absolutely. Many types of stores use scanners that they would indeed, they would. What about this is really important to people that are in the audience right now. What about packaged commodities? Must the net

content labeling be exactly perfect. Or is there a little alleyway allowed there to, there was a time that that when you bought a package, whatever it said on the package had to be exact. And that's true for the most part nowadays. But the courts have, have

ruled that we must allow for a moisture loss that occurs normally during good distribution practices. And for packages that are packaged elsewhere, we must allow that the rationale being, they were accurate when they were packed and the moisture loss was unavoidable. And therefore we must allow

for for that on certain food items. Let's take a package of whatever cornstarch let's say and it says such and such a thing there. What is the maximum allowance that you would vary before you would criticize? Well, it varies from, from type of commodity. The specifics

here. Okay, so they have, the poultry has a 3% gray area. They call it a gray area where it may or may not have lost moisture due to good distribution practices. So then we need to check further to see if if those good distribution practices really

occurred before we accept or reject it. And most of our package inspection program is based on an average concept anyway, on a particular lot. There can be some shortages provided there over ridges to compensate. And so it's based on the, on the average concept. Do you

have anything to do with deceptive packaging? What do we mean by this? And then what do you do about it? Yes, we do. We also look for deceptive or slack fill packaging. Um, before we decide whether it's deceptive or slack filled? We must first find out

if we can, what the reason might be for that? It could come from, um, a package being larger than necessary due to type size requirements. And so the package has to be, a small package may have to be larger to fit the proper type side. This

requires, it may be due to settling, like in the case of cereals that that occur naturally. Uh, so we, and then we did decide whether the competition is, uh, is maybe this particular one we're looking at maybe extraordinarily large compared to the competition. And we needed

to look at all those factors. And then if we decide that it is deceptively packaged, then we go further with it. Well, I won't mean the product, but I buy a certain thing that comes in a almost a quart sized plastic can like this. And it

says on there, I think £1 so many ounces, you know, and it weighs £1. Somebody else's usually just almost. Exactly. That would be net weight. I guess that would be the product should be wait. Yeah. Well, when you open the thing, it's about this high, which

was about five or 6" and it's about that far from the top. Now it's heavy and it packs and we shake it up a little bit, that comes up a little bit. But is there a possibility? I won't mention this from, from the standpoint of putting

cast an explosion on it. But does that mean that there's not enough in there? Well it's it's possible that it could be deceptively your slack field, separately packaged or slack field. But if you could bring that to our attention we can look into it and find

out because there are reasons for some of some products to be less than the capacity. Well if it says you know like the package weighs seven ounces and they're supposed to be a pound in there then it's a pound £1.07 ounces. And if that's the case

fine it might not fill the top. But still the amount of weight is in there, the amount of weight is in there and that's what I want to do is ask that of you and see what you thought about that. Yeah. Just tell us to call

our office. We encourage people to call our office if they suspect something like that and and we will look into it. Alright. Um one of the things down below and I just talk about every year when we were out there was fire wood and firewood was

a real problem back then. I don't know as firewood still a problem and it's still a problem and uh people need to know that when they buy firewood that a cord of wood is 128 cubic feet to the cord? The seller must issue an invoice telling

the his name and address the date of the sale the quantity and the price. And that's mandatory that firewood dealers do that. Even if the consumer doesn't ask for it, it's still our responsibility to issue that invoice and that receipt and that's tightly packed firewood. It's

not loosely thrown or it's not. And it's also shall be in ranked rank, which means all the same direction and not cross stacked when you cross stack firewood, it adds extra airspace and it won't be the proper amount like this. And like that. Right. The log

cabin style and a cord of wood is ranked and okay. Four by four by eight is an easy way to determine 100 and four ft wide. eight ft long. Right? And that would be 100 28 cubic feet. Doesn't have to be the four by four by

eight. But that's a good way to if you were taking it that way. And you measure would would simply doesn't fit itself perfectly. So if it's four ft two inches or 43 ft 10 inches, it could still be a perfect corridor. Well, yeah, what we do

is is we take averages uh, wood is different lengths to its call for 16 inch wood. Some is 14. Summit 17. It's pretty difficult to get exactly 16. So we take numerous dimensions uh measurements and and take averages and determine the cord that way to pause

for a minute. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to take a break here and have the station bring you a public service announcement after which race Sandretto, the chief deputy sealer for both Sonoma and napa county. And I will come back and talk more about weights and

measures and how they protect you First this message, a major contribution of black authors is that they set the record straight about the history of blacks in America. One of the best is Ernest gaines five generations of his family labored and died on a Louisiana plantation

when gaines left, he took the voices of its people and their spirit with him. He introduced them to the world in stories. Lord I missed, we done did it. Hey, we didn't back down 50 years ago. All that most people knew about the southern black experience

was written by whites that history of the south ignored the everyday lives of the african american people. I feel compelled to help fill that gap. Excellence as many faces. Welcome back to this edition of Sonoma County in the nineties were talking to Ray Sandretto who is

the chief deputy sealer of weights and measures for Sonoma County and my contract with napa county. Now Ray and the people he worked with have performed a long time now. Uh, in fact raised business about 30 years. He tells me, but they have been doing their

job, which is checking weights and measures of all the things that we purchased for many years. And I've been doing a great job of it. Uh They have protected us and they saved just a lot of money and we're gonna go on with some of the

things we're talking about. We were talking about firewood when we left and the fact that your predecessor, jean bologna and I used to dwell on this every year because it seems like there was more and more people getting the the business if you will from uh

sort of shyster like wood dealers. What else besides firewood? Do you check deliveries of right? We also check deliveries of shavings and sawdust and uh gravel rocks and gravel. Uh What we will do, we will verify the containers that they might deliver them in. We have

we make undercover purchases when necessary test purchases and uh any product sold by by yardage just about right earlier. You you touched on the subject? Why don't you expand a little bit on your petroleum program? Okay. The petroleum program involves price signs and service stations. They're

required to have the signs, uh the prices posted of the three major grades of uh of motor fuel that they sell. We also test, we check the labeling on the on the dispensers and uh the maybe they might be selling oil or antifreeze, that type of

thing. And then uh we will test their storage tanks for uh contaminated fuel whether it be water or something else. We run uh samples to sacramento and test for that and we may get the state car in to make some test purchases if necessary that where

we can trap the fuel and determine what it is. I don't want to blow the ramp on this thing. But your mysterious chopper or the people that you check out like that go in and and actually make purchases of things that are represented to be thus.

And so, and then you check later and see that that is accurate. Is that correct? That's not correct. You go back and raise a lot. You bet and you know, we don't want to imply that there's a lot of violations out there. For the most part,

the businesses in Sonoma County do a good job of having their skills tested and their meters tested and, and monitoring, Self monitoring. But when there's a problem, we, we respond to it. You folks have always said that, that our county in general is very abide by

the rules and laws quite well. Yes, they do some mistakes. Sure. But not. But what you're saying here really, then as a consumer should be alert and notify your office anytime they feel there's a problem. Is that right? That's correct. They should notify us as soon

as possible, uh, that they determine there's a problem the problem with with motor fuel. Well, for many reasons, but the problem with motor fuel is if they don't notify us as soon as they determine there's a problem then many deliveries are made to that station. And

we, when we sample a station, we need to have a representative sample of what they purchased. Now when they, we can't test their gas tank that the petroleum products in their gas tank because the evidence chain isn't complete. We have to be able to testify that

the sample we get is representative of what's being sold at that station. So the sooner they notify us, the better we can get a representative sample. You get out there and get working on it. What does all this monitoring and verification cost? And who pays for

it? Well, up until a few years ago it was, it cost less than a dollar per capita and came out of the general fund. And then recently we've had to, to put into place a device registration program where the device is uh, people with devices with

one device, there's an annual fee of $20 and it increases upward from their per location. Just recently this year, we've had to increase fees to uh, mobile home parks where they've had electric meters, gas meters and water meters a fee of $1 per meter. Now there's

many hundreds of meters out there and it doesn't come near to offset the cost of testing them. But it helps. And that's the reason for it. The fees that will all counties have had to go to fees of some sort to make up the difference of

loss of revenue from going back to prop 13. It really uh it had many things to recommend it, I'm sure. But it also crucified the county's fiscally and it helps to offset the cost of testing them. Ray, do you receive many complaints each year? We receive

about 300 complaints a year. Uh And and they, yeah and they about the about one third of the complaints is uh is a between firewood and petroleum divided between petroleum and firewood. And then and then another third is uh quantity control type complaints. And the final

third is is everything else from the depth of the firewood to uh the pile of dirt or something? What should the consumer do if they suspect awaits and measure problem. I presume they should contact you right? Yes, they should contact us. And and just pick up

the phone and pick up the phone and call our office and uh and and ask us tell us what the problem is and the sooner the better and we'll respond to their complaint complaints. Our number one priority for us. And and we will respond to complaints.

Now you are now the weights and measures as chief deputy stealer of Sonoma County and napa County on a contract basis. How many people work with you in these two counties? Not too many. Well in in napa county there are two inspectors in in Sonoma County.

We have five inspectors of course then the secretary and the sealer, Erik Larson in Sonoma County, that really isn't many. People know what's the population in Sonoma County is almost 400,000. Getting close to getting close to. What is it? Napa must be 50 isn't it? I'm

not sure in the population in napa. Yeah, it's up there somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 or 50. But when you, when you figure 7000 devices each year and hundreds of thousands of packages, it's a considerable amount of work out there in all your activities in

the two counties. Do you find many problems against consumers? We find that there's just as many problems to the disadvantage of the buyer or the seller. And keep in mind everybody is a consumer at one time or another. So, uh, as I mentioned before Sonoma County

and of course in Napa County to uh, do a good job of, of self monitoring and so we really don't have that many problems out there. That's that's good. That's good to hear. But I was just wondering, you know, if you did have many of them

against consumers, but like you say, everybody's consumer, everybody's a consumer and we find a certain amount of problems, but not that many really. Another thing that comes to mind a lot of people have asked me about this or I talk to people about it. How about

those timing devices now you see those things and car washes, laundry timers. One of them, how accurate are they are? Do they work? Well, what's the story on those they do for the most part and we have the jurisdiction over those as well. And we check

the, the timers on car washes, the vacuums. We check for time, any time that there's a there's a uh advertising on on on on timers. It has to show you how much Time you get for that quarter or for that 75 cents. And there's certain labeling

requirements that that we require and we do that as well. Yes. All right. Getting back to firewood every year. We get back to firewood. There's so many problems or work for years. I don't know what the percentage of problems are today with years ago when we

talked, as I said, we talked to Jeane every year. But what can a person do to protect themselves from being duped in purchasing firewood? Well, first of all, they should uh, the truck that comes out, they should look at the truck if they have an opportunity

to to measure the truck, they should measure it. If it's less than what they've ordered, reject it and call our office if it's if it is proper 128 cubic feet to the cord that still doesn't relieve the deliverer from delivering the proper amount. There might be

something under the pile when it's stacked. It still needs to be the proper amount. Check for invoice, they could, uh, get a, get the drivers or the license on the vehicle jot that down in case we need need that later on. And then, um, um, they

should call our office when there's a problem. And, and you know, one thing that should be suspicious of, if, if the firewood dealer asked for cash, it may not necessarily mean he's not concerned that he's concerned about your ability to pay. And so that's something to

be to watch out for. Um, one thing that has nothing to do with perhaps with your law enforcement aspect of this, but when for people deliver, would, are they supposed to stack it or is that just a deal that you make with them for extra, know

that there's nothing saying that in other words, so that they don't know what I'm saying is you can dump a load like that. They say it's a chord and then when you stack it up, it isn't unfortunately. That's correct. So that's when they should actually differently.

That's why it helps to measure it ahead of time sometimes. Okay. All right. We've got about a minute and some asian, how would you describe your office functions? Well, like I said before, we're, we're primarily concerned with equity in the marketplace and, and anytime money changes

hands from a weight measure account. I didn't mention mention count, but were involved in account as well. Anytime money changes hands, the weight measure account, we get involved. Okay, Ray nice to see you again. And first, nice to have you here visiting with us. You are

doing a good job for both Sonoma County and Napa county. And I commend you for that. Have you back again? Maybe next year And we'll talk about the situation information. Things are changing every year. So we we always have something new to talk about. Ladies and

gentlemen, my guest has been Ray Sandretto chief deputy sealer for Sonoma County and also for napa County by contract. My name is Richmond Program Sonoma County in the nineties. I'll be back with you next week. Another member of the county government family or related agency. Until

then tonight. Good luck. Good health. Each and every one of you.