PORT ANGELES — Clallam County must lay off 30 workers to balance a $2.4 million budget shortfall in 2012, County Administrator Jim Jones recommended Tuesday.
Thirty layoffs is 7.8 percent of the county’s 385½-member workforce.
Jones said he arrived at his recommendation after the eight unions that represent county employees refused to accept a one-year waiver on a pre-negotiated 3 percent cost-of-living pay increase or bargain for a 10 percent reduction in salaries in the form of 24 unpaid furlough days.
“If the unions would agree to that, we would not lay off anybody this year,” Jones said in a public workshop on his budget recommendations at the county courthouse Tuesday evening.
“We would still be about $800,000 short in being able to completely eliminate the shortfall if that had happened, but we would make up the $800,000. That was a reasonable use of reserves, which would buy us time to look for other ways to raise that revenue, perhaps in the form of a small public safety tax.”
Jones is required by county charter to present a balanced budget to commissioners and the public the first Tuesday in October.
His recommended budget has $30.4 million in expenses and $30.4 million in revenues in the general fund.
“Some way or another, we would go out to the voters and ask them,” Jones said.
“But the idea was there was to be no layoffs, and that was critically important to the commissioners.”
Jones described the prospect of cutting 30 jobs in this economy as “devastating.”
“There is no place for these people to go,” he said.
Clallam County has eliminated 29 positions in the past two years, mostly through attrition, while tightening its belt and drawing on some of the reserves that it built up in better economic times.
The projected budget deficit would pull the reserve fund below $7 million.
Jones has said a minimum reserve is needed to pay for urgent capital replacement projects like replacing the 12-year-old core computer system at a cost of more than $1 million.
Jones said the bad economy has taken its toll on the investment interest the county receives. Interest income has dropped from about $2.5 million in 2008 to a projected $200,000 next year — and it isn’t expected to come back.
“I don’t believe the economy is going to turn around anytime soon,” Jones said.
“We’ve reached the end, in my opinion, of the use of reserves as a bridge to a better day because we don’t think the better day is coming.”
Other public workshops on Jones’ recommended budget — and presentation on the six-year transportation plan — are scheduled for 6 p.m. today at Forks City Hall, 500 E. Division St., and Thursday at 6 p.m. at the Sequim unit of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula, 400 W. Fir St.
Beginning Friday, commissioners will meet in open sessions with elected officials and department heads to look for new revenue sources or find other cuts to make.
Most of the layoffs in Jones’ recommendation are midlevel supervisor positions. Most, but not all, are union members, he said.
The recommended budget includes 26 unpaid furlough days for Jones and each of the three commissioners.
Commissioners will approve a final budget Dec. 6 after a round of public hearings.
The unions reopened the bargaining in a group meeting with county officials Sept. 12, Human Resources Director Marge Upham said.
Commissioner Steve Tharinger said he was disappointed that the unions wouldn’t agree to the county’s counteroffer to prevent layoffs.
“I find that unconscionable,” Tharinger said.
Clallam County has six unions affiliated with Local 1619 of AFSCME — the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
These unions represent patrol deputies, patrol sergeants, Corrections deputies, Corrections sergeants, limited commission employees of the Sheriff’s Office, and managers, supervisors and professional employees, Upham said.
Teamsters represent county road and court employees.
A prosecutors association represents the deputy prosecutors.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
