PORT ANGELES — The Clallam County assessor’s office is continuing its reduction in customer service hours for another month following a personnel layoff during the 2024 budget cuts.
The office will be open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday through May 22. It will be closed on Friday.
During those 30 days, County Administrator Todd Mielke said the county will engage in a larger discussion regarding courthouse hours and how to adequately provide customer service to the public.
The assessor’s office first asked to decrease its customer service hours in January after the county cut the budgets of each of its 18 departments. During that process, the county laid off an individual who processed senior citizen and disabled exemptions and served as the primary point of contact for counter and phone inquiries.
“We’ve been cut to the bone in our office,” county Assessor Pam Rushton said. “It wasn’t a good idea to cut that position.”
For almost 10 years, Rushton said the office has been functioning with about 18.5 full-time employees. Now, the department is running at 17.25, with two half-time employees and 16 full-time employees.
“This [layoff] was a huge hit to our office,” she said.
To deal with the loss of the specialist, duties were redistributed among the remaining staff. Administrative and mapping staff were assigned to assist with processing applications on top of their regular duties, one appraiser has been reassigned to help the backlog and another appraiser trainee will be reassigned to scan completed applications, according to a county commissioners’ agenda summary.
The office also scaled back its customer service hours on a temporary three-month basis.
However, while that period allowed staff time to catch up on the backlog of emails and phone calls, it was not enough time to process most of the paperwork. Rushton said there are still about 500 senior citizen and disabled exemption applications that need to be processed.
The delay may result in some qualifying seniors receiving April tax bills that will be adjusted later, according to the agenda summary. If that happens frequently, it could impact taxing districts’ ability to receive expected revenues.
“It’s becoming a bigger problem than it was in January,” Rushton said. “We’re just buried — and the more buried you get, the more inquiries you get.”
The decreased manpower also has affected Current Use assessments, Personal Property evaluations, property segregations, processing recorded documents, updating maps, interpreting legal documents and supporting Board of Equalization and Board of Tax Appeals processes, according to the agenda summary.
“We just don’t have the workforce to do the work,” Rushton said.
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Reporter Emma Maple can be reached by email at emma.maple@peninsuladailynews.com.
