PORT ANGELES — Balancing the 2004 county budget will likely require employee layoffs, but the county administrator predicts fewer employees will lose their jobs than in 2003.
“We just don’t have the mechanism to sustain our services,” Dan Engelbertson said Tuesday, after releasing the county’s 192-page 2004 preliminary budget.
Mechanism, in this case, is Engelbertson’s term for revenue.
Engelbertson said the baseline budget includes a general fund budget deficit of almost $500,000, compared to the starting point of $1.2 million deficit last year that grew to $1.8 million after department “essential services” requests and capital projects were figured.
Clallam County commissioners in late December approved a $60.3 million 2003 budget after 25 county positions were eliminated, 22 county employees were laid off and six jobs were cut to part-time.
The baseline budget Engelbertson proposes for 2004: $54.07 million for all county departments.
——————–
The rest of the story appears in Wednesday’s Peninsula Daily News Clallam County edition.