PORT ANGELES — Clallam County government may have smooth skating through 2007, but a big hole in the ice looms in 2008, County Administrator Jim Jones said Monday.
With nearly two-thirds of county spending going to salaries, wages, benefits and retirement funds, employees are likely to take the cold bath, he said.
“County government here in Clallam County has some problems,” Jones, county administrator since July 3, told the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce during its weekly luncheon meeting in the CrabHouse Restaurant.
He said he would recommend that county commissioners adopt a 2007 budget that has a $1.4 million shortfall in the general fund — to be made up from reserves — and hope the Legislature grants some form of relief to the state’s 39 counties.
Jones, formerly chief financial officer for Port Angeles schools, said he had approached the situation thinking cuts would be easy to find.
Then he discovered, he joked, that “there’s no schools to close. Now what do we do?”
The Port Angeles School Board is considering closing Fairview Elementary School to offset $900,000 in revenue lost to dwindling enrollment.