County Manager George Wood notified department heads this morning that the County will need to implement furloughs of five days for all County employees except for the Department of Social Services.
The cutbacks will be phased in over the 8 bi-weekly pay periods remaining in this fiscal year ending June 30th. These steps are necessary to meet the revenue shortfalls in sales taxes, building permits, and Register of Deeds filings in the County.
"Neither the Board of Commissioners nor I wanted to have to take this step, but it is necessary to deal with the continuing decline in some of our major revenue sources. We have tried to phase it in over the remaining 16 weeks so that it does not impact any one paycheck of our employees. This will also minimize the disruptions in our daily operations. Our management team recognizes that we are in a very difficult economic climate, with 10.4% unemployment and declining revenues. We have to make difficult decisions to live within our available income, just as our citizens are having to do within their family budgets."