Lee County delays layoffs: Deficit left with department heads

DIXON – Lee County employees have been spared from the chopping block – at least for now.

County board members have been facing the possibility of a 2010 budget deficit for months. Proposed solutions have ranged from layoffs to mandatory unpaid furlough days to pay freezes.

The board settled the matter – barely, with a 16-12 vote – at this week’s meeting. Its decision? Leave it up to department heads.

“They’ve got all next year to decide how they’re going to make that bottom line work,” Finance Committee Chairman Rick Ketchum said. “If they run out of money before next Nov. 30, they’re going to have to lay people off.”

Until then, Ketchum said, reductions in the bottom line might be achieved through furloughs, pay freezes, layoffs, decreased hours, or a combination of those.

The alternative was across-the-board layoffs, he said.

“Our hope was that we not lay employees off, that [department heads] would just take some time to make the budget work,” Ketchum said. “The [board members] that voted no, they just wanted to start knocking two or three people out of every department now.”

Jim Seeberg, chairman of the executive committee, thinks most of the department heads will use furlough days instead.

“Most of them, we’ve already put them on their day off,” Seeberg said.

Even with the cuts in salary expenses, the budget has a projected deficit of about $1.5 million – the same as it had this year. The county will rely on its cash balance to get through 2010, Ketchum said.

“We’re not broke; we’ll have a cash balance next year,” he said. “But it’s getting lower every year. I’d say we’ve got another 7 years or so before we run out.”