The city of Kent will lay off 10 employees in January because of declining revenues in order to balance the 2012 budget.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Kent Mayor Suzette Cooke announced the layoffs in a Wednesday media release. Two employees also will be moved to open positions in other departments and three employees will have hours reduced.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cBesides these 10 employees, an additional 20 vacant positions are also being eliminated.\u201d Cooke said. \u201cThese reductions, plus additional new non-personnel cuts, are expected to save the city approximately $640,000.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
With the exception of Employee Services, the city\u2019s human resources function, staff reductions occurred in every department, including police and the mayor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Cooke said the personnel cuts will result in some reduced operating hours and a range of service impacts that will be analyzed in more detail as the City Council enters its final budget deliberations.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The council will vote on adoption of the 2012 budget at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 13 at City Hall.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThis unprecedented recession continues to strain our ability to provide the quality of services our residents expect,” Cooke said. “I wish to thank all city employees for their commitment and expertise. We are weathering these difficult times as well as we are, thanks to the hard work and dedication of each and every employee.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Department directors notified the 10 employees they will be laid off effective Jan. 12, Cooke said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This round of personnel reductions is in addition to the elimination of 90 positions since the recession began. Other steps taken by city officials to align expenditures with declining revenues have included delaying or canceling dozens of capital projects and reducing or eliminating funding for various programs and contract agencies.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, these latest cuts are unlikely to be enough in light of proposed reductions to state-shared revenues as the Legislature attempts to deal with the state\u2019s budget challenges,” Cooke said. “We\u2019ll know more as the 2012 session gets underway.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
City positions cut<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n (10 laid off, 2 left vacant, 2 transferred)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u2022 Economic Community Development administrative assistant<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u2022 Park facilities planning coordinator<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u2022 Parks program coordinator<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u2022 Information tech senior systems analyst<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u2022 Public works fleet mechanic<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u2022 Public works fleet maintenance worker<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u2022 Public works maintenance worker (vegetation)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u2022 Code enforcement officer<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u2022 Building inspector<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u2022 Police accreditation coordinator<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u2022 Police public education specialist<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u2022 Police records specialist<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u2022 Senior finance officer<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u2022 Crime victim coordinator<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The city of Kent will lay off 10 employees in January because of declining revenues in order to balance the 2012 budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-16789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16789"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16789"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=16789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}