Another Day - Another Dollar

The budget crisis at work is really bad. (as it is everywhere) The judges and other elected officials involved in the justice system have been meeting nearly every day for the last several weeks and recently the meetings are twice a day to come up with a plan to deal with the budget crisis. The county department heads and elected officials submitted to the Commissioners (BOCC) on Tuesday where they thought they could make more cuts. (They were mandated to make an additional 10% cut to this year's budget to cover the $4million shortfall - which on top of the 10% cut they made in December (39 layoffs and a lot of services pared back) which in addition to the 5-10%reduced budget that was submitted in September.) It is scary times my friends. Scary times!! I can't even begin to tell you all that I hear, but most is very very bad and still confidential! But what is public knowledge is that the unemployment rate for February in Cowlitz County was up another percent to 14.4% nearly double what it was last February.

There are so many rumors running rampant that I won't even begin to describe them. Most I ignore. Some I listen to and a few hold a lot of weight and I take to heart. Consistently, the number that keeps surfacing over the last month or so is that 80 county employees will lose their jobs this Spring. I think we will also be asked to take a day without pay at least every pay period. (The issue will be whether the many different unions decide to go for the greater good and help save their co-workers jobs or if they get greedy as individuals and won't agree to the furloughs.) The last thing this county needs is another 80 houses going into foreclosure and not receiving any property taxes for it. I hope they go for the greater good.

The strategy I employ to deal with all this stress and uncertainity is to keep my head down, help out where ever I can ,and realize that all of this is out of my control. There is NOTHING I can do about it! (either I will have a job at the end of the month, or I won't) So I have been doing what I can to control the things I can. (Let's see this week, the carpets were shampooed, the floors scrubbed, massive amounts of laundry done, closets are getting cleaned out....) If this continues for much longer, I figure I'll have the cleanest house in Cowlitz County.