WENATCHEE — A work flow chart is pinned to the wall above Bill Bailey’s desk in the Chelan County Community Development Department, with his name on top and two dozen employees fanning out below it.

For the last few weeks, Bailey has been working on a new chart, this time on a dry-erase board. He has drawn and erased a number of scenarios as he tries to figure out how to run an office that has lost half its people to budget cuts in the last year and a half.

Perhaps more than any other Chelan County department, Community Development is feeling the harsh impacts the downturned economy is having on county government. Layoffs began with the building industry decline in mid-2008 and continue with five more people losing their jobs this month.

In all, the department will have shrunk from a high of 33 employees midway through last year to 17.5 by Jan. 1.

Some people in the community are now suggesting that the department be eliminated altogether and planning services be contracted out to private consultants, Bailey said. Last month, Sheriff Mike Harum included Community Development in a list of what he called nonessential government services that should no longer be funded by the county.

“I have a department to run and I stay focused on that,” Bailey said. “But it’s been tough.”

Outside Bailey’s second-floor corner office, a number of desks sit vacant. A few desks down, flanked by empty cubicles, planner Lilith Yanagimachi works on plan reviews. She is now the county’s only long-range planner.

“I try to stay focused on what needs to be done,” she said.

Bailey said the Community Development Department was humming along at peak levels through 2007 and into 2008. New construction, remodels, subdivisions, building inspections and other building-related applications were at a 10-year high.

But by the middle of 2008, “it was like things hit a wall,” Bailey said. “Everything just stopped.”

At the time, Bailey was an assistant planning director in Yakima and was laid off. He was hired by Chelan County earlier this year after Director John Guenther resigned.

By the end of 2008, a planner, a building inspector and a code enforcement officer were laid off, and another six positions were not filled when people left.

Yanagimachi said department officials warned employees to update their resumes and “pad our savings accounts.” She said she also worked on increasing her credentials to improve her job security.

A crash in sales tax revenues in early 2009 prompted countywide budget cuts in July, when Bailey laid off another planner and moved one person to part time.

Heading into the 2010 budget planning this fall, Bailey said he was confident he could retain his current staff and weather the economy until the building industry started to recover.

But faced with a $2 million hole in the 2010 budget, the commissioners asked Bailey to cut another $338,000. That meant more layoffs.

In order to decide who to lay off, Bailey said, “I had to use numbers — planner 1, planner 2, like that. I couldn’t use names. It was too hard.”

In the end, he chose to lay off two more planners, two permit technicians and the position that was cut to half-time in July. Two other positions were reduced to half time.

With his pared-down staff, Bailey said he worries about meeting state-mandated deadlines for processing permits. He said his office is already contracting out some work to meet deadlines.

But they are limited in how much they can contract. He said state law requires counties to have a building official, a planning official and a state Environmental Policy Act official to oversee permit approvals. “Someone at the county has to be responsible for those things,” he said.

Bailey said he expects 2010 to be similar to this year in permit applications and building activity. But he said several developers are ready to build once the economy picks up. He said there are at least 1,000 lots in the county that are ready for residential construction.

“I think we will be back to our 10-year average (for permits) in 2011,” he said.

In the meantime, he said, “I’m scraping to hold on to every single person that I can.”

Michelle McNiel: 664-7152

mcniel@wenatcheeworld.com