16 Grant County employees back to full-time thanks to new funding
By Logan Bagett on Thursday, October 6th, 2022 in Eastern/Southeast Oregon News More Top Stories
CANYON CITY – 16 “full-time” employees that work under General Fund dollars for Grant County have recently been put back on full-time, after having 20% of their hours cut at the beginning of the fiscal year due to budget shortfalls.
On Wednesday in Grant County Court, Commissioners Hamsher and Palmer passed a motion to use recently awarded federal moneys from the Local Assistance and Tribal Consistency Fund. Grant County is slated to receive $2,181,600 each year over the next two years, totaling $4,463,200.
In addition to getting people for the county back to work on Fridays, Commissioner Hamsher said the funds could help the county in case this happens again in the future:
“One other nice thing about this fund is there’s no timeline on when it has to be spent. If we’re frugal with this, we could make this money last quite a few years and help with any kind of budget shortfalls.”
County Court Administrator Laurie Cates noted the motion Wednesday to reinstate the employee hours went into effect immediately, but the County Court realizes that some employees may have already made plans for Friday based on the previous schedule. It’ll be at the departments’ discretion whether they are open this Friday; but normal 40-hour-per-week operations will resume on Monday at the courthouse.
