Riverside County lays off more than 30 employees

32 Riverside County employees in different departments received layoff notices.

According to Ray Smith, the public information officer of Riverside County, two weeks ago four employees in the Supply Division and four employees in the Printing Services Division received layoff notices.

Three more employees from the Printing services division were reassigned within the county but not laid off.

“Most departments no longer need the large print jobs that Printing Services offered. Email, PDFs and documents signed with electronic signatures have replaced print jobs and greatly eliminated the need for paper copies,” said Smith. “Since June 2014, revenue is down 50.6 percent and production of high-speed copies is down 58 percent in Printing Services.”

Layoff notices also were sent last week to 23 Code Enforcement employees and one person in administration in the parent agency, TLMA.

According to Smith, because of the county’s overall deficit, Code Enforcement is being required to reduce its budget by $3 million for unincorporated-area code activities and to reach financial structural balance.

Another reason for the layoffs is that the city of Perris has decided to stop contracting the county for code enforcement services, costing Riverside County $1 million in revenue that paid the costs for employees who worked in Perris.

The Code department attempted to save money by not replacing employees who left or retired, as well as reducing its number of managers, but those saving were not enough to avoid the layoffs.

According to Smith, Code will now focus on priority violations and work quickly to resolve cases and fully recover payment from property owners to cover costs of the code cases and to and reduce impact to the general fund.

The department will prioritize cases and concentrate on health and safety issues. High-priority issues include addressing things like hazardous open trenches, pools without fences, unsafe electrical service in buildings, etc.

Lower-priority reports, such as parking violations or unpermitted patio covers will be acted upon, but will take longer to handle.

The priority level will be assessed when code receives a complaint.

Laid off employees will be placed on the county priority interview list for two years from their layoff date. Those employees have priority interview for all qualified classifications within their bargaining unit.