Four employees in the Coos County Planning Department will lose their jobs in January. The county blamed the layoffs on a big drop in construction and development.

Administrators presented the Coos County Board of Commissioners with options to close the gap between a lack of revenue and costs of running the department. Among those were cutting office hours, cutting employee hours to 32 hours a week or eliminating two and a half positions.

When Coos County commissioner and department liaison Nikki Whitty sat down with county administrators following a budget work session on Dec. 16, they found those options didn’t cut enough.

“That just didn’t pencil down as far as we needed,” Whitty said.

Planning Director Patty Evernden said the positions they cut include cartographer, planning technician, planner and office specialist. Eliminating the jobs will save the department about $17,000 per month, Whitty said.

The department is completely fee driven and expected to run independent of county support. The commissioners finalized that arrangement early in 2008 by taking the department out of the county’s general fund. Whitty said service fees covered the department’s operations until this year when revenue trickled downward with the economy. So far this fiscal year, which started July 1, the department has had to ask the commissioners for two loans — one in September for $53,000 and another this month for $35,000 — to cover expenses.

“That’s really a direct result of the economy — no developing and no money coming in,” Comm-issioner Kevin Stufflebean said.

If the planning department continues to run without budget cuts, administrators project it would end the year $43,000 in the red, not including the $35,000 loan approved on Dec. 16. Even with cuts, the department still would not have had enough revenue to make to the end of the fiscal year in the black, Evernden said.

Whitty said the employees’ last day will be Jan. 5. The layoffs could be temporary. If work picks up again, Evernden will offer the employees their jobs back. Whitty hopes the situation changes soon enough that the county won’t have to hire people lacking the experience of those employees lost.

For now, three people, including Evernden, will run the entire department.

“We will have to absorb those duties,” Evernden said.

The work load is light these days. Still, Evernden is asking people to call ahead to either get the information they need over the phone or to schedule appointments to assure timely service.

“You want to make sure you have them covered when they come in,” she said.