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County lays off workers as building permits plummet

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By Josh Sweigart, Staff Writer Updated 9:38 AM Wednesday, March 10, 2010

HAMILTON — Once one of the fastest growing counties in Ohio, Butler County now can’t find enough work to justify the size of its building department staff.

The county announced plans this week to lay off three workers on April 2 from its building division in the department of development: a building inspector, electrical inspector and clerical worker.

This is because building permit requests have plummeted in recent years. New single family housing permits dropped from a high of 1,542 in 2004 to just 355 last year. And officials don’t see an uptick coming soon.

“People are having significant downtime, so we thought it was time to make some changes, unfortunately,” said Michael Juengling, department director.

Juengling estimates the layoffs will save the county more than $100,000 a year, though “it wasn’t a budget cut, per se. It was a lack of work.”

As the tide of permits steadily dropped over the past five years to a low of 349 in 2008, Juengling said his staff was able to catch up on work left from the boom years. But they eventually ran out of stuff to do.

Through February this year, Juengling said his department has processed only 35 single family home building permits, “which is about on pace for ’08 and ’09.”