INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — A year after Sheriff’s Office employees got a $1,000 bonus in lieu of raises from retiring Sheriff Roy Raymond, current Sheriff Deryl Loar is expected to give at least some of them a bigger bonus, as much as $1,600 each.

It’s the product of an unusual situation, sheriff’s Comptroller Harry Hall said Monday. He said he expects to have $747,000 unspent at the end of the month.

Some of the savings, he said, came from budgeting $3.48 per gallon last fall for patrol cars’ gasoline and seeing prices drop to $1 less. And there haven’t been as many jail inmates hospitalized, he added.

“It’s like the planets all lined up,” Hall said. “It’s unrealistic to think this can continue (in future years).”
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Since her employer began closing on Fridays, Dawn Gilmore has turned her photography hobby into a money-making business that is helping to offset her lost income.

Without a lot of new real estate development, business has been slow for the Houston Cuozzo Group, a landscape design firm in Stuart. After laying off one-third of the staff of 18 last year, the firm started closing on alternate Fridays last September as a way to reduce workers’ hours and cut costs. In March, the firm started closing every Friday.

Across the Treasure Coast, many residents who have avoided layoffs are facing reduced hours — which means less money in their wallets. Some are spending their new-found spare time with family, home improvement projects or hobbies. Others are looking for ways to make up the lost income, such as a side business or a second job.
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MARTIN COUNTY — The typical long-time Martin County homeowner would pay $94 more in county property taxes in 2010 under a budget proposal released Wednesday.

Acting County Administrator Tary Kryzda proposed setting the property tax rate at $7.98 per $1,000 of assessed value for the budget year starting Oct. 1.

That represents an increase of 75 cents per $1,000 of assessed value, or about 10 percent, compared to this year.

However, the county would still collect $141 million in property taxes in 2010, the same as this year, because the overall value of the county’s real estate declined by 10 percent, Kryzda said. (more…)

STUART — Martin County’s lowest-paid workers will keep fighting the county’s furlough program because they can’t afford a 5 percent pay cut, a union leader said Tuesday.

Teamsters Local 769, which represents 275 of the county’s clerical and blue collar workers, will ask the Public Employees Relations Commission to resolve the contract dispute through binding arbitration, said Mavis Curley, the union’s chief steward in Martin County.

The furlough program requiring all county employees, except fire rescue workers, to take one unpaid day off per month starting Friday violates the Teamsters contract, Curley said. Under the contract, a workweek is 40 hours.
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Employees at Pratt & Whitney in Northern Palm Beach County will receive five days off, without pay, as the parent company of both Pratt and Sikorsky Aircraft lowered its 2009 profit forecast and announced that 11,600 workers will be laid off in 2009.

Pratt’s portions of the sprawling facility along the Beeline Highway in Northern Palm Beach County will be shut down, along with all Hartford, Conn.-based United Technologies Corp.’s Pratt & Whitney locations in the United States, on April 13, May 22, Sept. 4, Oct. 12 and Nov. 25.

“The furlough program is a part of our overall efforts to reduce costs with a focus on ensuring a strong future for the company, our employees, customers and shareowners,” the company released in a statement.

The moves, part of an expanded $750 million restructuring program because of the deteriorating commercial aerospace market, are being driven by a decline in expected revenue, which is now seen totaling $55 billion this year, down $2.7 billion from a December estimate.

Besides the furlough days, Pratt & Whitney has limited hiring, decreased the use of contract and temporary personnel, cut back on travel and deferred merit pay increases for 2009. (more…)

STUART — Business is down so much in the Martin County Courthouse that Court Clerk Marsha Ewing said Monday she may have to resort to layoffs in her 15-person office.

“I’m hoping and I’m praying that it doesn’t come to it, but it’s very possible that it will come to layoffs if things don’t turn around,” Ewing said.

Ewing said she rescinded a 3 percent pay raise in January and required all workers to take an unpaid day off each month in response to the downturn in filings that has reduced fee payments by nearly $600,000 compared to last year. (more…)

Slumping aircraft sales are prompting more furloughs at Piper Aircraft Inc.’s headquarters in Vero Beach.

The plane maker announced today that it would shut down the plant at the Vero Beach Municipal Airport for one week in May and one week in June, forcing all employees to take unpaid leave.

The furloughs are in addition to week-long plant closures planned for April and July, which Piper announced earlier this month. (more…)

VERO BEACH — Eight months after the state promised Piper Aircraft Inc. $32 million to keep its headquarters in Vero Beach, the plane maker has laid off 300 workers and plans to halt production for two weeks this year.

Piper made the job cuts Tuesday, pointing to “a deepening global recession” that has eroded aircraft sales. No severance packages were offered to the employees, most of whom were production-line workers.

“We can’t keep a full workforce on at this point when people aren’t buying planes,” company spokesman Mark Miller said.

The pink slips come on the heels of 150 layoffs that Piper announced last month. When those cuts were executed, most of the remaining workers were put on four-day workweeks.

In another move to slash costs, Piper will close its plant for a week in April and another in July, furloughing all workers, including executives. (more…)