It looks like things are going to get bad again for the workers of St. Lucie County. They are going to have to endure another wave of job cuts that will put a drain on the effectiveness of the services they can offer to the community around them. Thankfully this time the cuts are relatively light in terms of numbers, but considering that they span only one department the cuts have the potential to impact the speed and effectiveness of the services offered by the department.

The department to take the cuts is going to be the circuit court, as they were put out of a job the St. Lucie County Clerk this week. The job cuts are only set to impact 10 people, but the loss of those employees will also mean a reduction in the overall hours that the office is open. This combination means it may be harder for residents to get in touch with the office and transact their normal business. The office will be cutting off one hour of public operations time at the beginning of the day and then they will be cutting another hour off of the end of the operating day. That means the company will only be allowing the public to visit the facility from 9 AM to 4 PM, instead of the previous 8 AM to 5 PM.

Of course this is not the first time that the city of St. Lucie has made job cuts that have had an impact on the surrounding community. Some of you may have missed the coverage about how the cuts to the county’s services have reduced the effectiveness of its first responders, “… slower response to the non-emergency calls due to the termination of 24 police officers from their jobs. As per the article, more than half of the officers have returned to office. Few police officers have been moved from criminal investigations to road patrol. Response for the non emergency calls like complaints related to traffic, neighborhood disputes and quality of life are slow due to the reduction of staff.”

Of course the situation could be much worse for the courts. In the city of LA the job cuts have been much worse. For those of you who missed out on our earlier coverage here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed in no time at all, “I t looks like things are going to get a lot worse in the city of Los Angeles then it will before things get better, at least in terms of budgets and jobs that is. The city has decided that it needs to make some job cuts to its court system in a big way. The city is getting ready to be rid of, or otherwise impact 431 workers in a bid to cut back on their spending. The impact will come in three forms. The first will be layoffs. The second will be forced cuts to the workers pay. The third will be the forcible transfer of the workers as they are moved out of facilitates that are going to be closed…. getting ready to cut loose 669 workers from the city payroll.”

The impacted workers will not be given a severance package of any kind. The majority of the workers to be cut came from records department and other clerical positions with in the department. This, along with the reduced hours, may impact the speed with which filings and other court paperwork go through.