Many employees are frustrated, concerned about upcoming cuts.

As Bainbridge Island’s administration officials and City Council members hunkered down to debate cost-cutting measures Wednesday, their voices echoed through City Hall from a PA speaker in the main foyer.

While much of their talk focused on obtaining savings in dollar amounts, city staff were all too aware that much of those savings could come at the price of their livelihoods.

It’s a frustration and a debilitating distraction for many who worked within earshot of the day-long proceedings.

“I would say it is tense and it is stressful and very distracting,” said accounting technician Lara Lant. “It’s difficult to plan for the future when you don’t know what is going to happen.”

Many staff members feel overworked, undervalued and unsure of the direction the council will take and where cuts will be made.

“There is certainly a dark cloud in city,” said City Administrator Mark Dombroski. “I meet with employees on a regular basis who are concerned, and there is an apprehension that no one is protected.”

It is not known how much of the identified $3.55 million budgetary gap will be made up through layoffs. Council members seemed to suggest a minimum of $1 million would have to be winnowed from expenditures relating to city staff. Definitive decisions are expected to be made on March 25.

“I can’t even comprehend some of the cuts they’re discussing, It would be a ghost town in City Hall,” said Paul Miller, a city engineer and union shop steward.

Many of the upcoming negotiations for further reductions will have to be hammered out with the two unions that represent most city employees – the Police Guild and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

“I think the unions understand the dire situation, but they feel this idea of cutting staff down is a terrible proposition,” Dombroski said. “The city simply won’t be able to function and if you keep cutting (staff) they will break…eventually they’ll say this is not worth it and they will leave.”

Unionized staff have already made conciliatory moves in light of the city’s financial difficulties, the most high-profile being a two-year, two-week furlough for most employees. But the continued call for further reductions will likely strain city-union relations.

“The employees are pretty frustrated with it,” Miller said. “We had an 80-hour furlough agreement to help keep layoffs off until 2010 and we didn’t get out of January until we had layoffs of union employees.”

Miller said that could make it harder to find support for another unanimous move by union members, such as switching to a four-day work week as proposed by some council members. That may have to be a voluntary measure taken up by individuals.

Also at issue is just how much the city can cut while maintaining a base level of service. During Wednesday’s meeting, department directors discussed their already lean departments and which core programs would be affected by more layoffs and budget reductions.

Directors indicated basic services, from striping the roads to home inspections, could be affected.

“As we are going though this, I am surprised that no big cost savings opportunities jumped out at us,” council member Barry Peters said during a break in the meeting. “We already cut a lot of that in January.”

In that month, council members approved a $2.3 million expenditure reduction, which included the layoff of six city employees.

Part of the goal of those reductions were to achieve a sustainable city structure. Council members like to frame that sustainability in terms of the city’s 2004 employee and service levels. In that year, the city had 134 full-time employees. Today the city has just over 131 FTEs as a result of layoffs and unfilled positions.

“In my view, I think there are going to be layoffs and I think there will be some immediate rehires,” Lant said.

It is a prospect that Dombroski admits may be something the council revisits once revenues stabilize and the scale of service reductions are realized by the community.

“And that’s a very expensive proposition,” he said. “You rarely get the people back that you lay off, and there is a lot of loss in efficiency in that.”

Despite the ongoing uncertainties and frustration at the staff level, department managers expressed a stiff-upper-lip determination and defended their departments.

“We have a great group of people, and some really dedicated employees,” said Kathy Cook, director of Planning and Community Development. “Every city and every county in the state is in the same condition. We’re just trying to stay the course and do the best we can with what we have.”