Health district to cut position

The Spokane Regional Health District continues to cut staff and consolidate management as it tries to raise the salaries of some employees on a budget that hasn’t increased in more than five years.

On Tuesday, the agency announced that it was eliminating the job of human resources director Shari Yamane, a 15-year health district employee, effective July 1. The office will be placed under the supervision of the health district administrator, Torney Smith.

Last year, the finance office was brought under administrative services as the agency cut its staff of about 230 employees by the equivalent of eight full-time positions, said district spokeswoman Julie Graham.

Though this year’s budget allows for 2.5 percent cost-of-living increases for all district employees, the agency is also adjusting the salaries of some employees after a two-year survey found that the salaries paid for certain positions were much lower than what similar positions paid in other agencies statewide.

Last month, the district gave its environmental specialists a 6 percent increase retroactive to Jan. 1 in response to a survey that found health district employees were underpaid by about 10 percent as compared with the market rate. The health district comptroller, Mike Riley, said that the agency was able to find cuts elsewhere, such as in training funds, to pay all but $30,000 of the $120,000 cost of the pay raises.

Health district officer Kim Thorburn said the salary adjustments were overdue. The health district had not done a market study of salaries since the 1980s.

“Our problem is a revenue problem,” Thorburn said. “It has been absolutely flat at $22 million-plus for the last five years.”

The agency is awaiting results next legislative session of a joint task force assigned to find a stable source of funding for health districts that was lost by the repeal of the motor vehicle excise tax. In the meantime, the state has contributed about $2 million a year to the health district’s budget; the county’s share has remained flat at about $2 million. The remainder of the district’s funding comes from state and federal grants and fees from environmental health and clinical services.

Last year the district had to dip into its reserve fund to the tune of $700,000 to make ends meet in fiscal 2006.

Thorburn said the goal of placing all administrative programs under Smith’s supervision is a cost-saving response to a lack of revenue increases at a time when costs have increased considerably.

“We have trimmed to absolute bone,” Thorburn said.

But despite administrative cuts, the agency still had to cut back on some services, such as putting fewer public health nurses and food inspectors out in the community.

“We feel we are doing our job, but there will come a point when we will have to ask whether we have adequate staffing,” Graham said.