A tough budget season is reaching its climax, as Enumclaw City Council members make final adjustments to a spending plan for 2010.

More tinkering with proposed numbers was done during the council’s most recent budget hearing, specifically with regard to employee jobs that were on the chopping block. By the end of a public session, the council had agreed to keep a corrections officer, maintain the full-time status of a Public Works Department secretary and allow some serious shuffling of hours and dollars in the Human Services arena.

Human Services encompasses the city-operated public library and the Senior Activity Center and cuts had been suggested in both departments as part of a preliminary budget proposed by Mayor John Wise.

Bob Baer oversees both operations and, at the library, he was looking at the possibility of a full-time staffer being reduced to half-time, while a part-time employee was in danger of seeing her hours reduced.

Baer and his library staff discussed other options.

“In talking with staff, the idea was how to make it work best, to lessen the impact on citizens and staff,” he said. In the end, both will take a hit.

The agreement approved by council is that all full-time library employees lose 10 percent of their hours, part-time employees lose two hours per week and that Baer take a 10 percent salary reduction.

The impact on users, Baer said, is that the facility will close an hour earlier Monday through Thursday – shutting its doors at 8 instead of 9 p.m. Eventually, he said, the library might close one night per week.

At the senior center, the original budget proposal had called for the program manager to be reduced from full-time status to half-time. Through some budget manipulations, she will lose one-fourth of her hours.

To make that work, center director Jobyna Nickum is accepting a pay cut and both the secretary and bus driver are losing hours. As a result, the senior center will be closing immediately after lunch is served on Fridays, rather than remaining open until late afternoon.

Dealing with other suggested cuts, the council chose to retain a corrections officer that was eliminated in the Wise budget and to keep a Public Works secretary at full-time status, rather than shifting the position to half-time.