Grant County court cuts hours

EPHRATA — Grant County District Court will be open fewer hours starting April 1.

The court was open daily from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with an hour lunch from noon to 1 p.m. Now they will be open from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., with a half hour break between noon and 12:30 p.m.

This change affects the main office in Ephrata and the branch office in Moses Lake.

Court Administrator Barbara Smith said the change is because of a reduction in staff earlier this year. All county offices were asked to slice three percent off of their 2008 budgets.

For district court this meant losing two full-time staff positions and one part-time staff position.

The change is necessary so employees can catch up on paperwork, she said.

“We have the same amount of work and less employees. We need some uninterrupted time to get things processed,” she said.

There isn’t an end date when the hours would be restored, but it will be for at least a year, Smith said.

There won’t be any cuts to other services, she said. The office considered taking unpaid time off to avoid layoffs, but it was decided it wasn’t the best thing for the department, she said.