Skagit County government cuts hit home for Bellingham man

When he was hired as a planner for Skagit County, Dave Nellis thought he had arrived.

He and his wife went out and bought two cars — a fuel-efficient model for his commute from Bellingham and the minivan they always wanted.

They enrolled their 11-year-old daughter Jessica in gymnastics and Tae Kwon Do classes. The couple hired a nanny to watch Joshua, now 9 months old, so they could both work and earn good paychecks.

All the effort Nellis and his wife had put into their education while raising a family was starting to pay off.

“Here’s the ‘American Dream,’” the 41-year-old Nellis said, putting air quotes around the expression. “We’ve made it.”

That dream was deferred and felt as if it were shattered on Dec. 1, when Nellis was called into the county planning director’s office and told he was being laid off.

“I thought I could handle it,” he said over coffee in his kitchen on the Friday before Christmas. “That was the biggest lie, I’d come to find out.”

Everyone in the planning department knew staff cuts were imminent, but Nellis took this sit-down with Planning Director Gary Christensen to be a good sign. He thought his boss was going to give him a new project.

Nellis had been feeling out of place but was eager to keep busy ever since being transferred to the long-range planning division in July. He was originally hired as an associate planner for critical-areas review, and his initial job was to make sure building permit applicants complied with regulations that protect sensitive habitats.

After the number of building permits started declining steeply in early 2008, Nellis’ supervisors had to find something else for him to do.

It’s just that he had no training in long-range planning.

“They tried to keep me on board,” Nellis said. “I’d hoped and hoped and kept my expectations high.”

Christensen didn’t tell Nellis in that meeting about a new project. Instead, the director said he had to let Nellis go.

“My heart just went, ‘Boom,’” Nellis said, making a sound that was part shock, part despair. “They said, ‘Don’t take it personally. It’s purely a numbers thing.’”

Christensen said he would support Nellis as he looked for another job.

“These are real people. They’re not just employees, but they’re friends and colleagues and professionals,” Christensen said. “It’s not easy to lay people off.”

Nellis had taken a cursory glance at the job market back in July, shortly after his transfer. He was able to find six openings in his field. He didn’t change jobs then, he said, because he liked working for the county.

Now Nellis is looking for a job in earnest.

“It is as dry as a bone. There’s nothing out there,” he said.

If anything good has come out of this, Nellis said, it’s that he can spend more time with his children and hone his guitar skills. He’s an accomplished singer and songwriter, with a CD and some experience playing small venues around Bellingham.

He’s also an avid bicyclist and snowboarder, but he’s not likely to spend $40 for lift tickets at the Mount Baker Ski Area. Instead, he said, he’ll take his family on more walks in the park.

Since Nellis will get paid through Jan. 15, the financial reality of the layoff hasn’t hit his family yet. But if he doesn’t find another job soon, his family must rely on his unemployment benefits and his wife, Jennipher’s, salary as an engineer with the state Department of Transportation.

Nellis isn’t waiting for the county paychecks to stop before adjusting his home budget. Not everyone will get a new bicycle for Christmas this year after all. Friends and family members have agreed to forgo the gift exchange.

“I can’t afford it, which makes Christmas a little less warm,” Nellis said.

Nellis put only one string of lights on the house. In the living room sits the small Christmas tree that usually goes in Jessica’s bedroom.

Nellis calls it “the Charlie Brown Christmas tree.”

Jessica is no longer enrolled in gymnastics class, and her parents are thinking of pulling her out of Tae Kwon Do. The first material possession to go will probably be the fuel-efficient car for his former commute.

If Nellis stays in his field, he will need the building economy to rebound.

“If the economy picks up, I’ll go back to working for Skagit County and consider this a long vacation,” he said.

If not, Nellis said he would be willing to look out of state for work and sell his house in a quiet neighborhood off Mount Baker Highway.

That’s not the preferred option, he said. It would mean that his wife would leave a good job, and his young family would be uprooted.

Nellis doesn’t dwell on his own situation. He has started donating to area food programs, even after deciding he can no longer give to the environmental groups he usually supports.

A news story out of Canada put things in perspective for Nellis. A homeless woman had died next to her burning shopping cart on a frozen Vancouver street. Apparently, the woman was only trying to stay warm.

“We have so much,” Nellis said. “We have a roof over our head.”

Ralph Schwartz can be reached at 360-416-2138 or .