For the past month,  city officials have publicly cited 67 as the number of non-public safety employees who face layoffs tomorrow due to a budget crunch.

But when layoff notices go out Friday at the City of Tacoma, far fewer employees will actually get pink slips, city officials said Thursday.

“That initial list of 67 positions will probably equate to about 15 to 20 employees actually going out the door tomorrow,” city spokesman Rob McNair-Huff said.

The reason for the drastically lower number of anticipated layoffs?

Retirement buyouts, employment seniority issues and moving employees out of budget-strapped general fund positions and into other city vacancies, officials said.

“We’re still working the (layoff) scenario through tomorrow,” human resources director Joy St. Germain said Thursday. “All the positions that were identified (for layoffs)  are going to be gone and we’re going to get those budget savings.  But what happens to the actual employees really could vary.”

While up to 20 people will lose their jobs entirely, others may be demoted or moved into positions elsewhere in the city, St. Germain said.  In addition, 39 non-public safety employees have opted to take a $12,000 incentive to retire.

“We’re trying to minimize the number of people we have to send out the door, because it doesn’t move the city forward and it certainly doesn’t help the local economy,” McNair-Huff said.

Human resources staff and department heads will work through Friday to try to determine if alternative positions can be found for employees in jobs now at risk, St. Germain said.

“That’s why I don’t feel comfortable giving you the information today,” she said. “There’s some complexity to it.”

The city likely won’t publicly provide a firm breakdown of layoffs, demotions and job transfers until the end of the day Friday, if not later, St. Germain added.  City officials expect to give the City Council a full accounting of the job cuts on Tuesday.

Councilman Marty Campbell, reached Thursday evening, said he was surprised to hear the number of job losses coming tomorrow could be as few as 15.

“I thought it would be higher than that,” Campbell said. “If they were able to get it down to 15 through retirements, attritions or whatever, I suppose that’s good news — it’s still not good good news for those 15… But I’d be interested to see the math in how we got there.”

Getting hard numbers and names from the city about which municipal employees face the budget ax has been a chore since Interim City Manager Rey Arellano began talking about cutting jobs last fall due to a projected general fund shortfall of up to $31 million.

In November, city officials said such information wasn’t known because a plan was still being prepared.  Late that month, as a way to reduce the number of potential layoffs, the city gave eligible non-public safety employees until Dec. 3 to take a $12,000 buyout incentive to retire by year’s end.

On Dec. 5, city officials then notified employees whose jobs were in jeopardy. And on Dec. 6, Arellano presented a detailed budget plan that identified 166.7 general positions to be laid off, including 100 police and fire positions and about 67 non-public safety jobs.

(At the request of police and fire unions, the city council later agreed to postpone the proposed public safety layoffs for up to 30 days, while the city negotiates potential contract concessions.  The remaining 67 non-public safety layoffs were to proceed to a Jan. 6 implementation date, city officials had said.)

After Arellano presented his plan, the News Tribune formally requested the names of employees who’d been notified of potential layoffs. The city responded by providing a list with 108 names that didn’t include several employees who had said they’d already been put on notice their jobs were in in jeopardy.

(One of those employees, who asked not to be named, told the TNT today the layoff process has been handled poorly. “Everybody in this building to this date are in an uproar,  because they still don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” the employee said. “People are on roller coasters.”)

When a reporter pointed out the apparent discrepancy between the list provided by the city and the layoff numbers in Arellano’s plan, city officials explained on Dec. 17 that an additional 48 public safety employees had yet to be notified of potential layoffs and 11 other employees identified for layoff  had opted to take the retirement offer.

City officials now say the number of employees who’ve opted to take the retirement buyout totals 58 (9 police, 10 fire and 39 non public safety).

“There was a wildcard on (retirements),” McNair-Huff said today. “When an employee notifies the city they’re going to retire, they can rescind that right up until they scheduled day of retirement.  So, until we got to the end of December, we couldn’t say exactly who would take retirements.”

Additionally, after Arellano presented his budget plan, he has since “rescinded a few layoffs,” St. Germain said today.

“I think the definition of layoff, it isn’t necessarily easy (to explain),” St. Germain added. “There may be 15 to 20 people who have no jobs at all, but there are other people who have been laid off but have agreed to be demoted or have exercised their seniority rights to bump a less senior employee (into layoff). And we’re still trying to find vacant positions outside of the general fund where we can move some people.”