A message from Meredith Green, Kitsap county treasurer:

We wanted to update you regarding the Assessor, Auditor, and Treasurer offices plans for office hours.  Beginning August 3, our office hours will be Monday – Thursday from 9 AM through 4:30 PM, and on Fridays from 9 AM to Noon, whether in person, phone, or via electronic transactions.  We recognize that this may cause some inconvenience for you and hope that you can understand our predicament.

We’ve been asked to make budget cuts of 5% for the remainder of 2020, which amounts to a 10% annualized reduction in our budgets since we are already halfway through the year.  We anticipate that level of cut will continue through 2021.  This means reducing staff, leaving vacancies unfilled, or redirecting work to other areas.  Concurrent with the required cuts, we are also working on a new Assessor-Treasurer System and will be implementing a new Financial Management Software, which is required because both systems are outdated and no longer supported by our vendors.  In order to be more efficient, we need to provide uninterrupted time to our remaining staff members so that they can complete the necessary volume of work, plus train on and implement our new systems.