Months after Marion County cut jobs, there's another victim of the downturn in construction. The Alachua County Growth Management Department is eliminating some positions because of slumping revenue.

Very few new homes are being built and as a result - there's less of a need for building permits. That means that employees who assess residential homes are suddenly expendable.

"We've eliminated two positions from our budget - plans examiner and a building inspector," said Growth Management Director Steve Lachnicht.

"We're drawing down some of our reserve money and we've also been able to shift some of the salary expense in that department to other lap salaries in other areas of our budget where we've had some funds available to make ends meet for this year."

Lachnicht says that for a single-family home, the building permit fee is around 800 dollars on average, depending on the size of the house. This is actually good news if you're looking to buy a home - because so few people are building houses right now, many construction companies have lowered their prices.

-Josh Rosenthal, WCJB, TV20 News