LIMESTONE – The Maine Military Authority’s maintenance center at the Loring Commerce Centre will be laying off close to 100 workers in the next two weeks unless new work comes in.

A reduction in the number of military vehicles being refurbished was blamed for the slowdown at the facility, which has grown by leaps and bounds since it was instituted.

The facility has refurbished more than 3,800 military Humvees since it opened in 1997.

A contract the MMA received in February cut its workload with the Army by 75 vehicles a month.

“The workload from the active Army is the biggest reason,” Gary Cleaves, manager of the MMA’s Maine Readiness Sustainment Maintenance Center, said Monday. “We had a contract for 100 vehicles a month and that has been cut to 25 in the latest contract.

“We also had a cut of $4 million from the National Guard program,” he said. “There is a shift in vehicles in the National Guard.”

But not all is lost, said the administrator.

“We are hoping to get new contracts, any day now,” he said. “We have a lot of proposals out there.”

He said the layoffs will most likely be short-term until more work comes in. He said money is getting tight, and cuts need to be made.

He said an effort is being made to keep the cuts minimal.

Cleaves expects there will be growth in the amount of work at Loring’s MMA center, but it’s a matter of timing.

He said the layoffs will most likely affect the people who were hired last, according to union contracts. He expects there may be bumping from area to area. It will be a matter of seniority.

The layoffs will be in the area of body work, where most of the work at the center is.

The work force at the center is 518 people. The layoffs will affect about 20 percent of the employees.

Cleaves remained upbeat that work could come in even before the layoffs are made.

He said the center is still hopeful of getting work from Maine communities on school buses and public works vehicles.

“We have proposals out on those,” he said. “There has been some resistance to that. … [The] cost of new vehicles are rising and that may change their outlook,” he said. “I am getting good feelings from some communities.”

He expects work may come from that sector in the foreseeable future.

Cleaves said the layoff notices will come in the next two weeks.