BANGOR – EnvisioNet Computer Services Inc. planned to lay off more than 260 people last week, mostly in Orono, but the cut was reduced to just 96 jobs after founder Heather Blease received a telephone call at the last minute for more support work from one of the company’s major clients.

Blease, in a telephone interview Sunday evening, said letting go of 260 people was something she didn’t want to do. The company has been trying to secure additional business from the client for several weeks. But as every day went by, the cost of having too many employees for the amount of work filtering into the company was adding up.

“We’ve been working on winning this new business,” Blease said. “We knew that work was out there. We were trying to hold off on a layoff.”

But a decision had to be made. The time had come to lay off 260 people.

“We actually went up to Orono with the intent of a more massive layoff,” Blease said. “I was there on Wednesday to do that and decided to call it off at the last minute.”

A call had come from a client. Blease would not name which company was giving EnvisioNet more work, she said, because of a confidentiality agreement in the contract.

“On Wednesday we knew that the work was significant enough,” she said. “It could very possibly eliminate the need to downsize.”

Wednesday and Thursday were spent evaluating the amount of work and the number of people needed to do it, she said. Then a determination was made that some people would lose their jobs.

In Orono, 96 people were laid off Friday, and 160 people were shifted from what they were doing to help with the new business. About 40 people were added at the company’s other branch in Augusta.

“I was very thrilled,” Blease said about the added work. “Once Friday came, it’s never very easy to conduct a layoff, whether it’s one person or more than one.”

In an e-mail to employees Friday, Blease wrote, “Over the last several weeks, we have been challenged with call volumes that are too low to support the number of staff in our Orono facility. We have acquired new business for the facility, but have had to take further measures to align our scheduled hours to call volumes.”

Layoffs by the technology support company have been numerous in the last two months. In May, EnvisioNet cut more than 600 of its 2,000 positions and closed its headquarters in Brunswick because of an anticipated reduction in workload from one of its major clients, Microsoft Networks. In July, it was confirmed that more than 110 people either were let go or left the Orono facility because of a lack of work to do.

EnvisioNet filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June, and announced it was looking for a buyer. The company is in discussions with four potential merger partners, and one should be announced as the buyer within the next two weeks, Blease said.

Blease said she hopes to announce this fall that EnvisioNet needs to add employees instead of cut them. Each of the companies interested in buying EnvisioNet has new business that needs to be handled, and EnvisioNet has the capabilities to do that, Blease said. Plus, customer call volumes typically increase in fall months, she said.