The Deschutes County Commission approved the proposed county budget Monday for fiscal year 2013-14.

“There were no changes to the proposed budget based on the committee’s recommendations,” County Administrator Tom Anderson said.

The total county budget for fiscal year 2014, which begins July 1 and runs through June 30, 2014, is a balanced $287.1 million, a 0.9 percent decrease from fiscal year 2013. Despite the decrease in revenue and spending, Anderson said, county residents will see no appreciable decrease in services.

Anderson and the commission also discussed receipt of an unanticipated $1 million in federal money from the Department of the Interior’s 2013 Payment in Lieu of Taxes program, or PILT. The county payment will jump from $731,000 to $1.75 million.

“The full amount of that payment is not included in the proposed budget,” Anderson told the commission. “It doesn’t have to be. (It depends) on what we elect to do with that additional amount of money. You do not need to make that decision this morning.”

County officials, hearing the PILT announcement last week, questioned whether the amount was correct.

“The Department of the Interior confirms the number is right,” Anderson said. “Because of other federal funding decreasing, specifically Secure Rural Schools money, the amount from PILT increased.”

PERS

The passage of Senate Bill 822 also means more money, in the form of a decreased payment amount to the Public Employees Retirement System, or PERS.

“They recalculated the rates based on the passage of the bill and the change in the amount the county is responsible for is approximately $1.3 million less than anticipated,” Anderson said.

The combination of the savings and the increased payments means approximately $2.3 million more in revenue for the county. Because the changes were announced just last week, after the budget had been approved by the budget committee, they are not reflected in the adopted budget.

“We have not programmed where the money will go and learned about it too late to change the budget,” Anderson said. “With revenue of this type we’re not required to change the budget to account for it.”

Anderson plans to meet with department heads next week to discuss what each believes should be done with the money saved from the PERS changes.

“The budget committee directive is that any savings go into the PERS reserve fund,” he said. “We may also put it in a general reserve fund so it can be included in the budget process for next year.”