Deschutes County’s ’21-22 $653 million budget includes 38 new positions, 17 in Health Services

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- The Board of County Commissioners has approved Deschutes County's fiscal year 2021-22 budget following a series of public meetings and hearings by the county’s budget committee in early June.

The newly adopted budget for the county and six service districts totals $653,465,491 which includes property taxes, dedicated state and federal funds, grants, fees for service, and other revenue sources.

“Deschutes County continues to grow, and that growth is translating to a need, in certain areas, to expand staff and programming to meet increasing service demands,” said County Administrator Tom Anderson. “This budget will allow us to efficiently meet the needs of our communities through capital investment and strategic operational expansion.”

Deschutes County has five property tax levies that it uses to fund county services. The budget committee voted to leave the county’s current permanent property tax rate (1.2183 per $1,000 of assessed value) in place for FY 2022. There are also no changes in the Rural Law Enforcement District tax rate or for property tax rates that are used to fund the Extension/4-H District and the Deschutes 9-1-1 Service District. The tax rate for the Countywide Law Enforcement District was reduced from 1.08 to 1.05 per $1,000 of assessed value.

COVID-19 Response

The budget committee approved 17.20 new positions for Deschutes County Health Services to help support COVID-19 response, community crisis response and other public and behavioral health programs. The new positions include 6.60 FTE to support the County’s Crisis Response program. The Health Services department budget includes a variety of federal, state and local funds to support continued COVID-19 monitoring and response.

Growth to Meet Service Demands

The budget committee also approved 21.25 other new positions across county departments, including 5.25 new positions in the District Attorney’s Office, five positions in the Sheriff’s Office and four new positions in the Deschutes County Development Department.

New Initiatives

The county’s FY 2022 budget includes several new initiatives, including:

• The Road Department is proposing to spend $29.6 million on capital projects, including reconstructing Hunnell Road from Loco Road to Tumalo Road, paving Rickard Road from Groff Road to US-20 and funding construction of a roundabout at US-20, Cook Ave. and O.B. Riley Road in Tumalo through a partnership with ODOT.
• The Department of Solid Waste plans to spend $14.5 million to modernize the Negus Transfer Station in Redmond and $5 million to construct the next cell at Knott Landfill to allow for additional disposal capacity.
• Deschutes 9-1-1 plans to continue implementation of a long-term plan to support enhanced coverage of the district’s radio system through system programming changes and new radio site additions.
• The County plans to explore the development of a North County campus in Redmond, which would provide space for the Health Services Department and other County services.

To review budget documents and other related content, please visit www.deschutes.org/budget.