Union County Commissioners Matt Scarfo, right, Paul Anderes, middle, and Jake Seavert, left, listen to a presentation on Feb. 19, 2025, in the Joseph Building Annex Conference Room.

UNION COUNTY — Union County’s budget picture for the next year is set.

The Union County Board of Commissioners voted 3-0 Wednesday, June 25, to adopt a fiscal year 2025-26 total budget of $70.3 million. The budget is approximately 9% more than the current 2024-25 budget. The fiscal year begins July 1.

“Like I said during the budget committee meetings, it was so clean and there was no issues,” Union County Commissioner Matt Scarfo said. “It was refreshing.”

The board of commissioners thanked Shelley Burgess, the administrative officer and fiscal officer for the county, and the department heads for their hard work on the budget.

The commissioners also credited Union County’s budget committee with giving a big assist to the budgeting process.

Small changes

The adopted budget differed from the initial recommendation to the board of commissioners by the budget committee. There were two necessary changes within the general fund, Burgess said, due to additional information becoming available after the May budget committee meetings.

“Local budget law allows for changes after publication prior to adoption of up to 10% in any fund,” Burgess said. “These requested changes fall within that allowable limit.”

The first change is within the facilities department. Burgess requested the commissioners approve adding $180,000 in revenue to the county’s reimbursable expenses line item. This will allow the county to receive funds from its insurance carrier to make repairs to the Joseph Building, which was damaged in an arson fire.

These revenues, Burgess said, will be offset by equal expenditures with $150,000 in the capital repair line item and $30,000 in the materials and services line item.

The second change is within the corrections department. The Oregon Criminal Justice Commission extended the IMPACT grant funding by six months, Burgess said, which meant there was an additional $99,000 in revenues.

The county needed to include $49,000 in the expenditure line item for contractual services for IMPACT to extend the service provider contacts for the program and needed to add a $50,000 expenditure line item for the medications.

The revenue line item for the CJC MOUD grant also needed to be reduced to $50,360, Burgess said, to adjust for funds already received.

“ We received more of the funds in the current fiscal year than we had anticipated, so those funds will not be available next fiscal year,” she said.

So then the expenditure line item needed to be reduced to $133,402 to accurately reflect the available funding under the grant.