Carbon County's retirement fund is back on the roller coaster, officials state.

During the monthly meeting of the county retirement board, Robert Crampsie, county controller and secretary to the retirement board, announced that the retirement fund portfolio value as of May 31 was $59,612,592, down $3.5 million from last month."The month of May performance-wise was very bad," Crampsie said.He added that he checked the value as of June 19 and things were looking brighter in that the portfolio rebounded $1.5 million so far."So similar to last year, we started off with a great first quarter and now it seems like we're back on that roller coaster," Crampsie said, noting that even though the ride has been full of ups and downs, the portfolio is still performing well, with about a 5 percent rate of return for the year."We are experiencing some growth and hopefully this market will become less volatile and we'll see some decent returns between now and then," Crampsie said.The Carbon County retirement fund had been on a roller coaster ride over the last few years, but projections were looking up for 2012.By the end of 2008, the fund's balance was $47,684,152, which represented a negative 24-percent return for the year.In the first two months of 2009, the fund dropped even further, but beginning in March 2009, the county posted its first positive month in the stock market.The fund then performed well, recovering all of the money that was lost during the recession three years ago; and hitting its all-time high of $66.78 million on April 30, 2011 before taking a few more hits and nose-diving at the end of the year.At the end of 2011, the county's retirement portfolio's value hovered just under $60 million, which represented a year-end investment performance rate of return of just .037 percent, well under the annual actuarial assumption of 7.5 percent.Throughout 2012, the fund has continually posted gains until this past month.