Greene County receives funding for bridge rehabilitation program

WAYNESBURG – Greene County commissioners voted Thursday to participate in two state Department of Transportation funding programs that will provide the county with $3 million to rehabilitate county bridges.
The county will receive $2 million in grants from the state’s Road Maintenance and Preservation Program and a $1 million low-interest loan from the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Bank.
“It’s a good deal for Greene County,” Commissioner Blair Zimmerman said. “We have bridges that have to be repaired. This is like getting free money from the state.”
The county currently maintains 86 bridges, of which 18 are classified structurally deficient.
“This is very beneficial to us,” Commissioner Dave Coder said. “It gives us access to $2 million that otherwise would have had to be made up with money from county property taxes.”
Under the two programs, the county, in effect, will be receiving $3 million from PennDOT for bridge projects and will only have to repay $1 million of it through the loan, Chief Clerk Jeff Marshall said.
“This will enable us to address four bridges within a 2½- to 3-year period that would take us 10 years to complete if we went through the normal process,” Marshall said. The normal process would involve having each project included in the state’s transportation program.
Marshall explained how the funding will work.
Money the county will receive from the grant program must be matched “dollar-for-dollar,” he said. However, the county was able to qualify for $1 million in grants for money it previously spent on county bridges, he said.
The other $1 million in grants the county will get will be used to rehabilitate the four bridges. The match for the $1 million grant will be the $1 million low-interest loan from the infrastructure bank, Marshall said.
The $1 million loan will be repaid over 10 years with revenue the county receives from the $5 fee the commissioners approved two years ago on residents’ annual vehicle registration fees.
Act 89 of 2013, which provided funding for state highway projects, also gave counties the option of imposing the $5 registration fee to use for local highway projects.
The $5 fee, which is added to the normal vehicle registration fee, brings the county about $190,000 a year, Marshall said.
It was the county’s participation in the Act 89 program and the imposition of the $5 fee that enabled the county to obtain money from the PennDOT funding programs, the commissioner said.
“That was the main reason,” Coder said. The money was awarded only to the counties that imposed the $5 registration fee, he said. Twenty-one counties now levy the fee.
The four bridges the county plans to rehabilitate with the money include Bridge No. 31 on Route 491 in Franklin Township over Smith Creek; Bridge No. 8 on Route 357 in Perry Township over Shannon Run; Bridge No. 73 on Route 629 in Morris Township over Bates Fork; and Bridge No. 75 on Route 478 in Morris Township over Browns Creek.