The day after its last regularly-scheduled meeting, the Attala County Board of Supervisors held a work session with County Engineer Christian Gardner to identify bridge replacement projects that it believes might qualify for funding through the Mississippi $250 million Emergency Reconstruction Bridge Repair Fund.
The session was called to allow the board to select projects and then have Gardner complete all the information collection and application process prior to the Dec. 13 deadline.
Each bridge proposal will be evaluated on its individual merit, with the state looking to fund as many projects as possible. One of the main points of discussion was how to make Attala County applications rank as high as possible.
One strategy the county will employ is to offer to do a significant amount of “in-kind” work, rather than relying on the state to fund projects in their entirety.
Each of the supervisors agreed to do all the tie-in work themselves, including gaining rights of way, building up roads and tie-in road into the bridges.
“Some bridges will need to be built up four or five feet, so if the county does the dirt work, it will show as a cost to the county, so it will move the application up,” Gardner said the theory indicates.
The hope is that the state will prefer this type of project since it reduces expenses and allows the state to fund more smaller projects, rather than fewer large projects.
Because there is a three-year window in which the funded projects must be completed, Gardner also advised supervisors select bridges where they are as close to ready to begin construction as possible.
In the end, the supervisors selected 13 of the 79 bridges in the county for potential funding through the program.
Those bridges are as follows:
Bridge Number 10 on Road 4002
Bridge Number 11 on Road 4002
Bridge Number 78 on Road 1215
Bridge Number 92 on Road 5001
Bridge Number 127 on Road 5233
Bridge Number 143 on Road 3221
Bridge Number 144 on Road 3221
Bridge Number 145 on Road 3221
Bridge Number 146 on Road 3221
Bridge Number 147 on Road 3217
Bridge Number 148 on Road 3217
Bridge Number 160 on Road 2120
Bridge Number 179 on Hwy 407
Gardner said that until he is able to research and document the specifics of each project, he couldn’t determine the total amount of grant funds that will be requested.
The state is using an electronic application process where the software begins ranking projects based on the data entered in the application. This helps even the playing field for applications and also will allow the state to make awards as early as January 12-14. The state will then sell the bonds to fund the selected projects later in the month.
