Stimulus pleases
MONTOURSVILLE - Local PennDOT officials believe the one-year anniversary of the federal "stimulus" program is worth celebrating.
Forty-eight road and bridge projects have or will be completed in the nine counties of PennDOT's District 3-0, which has received $45 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding.
Northumberland County received more money than any of its district neighbors, some $9.5 million, nearly one-third of which will fund an Interstate 180 bridge project.
District Executive Sandra Tosca, speaking to a small group of local media at the District 3-0 headquarters Thursday morning, said ARRA did its job as well in keeping people employed. She couldn't determine exactly how many jobs may have been created through the stimulus package, but estimated that more than 5,000 people kept their construction-related jobs through the $1.026 billion in funding allocated to Pennsylvania.
"Without that investment, those people likely would have been without jobs," Tosca said. A loss of jobs would have resulted in more jobless benefits and a further drain on an economy that was "in desperate need" of stimulation, she added.
Wednesday was the anniversary of the stimulus program, which is now priced at $862 billion. It will continue in an effort to pump money into the economy.
Tosca outlined the 48 projects undertaken over the past year in District 3-0 has, which, in addition to Northumberland, includes Bradford, Columbia, Lycoming, Montour, Snyder, Sullivan, Tioga and Union counties.
She spoke about the challenge of making quick use of the ARRA funds.
"We got to work quickly and exceeded our expectations for what we wanted to do," she said during her 30-minute briefing. "For PennDOT as a whole, all but one of the 326 projects (statewide) that we wanted to do have been awarded bids. We have it done two months before the deadline" set by the federal government.
In fact, Tosca said, Pennsylvania received the top ranking among large states for the speed with which it delivered on the recovery program; it was ranked sixth overall.
"Our partners in the construction and consultant industries worked very hard in order to expedite these projects," she said. "That helped us to work faster and streamline the process."
To cite one example, she said the average time between advertising contracts for bidding and the start of construction was cut from 109 to 77 days.
Bridge, road repairs
While hundreds of millions of dollars were sent to the state's transit agencies, most of District 3-0's allotment went to bridge and road repairs.
With just five projects, Northumberland County took 20 percent of the money, a total of $9,598,503. The largest chunk of that is targeted for two bridge rehabilitations on Interstate 180 over Route 44 near McEwensville. That work is scheduled to start in April at a cost of $3,156,682.
Elsewhere in Northumberland County, ARRA was responsible for bridge rehabilitation projects on Black Mill Road near Sunbury and Short Road in Snydertown, resurfacing of 6.2 miles of Route 54 from Elysburg to Natalie, and overlay epoxy work on seven bridge decks along Route 147.
The fifth project, scheduled to begin March 1, will involve resurfacing 8.3 miles of Sunbury Street and Snydertown Road (all of it represented as Route 4012) from Snydertown to Paxinos.
Good timing
Tosca said the federal money could not have come at a better time.
"There are a lot of projects that this money helped us do that we might not have gotten to this year," she said, citing budget cuts and a decline in PennDOT revenues. "Money that came from the federal stimulus project enabled us to pave 66 more miles of road and paint and preserve two more bridges." Total amount of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act monies spent in the nine counties comprising PennDOT District 3, county by county:
Northumberland County - $9,598,503.
Lycoming County - $9,168,371.
Tioga County - $6,251,909.
Bradford County - $5,581,979.
Snyder County - $4,100,325.
Union County - $3,191,289.
Sullivan County - $1,851,595.
Montour County - $1,850,890.
Columbia County - $1,522,739.
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