Schuylkill County could save as much as $9 million over time by bundling bridge replacement and repair projects into one contract to buy the materials in bulk all at once and do the improvements over five years instead of 25, according to a proposal presented to commissioners Wednesday.

The county owns 62 bridges. Of those, 28 are in poor condition. Typically, the county improves/replaces one bridge every year or two.

At a public commissioners meeting, Timothy S. Benner, of Maguire Engineering in Allentown; Attorney Andrew C. Maher, a tax exempt finance expert of Stevens & Lee’s Valley Forge office; and Scott Kramer, managing director of municipal finance at Raymond James in Lancaster, teamed up to explain how the process works and the steps needed to implement it.

The men asked commissioners to publicly support the proposal as they plan to present it to the Pennsylvania P3 Board (the Public Private Partnership Board) later this month.

Established in 2012, the board oversees state transportation projects and evaluates private sector infrastructure proposals.

“The idea would be is we would take about 28 bridges that are in very poor condition and allow for private entities to come and fix them within a five-year plan,” Maher said. “What normally happens in Schuylkill County is you have a financing plan that improves one bridge a year, or one bridge every two years, which puts you behind the eight ball more and more and more. So you have ever growing numbers of poor bridges, which (results in) economic problems and public safety problems.

“What this project, I think, will allow us to do is improve bridges in a very brief period of time. That will help public safety and public economic development,” he said.

If commissioners agree, the team would present its proposal to the P3 Board on Sept. 24.

“What will happen is we’ll go before the P3 Board with our application, and then the P3 Board will conduct a high-level analysis of the project. They will determine whether or not the project complies with the P3 Act, which it does,” Maher said.

He expects the board to give its approval in February or March. Then, the team will seek requests for proposals to select contractors and engineers.

“Then, with that in place, we can begin financing and construction by the third quarter of next year,” he said.

Financing

“We estimate that savings from the (28 poor condition) bridges that we identified, at about $320,000 per bridge, or about $9 million of savings by pulling those bridges forward and fixing them over the next five years,” Kramer said.

“It eliminates the risk of construction cost inflation, transfers construction and performance risk, and it creates a great deal of budget flexibility,” he said.

The way it works is that the county would form a municipal authority to which ownership of the bridges would be transferred.

“The authority would then be the issuing the issuing body for the debt. We’re estimating that to be about $50 million for the payment of the bridges up front to complete the financing over the next five years,” Kramer said.

“The financing through the authority is completed through what are called Certificates of Participation. It’s actually not direct general obligation debt of the county. It’s a certificate which makes it an annual appropriation to budget for the payment to the authority for payment on the bridges,” he said.

Kramer said the debt is likely to be structured over 30 years, but with the option of prepaying it over the first seven or eight years “should we need to restructure or refinance that debt if rates move lower.”

Engineering

Benner said that “what we’re presenting here today is a tranche of about 28 structures, about that third of the worst of the worst structures that we can attack, repair them, replace them, get them off that poor list into the good category, and put this county on a better footing moving forward. So the P3 allows us to do that in a more efficient, cost-effective manner.”

“We’re not only addressing structural deficiencies of these structures, we’re addressing geometric deficiencies. A lot of the aging infrastructure out there is very narrow, single lane. When all these get replaced, we replace them to current standards, which is two lanes wide, improving safety at all these sites,” Benner said.

The bridges tagged for replacement or rehabilitation include one in Rush Township, on Orchard Road over Pine Creek, to be rehabilitated; one in Walker Township, on Atlas Road over the Little Schuylkill River, to be replaced; and three in West Penn Township to be replaced: one at Route 895 and Ridge Road, and the other at Route 895 and Ash Circle, both spanning Lizard Creek; and one on St. Peter’s Road spanning Mahoning Creek.

Of the 28 bridges across the county in poor condition, two need to be removed; three need to be rehabilitated and remainder need to be replaced.

The spark

Commissioners Chairman Larry L. Padora said the proposal came about after he asked state Transportation Secretary Mike Carroll to fix the county’s bridges.

“He’s really big on fixing bridges. More and more counties are looking at doing P3 projects now as a lane to fix those efficient bridges,” he said.

He pointed to Northampton County, where a $38.5 million P3 bridge bundling project is scheduled to begin and take about four years.

Allegheny County is also interested in the bundling proposal, Padora said.

“This is just a way to make massive infrastructure improvements in Schuylkill County at one time to get us caught up so that our ‘fair’ bridges don’t slip into the ‘poor’ bridge category,” he said.

He described the concept as “economy of scale.”

“Like a home builder, they build their homes one right after the other because they’re buying all the structures, all the beams, everything, all at one time. This would be that you would standardize the 23 bridges that are being completely replaced would almost be standardized to beam length, deck length, everything, so that when they go to order the premade beams, that you go in and order for 28 bridges, not a bridge here, a bridge there, every year.”