The Nevada Transportation Department has met a deadline for seeking bids for $70 million in road projects, ranging from highway repaving to historic V&T Railway work and an antelope and deer overpass, being funded by federal stimulus dollars.
The agency began in late March to solicit bidders for various projects. If a Monday deadline for seeking the bids hadn't been met, the state could have been forced to return some of the funds, spokesman Scott Magruder said Wednesday.
Already, contracts have been awarded for five projects accounting for nearly $50 million of the money, and Magruder said the state has been getting some good deals.
"We're getting more contractors bidding than normal, and they're hungry. They're sharpening their pencils and giving us very good bids that have been a little lower than the original estimates," Magruder said. "That lets us bid for more projects."
The $70 million represents half of the $140 million in transportation-related stimulus dollars that the state expects from the federal government. About $60 million more in such funds is going to local governments.
One of the goals of the federal stimulus funding legislation was to rapidly put people to work in "economically distressed" areas on road jobs that could be completed by 2010. Lawmakers were told during the 2009 session that the funding could help to create up to 9,500 jobs.
Most of the 10 Nevada contracts now out to bid or already approved are for paving jobs. The main exceptions are a nearly $3 million V&T Railway job near Carson City and the $3.6 million antelope and deer bridge over U.S. 93, about 10 miles north of Wells in Elko County.
So far, Nevada's bid requests are for projects in Clark County, Nevada's largest, and eight outlying counties including Pershing, Elko, Humboldt, Lander, Lincoln, Lyon, Nye and Carson City.
When all the transportation-related stimulus dollars are spent, it's expected that Clark County will have received just over half the money while Washoe, Nevada's second-biggest county, will have received
13 percent. All the stimulus projects are expected to be under construction by early next year.
The transportation project money is part of overall stimulus funds totaling about
$1.5 billion for Nevada.