TriMet’s new MAX orange line is nearing completion millions of dollars under budget — and a portion of those savings will be used to enhance the project.

The federally funded Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Transit Project was originally estimated to cost $1.49 billion. However, TriMet officials now anticipate the project will be between $10 million and $40 million under budget when completed in September.

Technically, any money saved on the project goes back to agencies that stepped forward with money for the project.

The Federal Transit Administration was in line to receive 50 percent – or between $5 million and $20 million – of the money not used. However, U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., pushed to the feds to allow TriMet to keep $3.6 million of that amount.

TriMet plans to use the excess federal money it gets to keep to restore several elements of the project that had been cut out of the final plans. This includes additional heated rail switches and an ice cap on the overhead power wires to help the MAX trains run more smoothly during winter weather, and constructing three shelters at new orange line stops.

Merkley praised the project on Monday after walking across the nearly complete Tilikum Crossing, Bridge of the People with TriMet leaders and representatives of labor unions whose members contributed to building the transit bridge and 7.3-mile light-rail line. When it officially opens on Sept. 12, the bridge will carry the orange line, the Portland Streetcar, buses, pedestrians and bicyclists across the Willamette River between Portland’s South Waterfront and Central Eastside.

“It’s just a beautiful project,” Merkley said. “A project like this adds a tremendous amount to the livability of the area.”

He said he pushed for TriMet to keep a portion of the federal funds the transit agency would otherwise have to return as a reward for delivering the project significantly under budget.

“It’s a good policy in a number of ways,” Merkley said. “It starts as an incentive for folks to come in under budget. It made sense both as an incentive and making the system work better when it’s in operation.”

The federal government joins other project funders that will benefit from the project coming in under budget. The state of Oregon, Oregon Department of Transportation, Metro, Portland Development Commission, Multnomah and Clackamas counties and the cities of Portland, Milwaukie and Oregon City are anticipated to save between $5 and $20 million on the project, according to TriMet.

The exact savings won’t be determined until the federal appropriations process is complete in 2019, said Dan Blocher, TriMet executive director of capital projects. Until then, the project will continue to incur costs and receive federal grant payments. This is why TriMet officials have estimated the savings in a range.

“We feel pretty sure it’s going to come in under budget,” Blocher said. “Until we get all of our money from the federal government, we don’t know what the financial impact will be.”

He and TriMet’s general manager, Neil McFarlane, attributed the savings to a dedicated and organized project team. Historically low interest rates have also helped.

“We have terrific designers and contractors and it’s a very experienced team, and that manifests in well-run projects,” Blocher said.

Merkley said the project helps emphasize the importance of infrastructure investments. As a car-free bridge, Tilikum Crossing could also be a trendsetter, he said.

“It’s really a statement to alternative forms of transportation,” Merkley said. “It’s going to get a whole lot of people out of their cars.”

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Every day, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, 7 billion gallons of clean drinking water spill from leaky pipes around the country.

According to a 2007 assessment by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the nation’s aging water infrastructure needs approximately $334.8 billion worth of improvements over the next 20 years. However, the U.S. is facing an annual $11 billion shortfall to pay for that work, according to the ASCE.

To that end, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., last week visited the Portland Water Bureau’s operations facility on North Interstate Avenue to introduce new legislation that could help the nation access money for water infrastructure improvements.

The Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act is designed to increase the availability of capital at a lower cost by authorizing the federal government to make low-interest loans via the U.S. Treasury for drinking water and wastewater projects.

“If we can borrow money at a better rate than we’re currently borrowing that means our debt service is lower and our rates are lower,” said David Shaff, administrator for the Portland Water Bureau.

Shaff said the bureau sold $76 million worth of bonds last month with an interest rate of 2.91 percent. Hypothetically, if that rate were to drop to 2 percent through the proposed legislation, the city would save $400,000 a year – or $10 million over the life of the bonds, he said.

Shaff said that is especially significant because the only other funds now available for water infrastructure are those that are available through the State Revolving Loan Fund, which has a cap of $6 million per loan. And those loans are competitive, he said.

“That’s incredibly useful to a small system,” he said. “But a system as big as Portland eats up $6 million in a bite pretty quickly.”

That’s because Portland’s 115-year-old water system needs some significant improvements. Shaff said that cast-iron pipes are becoming brittle, pump stations are wearing out and several reservoirs are well beyond their useful years.

Shaff said a fire hydrant on his block is the original one that was installed when the block was built in the 1890s. Other larger, more vital structures also need to be replaced.

“We have six crossings under the Willamette River,” he said. “But only one of those crossings is relatively new – and when I say new, it’s … 30 years old.”

That’s the Washington County water supply line. Whether that line or any of the others can endure the impact of a large earthquake is a huge question mark, Shaff said.

Shaff said the Portland Water Bureau is hoping to break ground within the next two months on a $35 million project to renovate its Interstate Avenue maintenance, construction and operations facilities, which are hugely susceptible to seismic events.

“It’s a 1920s-era unreinforced brick masonry building,” he said of the maintenance and construction building. “It will collapse.”

Shaff said the bureau is looking to address $400 million worth of capital infrastructure needs over the next five years. The bureau already has a AAA rating from Moody’s, but any assistance in making that borrowing easier and cheaper is valuable, he said.

Courtney Warner Crowell, deputy communications director for Merkley’s office, said the new bill likely would not be passed before November. She said the idea was to get it out in the open so that it could move forward next spring.

Shaff said multiple benefits would be produced by the legislation.

“It enables us to borrow money,” he said, “which enables us to do important work, which results in people getting jobs.”

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A new proposal from the office of Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., is taking some cues from the Franklin Roosevelt administration to help struggling homeowners.

The Rebuilding American Homeownership Trust, a temporary trust, would buy mortgages from families up to date on their loan payments but underwater in value. It’s modeled after the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation Act, which was enacted during the Great Depression to help families refinance unhealthy mortgages into long-term, fixed-rate mortgages.

In a conference call last week, Merkley said 8 million Americans are struggling to repay loans with high interest rates. Of those, 4 million do not have access to the Home Affordable Refinance Program through Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

“They are completely, 100 percent stranded,” Merkley said.

The proposed trust is designed to help those people without using taxpayer dollars. The prediction is for a 2 percent spread between the cost to issue the trust money and the resulting interest earned from homeowners. The plan envisions the federal government selling bonds to investors to raise money.

Three mortgage options would be established.

The first would be a 15-year, 4 percent mortgage designed to help families rebuild equity quicker. The second would be a 30-year, 5 percent mortgage with lower monthly payments. The third would be a two-part mortgage with a 95 percent first mortgage on the home’s current value, and a second mortgage on the balance. The second mortgage would not accrue interest or require payments for five years; it’s designed to help lower monthly payment obligations.

The trust would be piloted immediately and located in the Federal Housing Administration, the Federal Home Loan Banks or the Federal Reserve. The trust would require no legislative action and wind down and disappear as specially refinanced mortgages were sold or repaid.

Last week during a banking committee meeting, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner voiced his support of the program. Geithner said it was good economic policy, that it would not leave taxpayers exposed to any meaningful risk and that it would help reduce the remaining pressures the housing market has put on the economy as a whole.

“This is a win on every level,” Merkley said. “This is a win for the families that either get a much shorter term on their loan, get out from underwater much more quickly … or by having a longer term mortgage, they dramatically reduce their payments.”

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A group of Democrats last week introduced to the U.S. Senate a new piece of legislation that seeks to rebuild the housing market – literally.

The Project Rebuild Act would inject $15 billion into the rehabilitation of residential and commercial properties left vacant following foreclosure. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., introduced the bill.

“Right now we’re in a cycle where we have more and more foreclosed homes that are empty; they drive down the value and that leads to more foreclosed homes, and we’ve got to reverse that downward cycle,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who is co-sponsoring the measure.

The federal government would issue $10 billion in formula grants and $5 billion in competitive grants. There would be a minimum of $20 million for each of the 50 states, but Merkley said Oregon could get as much as $150 million, based on its population.

That could be helpful for Oregon homebuilders, considering foreclosures have a particularly nasty side effect for those businesses.

“A lot of guys are gone; a lot of contractors that were here are no longer here,” said James Fagan, co-owner of in Bend. “There are a whole number of companies that have gone out of Bend. It’s been kind of tough for a lot of people. We’ve contracted too, but we’ve managed to hang in there.”

Fagan said that with distressed home prices well below the cost of new construction, the latter doesn’t pencil out these days. As a result, he said, the company has had to lay off all four of its full-time carpenters, cut its margins and transition to subcontracting out all of its work.

So, with the list of cash-strapped clientele growing, the company recently tried something new.

It bought a distressed home for $280,000, pumped $90,000 into renovations and sold it this past week for $430,000. Fagan said that after accounting for real estate commissions and a few other incidental fees, the profit was fairly modest. But the project was certainly worthwhile.

“ We put some guys to work and made a little bit of money and we got ourselves out there as doing remodels, which we haven’t done a whole lot of in Bend,” he said.

The Project Rebuild Act could build on that effort by adding as many as 200,000 jobs across the nation, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Merkley said foreclosures are bad for business.

“Those dropping home prices make it almost impossible for new home construction to start, and because there’s just too much inventory of below-market homes for folks to choose from, construction comes to a standstill,” Merkley said. “The nice thing about restoring, maintaining and selling these homes is it directly puts people to work, as well as stopping the foreclosed home downward spiral.”

Based on statistics, the grant money could go a long way in Oregon.

With roughly 30,000 foreclosures in each of the past few years, the percentage of loans in the foreclosure process at the end of the fourth quarter of 2011 in Oregon was 3.61 percent – slightly below the national rate of 4.38 percent, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. That was down slightly from the third quarter.

Within the state, the foreclosure epidemic hit the Bend Metropolitan Statistical Area hardest. Bend’s foreclosure rate is 4.87 percent, according to LPS Applied Analytics. The Medford MSA and the Salem MSA followed, at 4.4 percent and 3.4 percent respectively.

Those numbers hurt sales prices for surrounding homes. HUD estimates that foreclosed homes decrease the values of others in the neighborhood by an average of $5,000.

And in Bend, the average sales price for a foreclosed property is approximately 15 percent below the normal average sales price. So homes that normally would sell for $170,000 are selling for closer to $146,000, according to LPS.

Fagan said Timberline Construction would consider renovating more distressed properties in the future, especially if grant money is available.

“There’s lots (of foreclosed properties), and I think there’s more coming,” Fagan said. “They’re in every neighborhood.”

Merkley estimates that foreclosure will strike 5 million more U.S. homes within the next few years. He said funding for the Project Rebuild Act isn’t identified yet. Right now, the plan is to educate people why it’s needed.

“We have to understand that housing brought us into this recession and economists say we’re out of the recession,” he said. “It doesn’t look like we’re out of the recession if you’re on the ground in America. … We are going to have to have to turn the housing cycle around to have a broader economic recovery – this is one approach.”

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The office of Sen. Jeff Merkley announced today that Bend Municipal Airport has been awarded a grant for $3.4 million from the Federal Aviation Administration to restore its Taxiway A.

“The current taxiway was put in in 1966,” said Bend Municipal Airport Manager Gary Judd. “It’s very old, and it’s cracked.”

The federal grant will pay for most of a $3.6 million project, which will widen the taxiway and move it a few feet away from the airport’s runway so it can accommodate larger planes. Local funds will make up the difference for the cost the grant doesn’t cover.

Judd said the airport was happy to get the grant, especially considering the turbulent funding year the FAA has had with its funding held up in congress.

“We applied for it, but with the FAA shutdowns, there was a bit of drama to see if we’d actually get it,” Judd said.

Bend Municipal Airport is currently undergoing a master planning process and has had a series of upgrades in recent years including a new taxiway, which was constructed last year. The airport is seeing more traffic and making gradual upgrades, Judd said.

“We’re up to about 98,000 operations a year, which is almost enough to qualify for a tower,” Judd said. Some of the airport’s traffic comes from large corporate jets, and while an increase in traffic is encouraging, those trips alone aren’t enough to justify a complete upgrade of the airport.

“We’re hoping there’s some growth, but the recession has definitely slowed things down,” Judd said.

Construction on Taxiway A is expected to be finished in summer 2012.

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Bank of America officials announced today the company will halt foreclosure sales in all 50 states.

The move comes less than a week after Ally Financial, which is the nation’s largest servicer of home mortgages, Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase all halted foreclosure proceedings in 23 states due to allegations that documents hadn’t been properly reviewed.

While the federal government looks to sort out the issue of improperly handling foreclosures, local real estate professionals believe the freeze could do more harm than good.

“This is going to really slow things down,” said Gerard Mildner, associate professor or real estate finance at Portland State University. “People are painting this issue as a sob story because people are going to lose their homes, but for the most part it’s just delaying the inevitable.”

The problem, according to local professionals, is that while foreclosure sales are stalled, the number of homeowners receiving notices of default, and entering the process of foreclosure is still adding up. This adds to what those in the industry call shadow inventory – the inventory of homes that are in the process of foreclosure but for whatever reason have yet to be foreclosed upon.

As long as the banks slowly release the foreclosures into the market, it doesn’t affect the pricing of the rest of the market. But if each bank has its supply of homes build up and then is forced to release a large number of those houses at once, the quick rise of supply could sharply drive down housing prices.

Since the allegations of improper foreclosure handling were made public, politicians, consumer advocates and civil rights organizations have come out against the lenders, asking for all foreclosure sales to be frozen. They also requested that an investigation be opened. Bank of America was the first institution to do so.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, who is a member of the Senate Banking Committee, was the first politician to call for the freeze in a letter he wrote to U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan. In his letter, Merkley focused on Ally Financial.

“Ally Financial did not exercise proper professional standards as decisions were made about the fate of families struggling to maintain their homes,” Merkley wrote in his letter. “These reports are even more disturbing because the U.S. Government is a majority stakeholder in Ally Financial.”

The letter continues, “The recent freeze in foreclosures announced by J.P. Morgan Chase, GMCA Mortgage and Bank of America while internal investigations take place suggests that this problem may be widespread and not limited to poor management at a single company.”

But Mildner thinks Merkley is looking at the issue from the wrong angle.

“I think that’s a ballsy thing for a U.S. Senator to say,” he said. “It’s very distressing to me that he can’t see the bigger picture.

“Having that many homes in the process of foreclosure doesn’t just affect those being foreclosed on, it affects our neighborhoods as well as the rest of us who are paying our mortgages.”

When a house enters the process of foreclosure, the homeowner tends to become emotionally detached from it, according to Mildner. When this happens the home doesn’t get the improvements and maintenance it needs, which drives down prices in the entire neighborhood, he said.

While Mildner would like to see foreclosure sales continue to go through as the government conducts an investigation, Bank of America is sticking to its new policy.

According to a statement on its website, Bank of American is suspending foreclosures until an assessment of its practices are completed. Any errors are most likely technical, the financial institution said.

Lynae Forbes, vice president of broker services at the Hasson Company Realtors, agrees that the move could hurt the industry. But she also mentioned a silver lining.

“For whatever reason banks have been hesitant to finalize short sales in recent months,” Forbes said. “But in order to not backlog their foreclosures they might be willing to look at more short sales as a solution.”

While Forbes is trying to remain optimistic, she and her fellow co-workers have no idea what’s actually going to come out of this.

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It was only time before the handling of foreclosures by loan providers made it to the political arena. And it looks like U.S Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., will be leading the push.

Merkley sent a letter today to U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan urging them to launch an independent investigation against Ally Financial.

Ally Financial, the nation’s largest servicer of home mortgages, halted foreclosure proceedings in 23 states last week after it was discovered that thousands of foreclosure documents had not been properly reviewed. J.P. Morgan Chase, GMAC Mortgage and Bank of America also have frozen their foreclosure hearings until the matter is resolved.

“Ally Financial did not exercise proper professional standards as decisions were made about the fate of families struggling to maintain their homes,” Merkley wrote in his letter. “These reports are even more disturbing because the U.S. Government is a majority stakeholder in Ally Financial.”

The letter continues, “The recent freeze in foreclosures announced by J.P. Morgan Chase, GMCA Mortgage and Bank of America while internal investigations take place suggests that this problem may be widespread and not limited to poor management at a single company.”

In addition to the independent investigation, Merkley, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, called for all foreclosure proceedings by Ally Financial and other servicers with established problems to remain frozen until the loan servicers are found to follow proper protocol.

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Sen. Jeff Merkley is rallying behind governmental leaders from several Oregon municipalities to stop a proposed land deal that he says “would set a terrible precedent and create a significant loophole in the state’s land use system.”

The deal is being proposed by Chris and Tom Maletis, owners of 385 acres south of the Willamette River near Wilsonville. The land, which includes the Langdon Farms Golf Course along Interstate 5, is currently zoned for exclusive farm use with a conditional use permit for the golf course that would be revoked if the course closed.

The land also is designated as a rural reserve by Metro and Clackamas County, meaning it can’t be considered for urban development over the next 40 years. The brothers are proposing construction of a green industrial development on the property, although city leaders from the surrounding towns are concerned that the 2005 proposition of a mega-casino could be rehashed.

Under the deal the developers would apply with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to place the land into a trust for the Klamath Tribes of Chiloquin. The tribes would then lease the land back to the brothers, freeing them of state, county and municipal land-use regulations under the Klamath Restoration Act of 1986. Loose wording in the Klamath Restoration Act makes it difficult to determine if the tribe can be trusted land only in the general vicinity of their reservation, or anywhere. Langdon Farms is about 250 miles away from the tribe’s original reservation.

In a letter to the regional municipalities, Merkley said, “I share many of your concerns about land at such a distance from the tribe’s ancestral land moving into trust. … Although I have great interest in aiding the Klamath Tribe’s economic development efforts and understand their desire to meet the challenges facing tribal members who are living in the Portland metro area, I believe that using the conversion-to-trust process to achieve a zone change for development in Clackamas County would be a serious mistake.”

Merkley sent the letter in mid-April and indicated that he wasn’t sure if the deal would move forward or not. At about the same time the Maletis brothers canceled planned town hall meetings to discuss the issue in Wilsonville, Hubbard, St. Paul and Aurora, noting that an application hadn’t yet been filed with the BIA.

Mark Ottenad, public affairs director for the city of Wilsonville, thought the proposed land trust might be a lobbying technique to get the land put in an urban reserve instead of a rural reserve during Metro’s recent land planning initiative. But Mark Cushing, the attorney representing the brothers, said, “We took a slight hiatus during the Klamath tribe’s recent election process but will still be moving forward with the deal.”

Ottenad said the big issue with developing the land is that the transportation infrastructure around Interstate 5 couldn’t support urbanization south of the Willamette River. It would cost ODOT $500 million in capital costs to make the improvements to support urbanization that far south, he said.

“We have a great deal of concern with how things move along Interstate 5 because so many of our businesses depend on smoothly moving up and down the freeway,” he said.

The other major concern is that once the land is put in a trust, it would be fairly easy to change its use from green industrial.

“We have two million square feet of vacant industrial space in the area. Why would we need more?” asked Ottenad. “Even if they are designating the land as non-casino with the BIA, our attorneys have advised us that it would be fairly easy to change that designation if the proposed idea didn’t pencil out.”

While the debate continues in Oregon, Merkley said in his letter that he will be keeping a watchful eye on the issue and is prepared to enter into a discussion with the Department of Interior in the deal is made.

“It is the senator’s hope that the parties involved will allow Oregon’s land-use system to continue to function as it was envisioned by the Oregon Legislature and Oregonians who believe a big part of our state’s legacy is our smart stewardship of rural reserves,” said Julie Edward, communications director for Merkley.

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While a requirement in the new health care reform law for employers to provide health insurance won’t apply to most contractors, the largest companies will have to provide insurance for their employees. And they’ll be bidding on some projects against companies who don’t have to.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., had attached an amendment to the bill that would have required contractors with five or more employees and payrolls of more than $250,000 to provide health coverage. That amendment didn’t survive the reconciliation process between Senate and House versions of the bill.

As it stands, only companies with 50 or more employees will have to provide insurance. That applies mostly to the largest contractors.

“Going from five to 50 is going to affect a certain amount of companies,” said John Ward, president of R&H Construction, which has more than 50 salaried employees. “I think it’s really hard to tell what the effects will be until we understand what the whole bill does.”

R&H already provides benefits for its employees, Ward said, as do most of its competitors. “If they’re a company that chooses to provide health care benefits, we’re already competing on the same playing field,” he said.

“If they’re not (providing benefits), we’re already competing against them,” he said. If the new law spurs companies below the 50-employee mark to drop their health care benefits, that could affect competition.

“(If) a company that was under 49 employees went from having benefits to not having benefits because of this, then their costs could be lower from that,” Ward said.

Brian Turmail, spokesman for the Associated General Contractors of America, said it’s hard to imagine droves of medium-to-large contractors dropping their health benefits because their larger competitors now can’t do the same in response. “That’s a bit of a red herring,” he said.

“If you cut benefits, you cut your ability to perform as a company,” Turmail said. “Everyone has the same construction equipment. There’s no secret front-end loader that’s going to beat out the competition.

“Where you’re going to compete is on the strength of your employees.”

Bart Eberwein, a vice president with Hoffman Construction, said the company wins jobs more on expertise than cost. “I’d like to think we compete on other things, complex projects that are like heart surgery in the middle of a busy campus,” he said.

Considering only health care costs misses the point, Eberwein said. The more the company spends on wellness, the less it has to spend on health insurance.

Programs ranging from smoking cessation to weight loss to blood-sugar monitoring help Hoffman keep insurance premiums low, Eberwein said. “It has already had a huge, huge, huge effect” on premiums, he said.

“Sometimes that means it just doesn’t go up when everyone else’s goes up in the double digits.”

While the Merkley amendment didn’t make the final health care reform bill, Merkley and union supporters still hope the concept will resurface in another bill. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said the organization will keep working to bring more contractors under the health-insurance requirement.

Tom Owens, spokesman with the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Department, said he doesn’t know what the chances are of that happening. “There hasn’t been any discussion about how to proceed,” he said.

Owens stopped short of saying that reviving the Merkley amendment was a top priority. “We’re interested in seeing the issue revisited, but we don’t necessarily have a priority list.”

Julie Edwards, a spokeswoman for Merkley, said there’s no new stand-alone bill that does what the amendment would have, and it hasn’t been attached to another bill. She wouldn’t speculate on the chances of that happening.

“It’s really too soon to say,” she said.

Turmail said he doubts the Merkley amendment could pass as its own bill, especially after the controversy that arose after it was originally included in the health care bill. “I don’t have a sense that there’s any kind of base of support for this measure,” he said.

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An amendment to the federal health care bill that was geared toward contractors won’t end up in the final bill, a representative from Sen. Jeff Merkley‘s office said today.

Merkley, D-Ore., successfully added an amendment to the bill before it passed the Senate in December. The amendment would require construction companies with five or more employees, and at least $250,000 in annual payroll expenses, to provide health benefits to their workers.

For other industries, the limit is 50 or more employees.

With the House of Representatives working to reconcile the Senate version, the amendment will drop out, said Merkley spokeswoman Julie Edwards.

The amendment could reemerge as a standalone bill or attached to another bill, Edwards said. Right now, there’s no timeline for that to happen.

“It’s really too soon to say,” Edwards said.

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