A deteriorating bridge on Clay Furnace Road in Jefferson Township, which is off-limits to monsters of the roadway like school buses and tractor-trailers, is in line for long-needed repair.

Mercer County commissioners passed two motions Thursday relating to the bridge, which board Chairman Cloyd E. "Gene" Brenneman describes as a "rickety steel span."

The first motion formally allows the county and its bridge department to prepare plans and surveys for reconstruction of the bridge. The second authorizes the county to open bids for the project after it receives utility and right-of-way clearances.

The bridge plans have already been approved by PennDOT, according to a memo sent from bridge department director Mark Miller to Brenneman on April 2.

The span appears near the top of PennDOT's 12-year list of bridges in need of repair.

State and federal money will cover 80 percent of the costs for the project, which is likely to cost more than $200,000. The rest will be paid for with local dollars. In 1997, the county estimated repairing the bridge would cost at least $220,000.

The project could be wrapped up by late summer or early fall, said Commissioner Olivia M. Lazor.

The Clay Furnace Road bridge has a 2-ton weight limit -- despite signs that indicate vehicles weighing as much as 5 tons can pass over it without unloading cargo or passengers. School buses do not cross it.

Despite the poor condition of the Clay Furnace Road bridge and others and the fact that Mercer County has the fifth most bridges in the state with 258, getting funding for area bridge projects is a years-long wait in a long line of state and federal grant-seekers, commissioners Brenneman and Lazor said.

"Someone has to be constantly bringing issues before PennDOT to get local projects noticed and completed," Mrs. Lazor said.