Out of 13 companies in four states expected to submit bids to land the job of improving the T-dock crane support at the Port of Vicksburg, only one made an offer – more than double the amount Warren County supervisors pledged to borrow for the sorely needed work.

With additional funding sources now needed, county officials are mulling options for additional funding, including federal grants.

&#8220We need to do whatever we have to do,” Board President Richard George said.

The lone bid was a $3.4 million offer from Vicksburg-based Riverside Construction on replacing the support platform, a project pegged at $1.7 million by county engineers and which supervisors voted to renew up to $2.5 million in port improvement bonds to finance along with repairing the structure leading to it. No bids came in for the structure repair.

County Engineer John McKee said the high cost and limited availability of equipment and construction materials likely played a role in the dearth of bids received for the projects, which garnered initial interest from companies from four states.

&#8220There’s so much building going on from here to Dallas, companies just can’t find equipment,” McKee said.

Thursday’s developments add another challenge to the Warren County Port Commission in stopping a decline in revenue since February, when the dock was closed after an inspection revealed cracks and corrosion from years of bumps from barges since its completion in the early 1970s.

Its effect on business at the port has been acute, as totals of solid tonnage unloaded in March and April were down 84.5 percent from January and February.

Supervisors may seek $75 million in community development block grants (CDBGs) now available to 43 of 49 counties in the Gulf Opportunity Zone, the federally declared disaster area due to Hurricane Katrina of which Warren County is a part. Such monies are administered on the state level by business development authorities, with Mississippi Development Authority in charge of CDBGs here.

&#8220We will explore approaching MDA on those funds,” George said later. &#8220A great deal of the unexpected cost is because of all the damage Katrina did on the coast. It’s driving up the cost of doing business.”

Each county is eligible for up to $2 million in grant money for projects such as infrastructure improvements, roads and water and sewer system improvements.

Such funds still may have to be matched with money on the county level and applications must be filed with Mississippi Development Authority by Aug. 31, said Olie Elfer of Jimmy G. Gouras Urban Planning Consultants Inc., who shared details of the grant program with supervisors earlier Thursday.

Elfer advised the board projects must deal with county resources affected in some way by the hurricane.

In other business, supervisors agreed to have the county Web site linked on the home page of the Vicksburg-Warren County Chamber of Commerce.

Executive director Christi Kilroy said officials with Leadership Mississippi visited the area in May, talking promotion strategies with its local entity, Leadership Vicksburg.

&#8220’Do we have a common voice?’ was one of the questions they had,” said Kilroy, one of 10 business and marketing professionals in the local group.

Kilroy, completing her first year at the helm, said the next challenge for the chamber is growing the current participation by local industries in the Red Hot Deals link on the site, where businesses can post maps, phone numbers and their own Web sites.

Warren County contributed $15,000 this year to the Chamber’s efforts to promote Warren County as a destination for retirees, plus another $10,000 toward other Chamber operations.