The 90-year-old Deception Pass Bridge is in fair condition but “just starting to get into poor,” a state bridge engineer told Whidbey Island officials this week.

That doesn’t mean it’s unsafe, engineer Evan Grimm said, but just that it will need a lot of work to bring it up to a solid “good” condition.

“That’s an indication to us, as bridge managers, that this bridge is not going to continue to last forever,” he said. “It’s going to need to be replaced.”

A half dozen employees from the state Department of Transportation attended an Island County Council of Governments meeting Wednesday to talk about the future of the historic bridge that connects Whidbey and Fidalgo islands. The Council of Governments is a group made up of elected officials from the county, municipalities and ports on the island.

The main message from the DOT officials is that the state Legislature has badly underfunded bridge preservation for many years, which means maintenance and seismic retrofitting of the Deception Pass Bridge isn’t planned. Likewise, there are no plans for replacement or managing the aftermath of a disaster that takes out the bridge.

At the same time, some local officials questioned why the DOT is spending money on smaller, less important projects instead of saving funds for more important work.

Grimm discussed the huge challenge of dealing with the backlog of work needed on the 3,400 bridges on state highways. The average age is 51 years, with 313 bridges being 80 years old or older. He acknowledged that there is preservation work that should be done on Deception Pass Bridge that isn’t being addressed.

Grimm said the state will inevitably meet the federal threshold of 10% of bridges being in poor condition, which will mean greater oversight.

“It took decades of underfunding to get us into the condition that we are right now,” Grimm said. “It’s not a good place to be.”

He gave an example of the basic preservation work that isn’t getting done on the Tacoma Narrows bridge.

“It’s frustrating and frankly it’s embarrassing,” he said. “We need to be spending a lot more money on that structure.”

Another example was the Carbon River/Fairfax Bridge, which was recently closed permanently for safety reasons. Grimm said the state simply wasn’t painting it, which is necessary to maintain steel bridges.

Grimm said Deception Pass Bridge is unique, which is why a special seismic study was completed on the structure. The plan recommends $3.2 million in seismic work, but the state has no plans to do the work because of a lack of funding.

The engineer explained that 918 bridges were on a list for seismic retrofitting, but only 330 were completed. State lawmakers authorized no funding for retrofitting last year or the year before.

Coupeville Mayor Molly Hughes asked who in the state Legislature proposed spending $900,000 to study and engineer suicide prevention efforts at the bridge.

“If our bridges are in such horrible conditions that you are only able to do emergency repair on all the bridges on the state, I feel like suicide prevention is a low priority,” she said. “I know that sounds harsh. I know that sounds awful, but I would rather invest that money in keeping the function of Deception Pass Bridge for the hundreds of thousands of people that use it on an annual basis.”

State Sen. Ron Muzzall, R-Oak Harbor, happened to be in the room and passionately defended the spending, which he had lobbied the Senate Transportation Committee to include in the budget. He said people jumping off the bridge is a growing problem that has personally affected him as well as many first responders.

Muzzall said a friend he’s known since childhood committed suicide at the bridge. He also has a close relationship with a state trooper who lost hold of a person who was jumping.

“Watching that person plummet 180 feet to the water surface is not something you wish on someone,” he said.

But Muzzall also agreed that the DOT is badly underfunded, even with the increase in gas tax and a decision to move some excise tax to the department. He pointed out that the gas tax is decreasing simply because people are using less gas.

“We have an unstable funding model that puts them into the position to do more with less every day,” he said.

Yet Island County Commissioner Jill Johnson questioned how the DOT chooses to spend money. She said a roundabout project on Highway 20 at Fakkema Road is going forward even though no local officials prioritized the project. Meanwhile, the bridge “looks junky” with potholes and broken railings and there are no plans for seismic retrofitting or to replace it. Likewise, the widening of the highways on the island has been a local priority for 20 years but hasn’t happened.

“The major priority infrastructure has no plans but U-Haul gets a roundabout?” she asked, referring to the business at the intersection of the highway and Fakkema Road.

A DOT official explained that the project was funded by a unique “pot of money” for small, safety-related projects.

Johnson, however, said the state should stop spending money on small, easy projects that aren’t wanted by local officials in order to save money for big projects. Other members of the Council of Governments agreed. Commissioner Melanie Bacon argued that fixing the intersection of Highway 525 at Honeymoon Bay Road should have been a higher priority than the Fakkema Road intersection.

Likewise, Hughes questioned why local officials and staff members spend endless hours in Regional Transportation Planning Organization meetings to come up with plans and priorities when DOT is just going to ignore the input and “do random stuff.”

“I’m seriously just gobsmacked that this has happened,” she said.