A Georgia Ports Authority official said Thursday in Gainesville that he is “very confident” that President Barack Obama’s budget next month will reflect needed funding to kick the Savannah Harbor deepening project into gear. James “Jamie” C. McCurry Jr., the authority’s senior director of administration and government affairs, said the hope is the project — first proposed in 1996 — can get started this year and wrap up in three to four years. The $652 million project calls for deepening the port from 42 feet, its current depth at low tide, to 47 feet.