MANSFIELD — The $1.5 million Richland County summer road paving plan is coming into view.
County commissioners on Tuesday approved an $851,270 contract with Sarver Paving of Ashland to chip-and-seal nearly 30 miles of county roads.
They also approved county Engineer Adam Gove’s request to seek bids for hot asphalt repaving of four to five miles of county roads this year, with an estimated price tag of $661,253.
Those bids will be opened June 13.
Chip-and-seal is a pavement treatment that combines one or more layers of asphalt with one or more layers of fine aggregate. Chipseals are typically used on rural roads carrying lower traffic volumes.
Chipsealing is cheaper than hot asphalt resurfacing, but is not as long lasting. The 29 1/2 miles to be chipsealed are on 10 different county roads, according to the engineer.
“We do a rating on all of our roads annually and a chipseal is more of a maintenance item,” Gove said.
“So we’ll go through and do the repairs that are needed before. It’s not a terrible road yet, so we put this treatment on it to extend the life of the pavement,” he said.
“Somewhere down the road, it will probably require an asphalt resurfacing.”
Gove said he received six bids for the chip-and-seal project, the lowest of which came from Sarver.
The second-lowest bid was Melway Paving from Holmesville for $876,217. The highest bid was from Small’s Sand & Gravel Inc. from Gambier for $1,029,732.
Gove, whose office estimated the chip-and-seal project at $811,988, said he was pleasantly surprised to receive six bids for the project.
“Typically we get two or three for this type of work,” he said.
“Most of these names are familiar names of the six who bid,” Gove said. “I think they are just looking for work this summer.”
Gove included one alternative for contractors to consider, a 1 1/2-mile section of Shelby-Ganges Road between the CSX railroad tracks and Plymouth-Springmill Road.
“I offered the alternative in case (base) bids came in lower than maybe we were expecting,” he said. “But we only have about $850,000 to put forth for this (chipseal) project.”
Sarver’s bid for the alternative work was $46,837, he said.
The chipseal project is scheduled to be complete by Sept. 15, according to Gove.
The engineer said it appears prices for petroleum-based products have leveled off after three years of inflation-driven price increases dating to 2020.
“Our chipseal cost is up a little bit, but not significantly. We won’t know for sure until we get the bids in for our hot-mix asphalt resurfacing,” he said.
