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Holly Hill workshop reviews five-year paving plan and weighs cheaper 'cape seal' option
Summary
City staff and a Mead Hunt consultant reviewed a five-year resurfacing plan for roughly 59 miles of streets, presenting a conventional mill-and-resurface cost estimate of about $9.6 million in today's dollars and a lower-cost cape-seal combo estimate near $7.5 million; staff will return with options this project cycle.
David King, a consultant with Mead Hunt, told Holly Hill city officials at a workshop that the city controls about 59 miles of streets and that a 2021 visual pavement condition index (PCI) survey found roughly 78% of those streets rated "satisfactory to good." King said the study removed recently resurfaced segments and applied a degradation model to estimate current conditions and future needs.
King framed two primary resurfacing approaches. The conventional method, milling and repaving, removes an inch or two of asphalt and then repaves; King said that approach "in today's dollars this cost about $250,000 per mile." He told commissioners that a citywide, all-at-once mill-and-resurface calculation for the remaining network came to about $9.6 million as a present-dollar snapshot for comparison.
As an alternative, King described a two-step "cape seal" treatment (chip seal followed by a micro-surface overlay) intended for lower-volume residential streets. He said cape seal "is about 30 to 50% less expensive" than milling-and-resurface and gave a present-day per-mile figure near $170,000. King cautioned that cape seal is more of a surface treatment and is less appropriate where the pavement structure or base is compromised, so a long-term program would mix cape seal and selective milling.
Staff and council members pressed several practical points. City staff said this year is an engineering year with about $50,000 budgeted for design and coring work and that a typical paving year, when projects are combined for volume pricing, can approach $400,000'$500,000. Council members asked whether federal or community development grant money (CDBG) would change obligations after severe weather; King said federally funded segments remain city-owned but have different requirements in some federal contexts and that the city had not used CDBG for this program.
The presentation compared program scenarios: the consultant's snapshot showed a $9.6 million estimate for an all-milling approach versus about $7.53 million for a combo program using cape seal on appropriate streets. King emphasized the numbers were current-dollar comparisons to show how different annual funding levels affect the time required to complete a renewal cycle and that roads with a PCI near or below 55 would still require milling or base work before any surface treatment.
Council members also asked about climate and drainage effects. King said increased standing water and higher groundwater accelerate structural failure because subgrade moisture weakens pavement life; he recommended coordinating drainage or sewer repairs with resurfacing to avoid rework. On materials reuse, he explained that reclaimed asphalt millings are commonly recycled at plants and that DOT specifications allow a substantial recycled-content portion of mixes, though full in-place recycling is a different process used for reconstruction rather than surface work.
No formal action or vote was taken; the workshop was information-only. Staff said they will return during project planning with options for the next paving cycle, including recommended mixes of milling and cape-seal treatments and cost estimates tailored to chosen annual funding levels.
