Caution: Palm Coast Will Resurface 10 Miles of Roads Spread Around 33 Segments in the City

It’s not the resurfacing program of old when, year after year, Palm Coast would repave 50 miles of road in a city crisscrossed by 550 miles of roads. But it’s not 2013, either, when the city barely resurfaced roads at all: the total that year was measured in yards (5,600), not miles, and it covered just four deteriorated streets.

This year, the city will resurface 10 miles of roads, dumping almost 10,000 tons of asphalt on 33 stretches of streets in the C, F, P, R and W Sections, along with a few segments in Seminole Woods. See the full list of resurfacing projects below.

The Palm Coast City Council was briefed on the $1 million project this week and is expected to approve the repaving contract at a meeting next week.

Four companies placed a bid for the project, with the highest bid coming in at $1.4 million (Duval Asphalt Products of Jacksonville) and the lowest at $865,160 by P&S, barely besting Ormond Beach’s Halifax Paving ($868,188).  P&S Paving Inc. of Daytona Beach has been contracting with the city for resurfacing for years. The resurfacing is expected to take 60 to 90 days once it begins.

The dollars come out of the city’s street improvement fund, with gas tax revenue as the primary  source. Gas tax revenue is distributed between the county and its cities.  Palm Coast’s share is $1.6 million annually. The remaining dollars pay for other road improvement projects that grants can’t pay for.

Because the city pledged to resurface every square foot of road over a 10-year period ending in 2012, streets tend to be in relatively good shape, although streets repaved at the beginning of the resurfacing decade are obviously showing signs of wear, and some are deteriorating beyond pot-hole fixing.

“Some of the major roads we’re beginning to see the unraveling,” Tony Capela, the city’s public works superintendent, told the council on Tuesday. By unraveling, he meant deterioration and failure of the road.

Arterial roads get preference over secondary roads. Roads that generate a lot of customer complaints will also have priority, Capela said. “I really don’t get any complaints about Old Kings Road,” he said, prompted by a council member’s question about that much-traveled road. “We are looking at Old Kings Road for next year, because we’re starting to get caught up and we’re not seeing a really big need. When you look at Old Kings Road, we’re looking at probably a four-mile stretch.”

The 10-year resurfacing program was paid for through a half-cent sales tax supplement voters approved in 2002, for county and municipal needs. Palm Coast’s share totaled $23.4 million. It was entirely devoted to the resurfacing program. Palm Coast and the county clashed and eventually could not agree on a renewal of the sales tax last year, as the county sough to increase its share of the revenue and Palm Coast resisted. Instead, the county unilaterally passed a sales tax supplement by a super-majority vote of the county commission. Palm Coast is still getting a share of that revenue, but its share has been reduced by $500,000 a year.

Palm Coast Resurfacing Projects, 2014