Feedback on a Large Paving Project

We're getting the "big ticket" items of our reserve fund list and replacing the asphalt on a 5-foot wide, 1/2 mile walking path has me straddling the fence on strategy. Either way we'd go, money won't be the issue as there is enough Reserve Funding and we're saving about 27.5% of our budget into Reserves.....we feather the nest because we got burned in the last decade.

1. Should we simply replace the asphalt that needs replacing in smaller chunks, leaving the old but flat parts of the path unaddressed until needing attention?

2. Should we just grab the lump sum and repave the whole path at one item, replacing the bad and resurfacing the good....creating one uniform job that will certainly not be out of line, just a big job that will slow our approach as we check off the reserve fund replacements on our list.

One fact is that you can pay 70% less per square foot if you hire a big job to be completed at one time. Doing patch work of, say, 30 feet at the time, per job is expense. $2/sq foot vs $6/sq foot depending on scale of job.

I move back n' forth because I like the "get it done" approach....but a more steady approach would allow us to address other property replacements on the Reserve Fund list in a shorter calendar window. Our neighborhood is approaching 30 years old so it all needs a good review and most of it could stand an update. Deferring Reserve Fund maintenance doesn't save money, making this an exercise in strategic thinking.

What are your thoughts?

We don't have a path but we do have streets and parking areas. Our Reserves have individual line items with x amount allocated to each item (vs. just having one large pot of Reserve funds). We actually have one line item for repairs and one line item for repaving.

Repaving is milling and paving of the entire streets and parking areas.

Repairs are doing sections that need repaired between repavings.

As Glen pointed out, if funding isn't an issue, you should repair all that needs repaired. If you don't have your Reserves broken out by line item, you may want to consider it as this will tell you if you actually have enough funds available when a repair/replacement occurs.