Municipal and county administrators are weighing the decision by the state to suspend, at least temporarily, paving contracts temporarily in light of skyrocketing costs for paving materials.

In Bangor, City Engineer Jim Ring said Wednesday he was not yet certain how the DOT’s decision will affect state-funded paving projects administered by the city.

Ring said the city opened bids Wednesday afternoon on two locally administered DOT projects

“These are MDOT projects we have designed, advertised and will administer, as we have done with numerous local MDOT projects in the past. This approach has provided faster delivery and cost savings. There is a local match, usually around 15 percent, and the rest is federal and state money.”

The two projects at issue are pavement rehabilitation on the section of Cumberland Street that runs from Market Street to Broadway, and Griffin Road from Maine Avenue to Union Street, according to Ring. Combined, the projects are expected to require an estimated 1,500 tons of paving material.

On Thursday he reported that the bids received for the two projects came in a combined $135,000 over budget.

“The primary reason was paving – the lowest price for this item being $115 a ton compared to a bid price of $77 received a month ago for our regular city [paving] program. We have forwarded [the bid documents] to MDOT but it will be a few days before we have a response.

“We need to secure MDOT approval to award contracts, and I anticipate that will hinge on whether bids are within budget,” Ring said. If the bids are over budget, he said, “MDOT would likely not authorize an award, but I don’t know that for certain. Obviously, if pavement price comes in $20 a ton higher than budgeted, that would be a shortfall of around $30,000.

“I can’t be critical of MDOT’s decision to suspend paving, given the asphalt price increase,” Ring noted.

“Interestingly, these increases have not exactly mirrored other petroleum product pricing as I understand it,” he said. “We can be hopeful that costs will come down over the next six to eight months, but obviously that’s uncertain. The other concern is what happens to overall construction costs in general within that same timeframe, as the increases have been very significant over the past couple of years.”

Across the river, Brewer officials have “known that this [price rise] was coming,” City Manager Steve Bost said Wednesday.

The city’s list of large paving projects this summer is fairly short, he said.

Even with the rising cost of asphalt, city leaders decided recently to put down a skim coat on Parkway South, between Pendleton Street and the East-West Industrial Park entrance, which is a state highway, Bost said.

With the new public safety building, which is scheduled to open this fall on Parkway South, and a new elementary-middle school, scheduled to be completed in 2010 just down the street, the paving was needed to protect the roadway, he said.

State crews are “doing improvements to the South Main Street corridor … but that’s been a long-term planned” project, and will continue until finished, Bost said.

On the county level, Penobscot County has coordinated paving some of its roads with state projects, Barbara Verilleaux, director of the Department of Roads and Mapping, said Wednesday, but there were no projects planned this spring or summer.

“When the state was paving in areas where we were,” she said, “we have coordinated with the Department of Transportation to save the cost of hauling materials.”

Verilleaux said she was hopeful that the recent decrease in the price of oil would keep the price of asphalt from increasing too dramatically next year when the county will most likely need to pave some of its roads.

BDN writers Nok-Noi Ricker and Judy Harrison contributed to this report.