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LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — After pausing a $5 million road project in Cobb due to quality and durability concerns, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday directed staff to add $700,000 to upgrade the surface on certain roads from double chip seal to asphalt.
In 2024, the board approved the plan to use a double chip seal — a less expensive paving material for part of the project — for budgetary reasons. But as construction progressed in the summer, resident complaints and signs of early deterioration led to a mid-project pause and review.
Ultimately, the board agreed to allocate additional funds to upgrade the paving material to meet quality standards that can better withstand traffic, weather, winter snow plows — and last longer.
While Public Works staff said the issue stemmed from paving material rather than construction, the pause and reevaluation of the project have raised questions about the county’s decision-making process.
“We failed,” said Supervisor Bruno Sabatier. “We had plans made available to us. We approved these plans. Two directors have gone through these plans and continued to push forward with these plans, and now we're saying something went wrong.”
During public comment, residents expressed frustration over newly paved roads deteriorating quickly. They said the road issues have raised both emotional and practical concerns, urging the board to approve better paving materials.
As the board agreed at the meeting, a construction change order will go before the board in mid-August, according to Interim Public Works Director Lars Ewing in his email to Lake County News. The change order will reflect the additional funding allocation to the project.
Dates for project resumption and completion are to be determined as county staff work with the contractor, Argonaut Constructors, on the change order, Ewing added.
Construction paused after road issues surface
On April 8, the county awarded a $5.1 million construction contract to Argonaut to rehabilitate 16 miles of road in Cobb.
Under the project plans approved, all local roads were to receive either hot-mixed asphalt or a more affordable double chip seal — a gravel and oil mix. Asphalt, though more expensive, is more durable and typically lasts twice as long, according to Ewing.
Construction began on June 9. As it progressed, residents reported quality issues — including potholes quickly forming on some newly pulverized roads that had received a single layer of chip seal. Their feedback prompted county staff to investigate.
District 5 Supervisor Jessica Pyska, whose district includes the project area, attended a Cobb Area Council meeting to discuss the matter with the residents, Ewing told Lake County News. On July 17, after inspecting the roads onsite, county staff paused the project pending a design review.
The county then requested the final design report from Nichols Consulting Engineers, or NCE, the firm hired to design for the project.
In a July 23 report, NCE noted that “former county staff” had recommended many roads be surfaced with a double chip seal, according to the staff memo.
“Where the issue came about is the concern of the double chip seal,” said Ewing at the Tuesday board meeting. “At that point, I paused the contract after the first layer of chips was placed so that we could reevaluate.”
For now, 26 roads totaling five miles — or roughly 31% of the project — remain with a single chip seal layer, awaiting next steps.
‘We need to understand what we’re approving’
While decision making was mentioned at the meeting, a deeper discussion did not follow.
In a phone call with Lake County News on Monday, Supervisor Sabatier said he was picking up “new information” from NCE’s July report.
To meet the county’s overall budget, the report said “we recommend a group of streets be surfaced with a double chip seal, composed of a larger lower chip and a finer upper chip for smoothness and placed on the pulverized layer.”
Sabatier read this section to Lake County News and said it’s new to him.
“We didn't approve the specifics of the project; we only approved the contract that does not divulge the very detailed specifics of the project,” he said during the call. “And so that can be something that we can change.”
At the Tuesday meeting, Sabatier brought up the fact that the project design had been recommended by two consecutive department directors and approved by the board — and still went wrong.
“We need to do a better job of either understanding what we're approving or making sure that we review what we're approving,” Sabatier said.
Ewing responded, refusing to say there were mistakes in previous decision making.
“I'm not here to say that those decisions were wrong. Chip seal is a viable product.” said Ewing. “I do not want to be up here as the interim director saying that any former directors or anyone involved with the project made an incorrect decision. It's a judgment call.”
The board did not further discuss whether a mistake had been made or how to improve the decision-making process.
On June 17, the supervisors voted to terminate Glen March, director of Public Works, just a year after he took the job.
March’s termination occurred about a week after construction began for the Cobb road project.
With Ewing now serving as the interim, the county is seeking a new permanent hire — the fourth person to oversee the project, following Ewing, March and his predecessor, longtime director Scott De Leon, who retired in June 2024
“There's been a lot of lessons learned in this project. We're on our third director with this project. We have another one coming up,” Supervisor Jessica Pyska said. “And I think, as a board, when we look at these projects, we need to make sure that we're doing these projects to a standard that's going to give us a long term return on our investment.”
As the Cobb area lies in her district, Pyska offered to contribute $225,000 from her cannabis discretionary funding: “I'm pushing in most of my discretionary funding to make this happen, because it's that important.”
The remaining amount — $475,000 — will be covered by the approved county budget for roads or unanticipated occurrences. Ewing said at the meeting that it would not affect the county’s other projects.
Residents: ‘That’s not gonna hold’
NCE Principal/Pavement Engineer Jame Signore said at the meeting that double chip seal is a “very common treatment used in rural agencies around the western United States.”
He recalled that for the Cobb project, double chip seal was only planned for roads with lesser traffic and lower speeds.
But it does not seem to perform as expected in some of the roads treated with this material.
Kelsey and Jeritt Skelton, who live on Grouse Road — one of the roads being considered for an upgrade to asphalt — said they were initially excited to see the road work begin.
But days after the first layer of chip seal was applied, the crew came back and did a “patch job,” Jeritt Skelton told Lake County News, standing on the road in front of his home, pointing to the “patches” in various sizes. Some parts of the chip layer already were gone and dirt was exposed.
“That’s not gonna hold,” said Kelsey Skelton, speaking of the road durability during winter, looking away to the road.
She said she did not know what’s going on with the road work. Seeing the constructors putting the first layer down and not coming back, she thought, “that’s how it’s gonna be forever.”
Still, the Skeltons expressed gratitude for this first chip seal layer with patches. “I am grateful to have this at least; the roads before were really bad,” Jeritt Skelton said.
The Skeltons are not alone.
Ewing told Lake County News that residents’ concerns have centered on “frustration regarding previously-paved roads being double chip sealed, and questions regarding whether the double chip seal would hold up in that area given frequent use of snowplows in the wintertime, among other factors.”
Cobb resident Grace Ernst said during public comment that the first coat applied to the roads have already developed potholes, areas of exposed dirt and erosion.
“And that’s with good weather and just a few cars driving by,” Ernst said. “It is troubling to think about how the deterioration will progress and accelerate once we begin to get rain and snow.”
Operations Chief Paul Duncan of South Lake County Fire Protection District and Cal Fire also spoke over Zoom to support asphalt paving for safe operation of fire fighting.
“We need to maintain that state minimum of 75,000 pounds and an aggregate base of those roads to support that equipment,” Duncan said.
Located just two minutes away from the Summit Drive, on one of the roads under concern, is the Cal Fire Helitack Base.
“Putting a chip seal down, to me, is not a long term solution,” Duncan said. “And it is a hazard for that community.”
Ongoing challenges
Toward the end of the discussion, District 3 Supervisor EJ Crandell, who said his district has the lowest Pavement Condition Index, or PCI, reminded the board that road challenges extend beyond Cobb.
Road conditions have limited access by garbage truck and emergency vehicles in parts of his district, Crandell said, among other problems the district’s residents have been facing owing to road conditions.
“I'm not trying to go against this project; I support it. I just want to emphasize that I just want these to get done, so my district can get a higher PCI code,” he said. “I only say that just to kind of stand on a soapbox, not trying to go against this.”
A 2023 report by NCE recommended a 10-year pavement management program of $165 million over 10 years — a minimum scenario — that aims to raise the overall pavement condition in Lake County and reduce the need for deferred maintenance. However, even this plan was well beyond the county’s funding capacity.
As the board addresses Cobb’s immediate needs, how to allocate stringent road funding countywide remains an ongoing challenge.
Cobb roads under evaluation
In his email, Ewing provided a list of the roads being “evaluated for pavement.” It includes the following 26 roads:
• Adams Springs Court
• Adams Spring Drive
• Brookside Drive
• Carolyn Drive
• Castlewood Road
• Costello Way
• Creek View Drive
• Dove Drive
• Elliott Drive
• Entrance Road
• Forest Lake Drive
• Grouse Road
• Hogan Hill Lane
• Jones Court
• Lassen Drive
• Palmer Court
• Palmer Drive
• Pamela Drive
• Parnassus Drive
• Prather Court
• Prather Way
• Quail Drive
• Regina Way
• St Helena Drive
• Sugar Pine Drive
• Summit Drive
For a full list of roads under construction for the Cobb road project, click here.
Email staff reporter Lingzi Chen at
