In Fayette County there is no line between the city and the county to worry about. Lexington and Fayette County are one government, the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, so one set of right-of-way rules and one business license cover everything from downtown to the horse farms at the county's edge. This page covers where we work, what the ground and the weather here do to asphalt, and what those rules say.
Chevy Chase, Ashland Park and Idle Hour; Hartland, Palomar and Andover; Masterson Station, Hamburg and Beaumont; Gardenside, Tates Creek and the neighbourhoods inside New Circle Road; and the farms and rural homes outside the urban area. If your address is in the county, send it.
Lexington drew an urban service boundary in 1958, widely described as the first urban growth boundary in the country, and new development has been steered inside it ever since. Drive out along any of the pikes and the change is sudden: subdivisions give way to board fence and pasture within a few hundred yards.
For asphalt that produces two very different kinds of job in one county. Inside the boundary it is mostly suburban drives, older neighbourhoods with narrow drives squeezed between houses, and newer ones where a whole street was paved in the same year and is now greying at the same rate. Outside it, a single drive can run a long way from the road to the house or the barn, carrying trailers and farm trucks as well as cars. The first kind is mostly about edges and hand work; the second is mostly about keeping a long run of asphalt from breaking up at its edges and turns.
The National Weather Service's 1991 to 2020 normals for Lexington give close to 50 inches of precipitation a year, about 14.5 inches of it falling as snow in an average winter, a January that averages just under 34 degrees, and a July that averages close to 77. In plain terms, it is a wet place with a winter that sits right around freezing.
That is the hard case for asphalt. A winter that hovers near 32 degrees freezes and thaws over and over, and with that much rain there is almost always water in any open crack when it does. It is the reason we push crack filling before winter, and the reason a coat of sealer goes on in dry, warm weather with a clear forecast behind it.
The season edges matter too. Lexington's records, kept since 1872, include a spring freeze as late as May 20 and a fall freeze as early as September 30. Those are extremes, not the norm, but they are why a job scheduled at either end of the season is checked against the overnight forecast rather than the calendar.
Work in the public right-of-way in Fayette County is permitted by LFUCG's Division of Engineering under Chapter 17C of the county's code. The published fees are $250 for a surface cut permit and $100 for an installation permit, and the division asks small contractors and homeowners who will be working in the right-of-way to contact its right-of-way management staff before starting. Rebuilding a driveway entrance where it meets a public street is that kind of work.
Separately, the urban county government requires every person and business doing business in Lexington-Fayette County to obtain an occupational license before starting, with a $100 initial fee and a $100 annual minimum.
What that means for your job: sealing, crack filling and patching on your own property need no right-of-way permit. Entrance work at the street is only booked with a paving contractor who can pull the LFUCG permit, and if the entrance joins a state route instead, the permit comes from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet's District 7 office, which is based in Lexington. Fees change, so the current one goes on your quote.
Keeneland, open since October 1936 on Versailles Road, runs both racing and Thoroughbred sales, and the city's calendar bends around them and around University of Kentucky home games. For a business, church or association lot that fills up on those days, the sealing and striping dates are picked so the lot is fully cured and open well before the crowds, not being coned off during them. See parking lot sealcoating and HOAs and property managers.
No. The city and county share one government, so the same Division of Engineering covers the right-of-way in both, except on state routes, which are the Transportation Cabinet's.
No. Long lanes are priced by area like any drive, and the edges and turns get the most attention because that is where they fail.
Usually into mid-October, depending on overnight lows and dew. A job booked late is checked against the forecast and moved if the nights turn cold.
Next door: Scott County to the north, Woodford to the west, Jessamine to the south and Madison to the southeast.
