SLO County supervisors approve new route to save Bob Jones Trail. Where will it go?
The Bob Jones Trail gap closure project came before the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors again on Tuesday in a last ditch attempt to save the popular public works project.
The efforts to bridge the gap in the bike path from San Luis Obispo to the sea have been stymied for years by multiple property owners who have refused to sell parcels of land or access the county says is needed to complete the project.
After years of stalled negotiations and multiple failed attempts to acquire some of the land by eminent domain, the county was left with no other option but to pivot.
At the eleventh hour, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved in a 3-1 vote a proposal for a new design that reroutes the trail to avoid the withholding properties.
Supervisor Debbie Arnold was the sole dissenter, with Supervisors Jimmy Paulding, Dawn Ortiz-Legg and Bruce Gibson all voting to pursue the new pathway plan.
Supervisor John Peschong recused himself from the vote on the grounds of a conflict of interest. Ray Bunnell, the property owner at the center of the county’s land acquisition attempts, has previously donated to Peschong’s re-election campaigns.
“By all counts, this project should be dead,” Public Works director John Diodati said at Tuesday’s board meeting.
Now, the project just might make it out alive — but the county is working against a tight timeline.
In order stay on schedule to keep its $18.25 million grant for the project, the project must be approved by the California Transportation Commission at its Jan. 30-31 meeting.
If approved, the project will be able to meet its March 2025 funding deadline and construction would begin within six months.
If the proposal is denied at the January meeting or if the county fails to meet the deadline in any way, the federal grant will lapse and the county’s funding source for the Bob Jones Trail will go away for good.
What does the new Bob Jones Trail design look like?
The completion of the Bob Jones Trail from SLO to the sea has been held up for years by five property owners whose land the trail passes through, but Bunnell in particular has been the center of the county’s attention.
The county has been trying — and failing — to secure a corner of Bunnell’s property for the pathway for years, offering him more than $200,000 for just over an acre of his land, The Tribune learned from documents received in a Public Records Act request.
The alignment on Bunnell’s property is still the county’s preferred route, but after the most recent eminent domain vote to take the needed portion of his land failed on Aug. 20, the board instructed staff to explore different options for the trail. Staff presented what they came up with at Tuesday’s meeting.
The new “bookend approach,” divides the trail to avoid the withholding properties — including Bunnell’s.
Instead, the path would reroute onto a strip of Caltrans owned-land next to Highway 101 for a stretch between Clover Ridge Lane near Bunnell’s property and Ontario Road, county civil engineer John Waddell told The Tribune.
The county will use its $18.2 million grant to fund construction of the bookends on either side of the Highway 101 stretch, while Caltrans pledged to use $6 million of discretionary State Highway Operation and Protection Program funds to fill in the gap in the trail along the highway.
To keep trail users safe along the highway segment, Caltrans would likely install a protective barrier between the highway and the path, which would be built 10 to 12 feet away from the roadway, Waddell said.
By Jan. 27, the county must submit a nearly complete design plan to the California Transportation Commission, which includes any land acquisition agreements that are still needed for the new alignment and a plan to fill funding gaps, if there are any.
Diodati said that there is a lot about the new project plan that is “still in flux,” and that “even what we’re proposing today could change by the time we get to the (California Transportation Commission) recommendation,” but he told the board that this is their preferred option at this point.
“This is our best effort,” Diodati said. “It has literally changed every day trying to navigate how we move this project forward.”
New Bob Jones Trail design negates negotiations
Because the new path design avoids Bunnell’s property entirely, Diodati said they no longer need to negotiate with the property owner for his approval of the project.
Bunnell previously requested that any portion of the trail running next to his property come with additions such as a security fence and a tunnel under his driveway on Clover Ridge Lane to prevent foot traffic at the entry of his property, but those accommodations may no longer be made under the new plan.
Diodati said that in order to save on costs, the county may replace two tunnels planned on Clover Ridge Lane and San Luis Bay Drive with surface street crossing and eliminate “a decorative fence proposed along the entire trail route.”
“From our perspective, we’re avoiding his property, so we’re moving forward with the Caltrans alignment,” Diodati told The Tribune. “Our understanding was we he did not want the trail on his property, and we’ve met that request by having a proposal that removes the trail from his property.”
The new trail alignment also avoids the Baron Canyon Ranch Association, which had its own reservations with the project impeding on its property. Negotiations with both landowners are no longer necessary, Diodati said.
The same goes for the remaining withholding property owners — Robert Kruse, Edward Pollard and James Warren. Slightly different from Bunnell or Baron Canyon, the trail doesn’t pass through their property but rather through a Caltrans-owned cattle trail that they also have access to. Since the underlying property owner is Caltrans, the county doesn’t need the landowners permission to use the cattle trail for the Bob Jones path, only Caltrans’.
Kruse recently sold his cattle trail access rights to the county outright before this new plan was put into action. As for Pollard and Warren, Diodati said the county was previously attempting to reach shared-use agreements out of courtesy, not necessity.
“It was never necessary,” Diodati said. “It was just something that we felt would be appropriate to do, as a good neighbor, to compensate them for that shared use.”
He said if the county is unable to finalize any agreements in the next few weeks, it will end negotiations with Warren and Pollard and work directly with Caltrans.
“If another party is not willing to negotiate, we’re not gonna waste our time,” Diodati said, but added that “there’s still time for them to come to the table,” and the county would use its funds to provide compensatory payments to Warren and Pollard if requested.
Now, the only access agreement that still needs to be negotiated is with a property that was previously owned by Thomas Reynolds of Reynolds Resorts.
Two weeks ago, Reynolds suddenly sold his land to Avila Beach hotel and campground Flying Flags.
“It was a curve ball for us on this project,” Diodati said. “We were in good negotiations with Reynolds and now have to start from scratch with the new property owner and have that secured by January.”
Diodati said its possible the county could receive an extension on securing the access rights to the property, but they are operating under the assumption that negotiations need to be complete by the Jan. 27 deadline.
The county is in negotiations with Flying Flags right now and is already “discussing numbers,” Diodati said.
How did the board vote?
The proposal for the new Bob Jones Trail alignment was approved 3-1, with Supervisor Arnold voting against the project.
Even though Arnold was the only supervisor “adamantly opposed” to using eminent domain to acquire Bunnell’s property, she did not support the alternate option, she said.
“I was really excited when there was a realignment, and the staff worked so hard to get a different take, a different approach to this, but now it’s posing new problems for me to be able to support it,” she said.
She primarily had reservations about the county potentially having to take on extra costs for the new alignment that still may not go through if Flying Flags decides not to sell.
“I feel like I’m in a position where either which way I vote today isn’t a good one,” Arnold said.
She ultimately voted against the proposal, but it passed with the majority approval of the other three voting supervisors.
“I do believe this is a project worth saving,” Supervisor Paulding said. “We’re engaging in the right conversation at the right time here.”
This story was originally published October 30, 2024 at 11:25 AM.
