From traffic to incorporation, new plan could help address Nipomo growing pains
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- Traffic congestion ranked as Nipomo's top issue among 1,200 survey respondents.
- Survey showed 43% of residents support exploring incorporation for local control.
- Public input will shape new Community Plan set for Board review in late 2025.
The shape of Nipomo is set to take form over the next year — and a new survey shows where residents’ priorities for their town lie.
It’s been more than 20 years since Nipomo last approved a Community Plan — the document that guides long-term community developments such as land uses, parks, public spaces and public safety — and now, San Luis Obispo County is getting ready to create a new plan for the next two decades.
A community survey of around 1,200 Nipomo residents conducted between May 3 and June 10 outlined some of the community’s top priorities for the plan, with traffic circulation, pedestrian and bike paths, a lack of shops and restaurants and housing development ranking among residents’ top concerns.
District 4 Supervisor Jimmy Paulding, who represents Nipomo as an unincorporated community, said he’s focused on delivering a plan that works for the town’s residents.
He placed a heavy emphasis on the importance of community feedback in the plan’s creation process, which kicked off in March 2024 when the Board of Supervisors considered a housing policy review of the area.
Paulding said that feedback will be crucial in developing a community plan that works for Nipomo over the coming year, with the Board of Supervisors set to review it for approval late next year.
Two additional workshops for the public to give feedback on the plan will be held in upcoming months, where the draft version of the Community Plan will be revealed.
“What we’re hearing from the survey results, and what we’re hearing from the people at the community meetings, is that there’s a lot of room for improvement,” Paulding said. “They have legitimate issues that have gone unaddressed for years, and that’s my goal — to tackle those issues head-on and to develop a plan to improve them, not just through new development, but giving people options to a voice in whether or not they want to fund more parks and rec.”
Survey shows high need for infrastructure upgrades
Of the roughly 1,200 respondents to the county’s survey, 815 identified traffic congestion as the biggest issue facing Nipomo, leading the next issues by nearly 300 responses.
A lack of sidewalks or bike lanes, not having enough restaurants or shops, a lack of community planning and excessive growth/housing development ranked numbers two through five in respondents’ top issues in the area, each polling with a little over 500 residents.
Similarly, the list of wanted improvements started with better traffic flow and street design, followed by more places to eat, shop and drink locally and a revitalized downtown.
On the issue of housing growth — which has drawn significant attention in Nipomo in recent years with the approval of the Dana Reserve housing development — Nipomo residents were more split.
While 435 survey respondents said the town has grown enough and should pause further development, around two thirds of respondents said they supported new housing in some capacity, be that only affordable housing for working families and seniors, new housing wherever it’s needed or infill development rather than urban sprawl.
Paulding said resolving these community issues is possible, and can be factored into the final Community Plan in development — but not without a funding stream set up to make those goals a reality.
“Because it’s not an incorporated town or city, its infrastructure services have fallen behind the pace of development, and we see just a lack of good community planning,” Paulding said. “The current mechanisms to fund those types of improvements, like traffic congestion improvements, aren’t really robust.”
In the survey, residents were split on whether Nipomo should look for more ways to generate funding for community enhancements.
Around 47% respondents said they were on the fence depending on what improvements would be funded, while another 38% were in favor of looking at ways to get more funding, 8% said they were against and 7% said they weren’t sure.
On the specific issue of supporting a local sales tax, property tax or similar assessment, respondents were even more split, with 11% strongly supporting the idea, 31% in support, 24% unsure, 12% against it and 22% fully against it.
Paulding said these issues should be put to voters through ballot measures on whether to institute taxes or a benefit assessment so the community can make its own decisions about what it can fund.
Is incorporation an option?
Paulding said the issue of whether Nipomo should become an incorporated city — a process that would see Nipomo form its own local government rather than being a town strictly under the Board’s representation — has been floated in the area for years, but it’s recently been picking up steam.
In the survey, some 43% of Nipomo residents said they wanted the town to explore incorporation, while 23% opposed it and another 34% were unsure.
“If one of the outcomes of this planning process is the community saying, ‘Hey, we want to study that again,’ I would be supportive of that,” Paulding said. “It’s my understanding that it’s really hard to incorporate cities in California today for a number of reasons.”
Paulding said making Nipomo an incorporated city would allow for more local control of planning and zoning decisions, which would alleviate some of the town’s traffic circulation issues.
However, South County Chambers of Commerce board chair Susannah Brown said while incorporation would make it easier to lay out the community, the higher costs associated with operating an incorporated city government is not within Nipomo’s current economic capacity.
“Unless they had a Walmart or something that would generate a lot of tax revenue consistently and reliably, I don’t see that happening, and I know that the community doesn’t want that type of infrastructure, either,” Brown said. “They don’t want a big superstore.”
Even with one of the lower tax burdens for business owners in San Luis Obispo County, it won’t be easy for Nipomo’s businesses to bear the tax burden of large-scale infrastructure improvements, let along the cost of supporting an incorporated city, Brown said.
“I know with fire needs and sheriff’s needs going up, the county has been trying to mitigate a lot of those costs and push a lot of that onto the developers that are building,” Brown said. “If the (county) feels like they need more infrastructure in this plan — which I haven’t heard the final say on which way they’re leaning right now — if it does lean that way, I do see that they’re going to need to add a little bit of a tax to the businesses, but I don’t think that’s what the businesses want.”
Brown said she believes there’s more appetite for smaller, locally owned businesses in Nipomo than big box chains due to the town’s semi-rural character.
She said she anticipates Old Towne Nipomo and the area surrounding the Dana Reserve project site to emerge as the two places that will see the most economic development over the coming 20 years as infill development increases in Old Towne and Dana Reserve residents start moving in and a market develops.
Most of all, Brown said she wants to see the new Community Plan account for reasonable growth that preserves Nipomo’s feel.
“Residents value Nipomo’s semi-rural identity,” Brown said. “The updated plan must strike a balance between protecting that character and addressing real challenges like traffic, school capacity, water and housing affordability.”
This story was originally published July 25, 2025 at 11:37 AM.
