Residents, emergency responders, and farming communities struggling to cross Cecchetti Road in Arroyo Grande must wade through until 2027 after the San Luis Obispo County supervisors rejected funding a temporary bridge.
“As a farmer in the South County, I understand the impacts it’s had on our operation. We farm on the Branch Mill side, but we also have operations on the Lopez Drive side,” SLO County Farm Bureau board member Tom Ikeda said at the Oct. 7 Board of Supervisors meeting. “Cecchetti Road was the safest crossing for us. To take this over just to the opposite side of the creek is double the time at least.”
The culvert across Arroyo Grande Creek on Cecchetti Road was one of four bridges that washed out in January 2023 storms and required replacement. Floodwaters destroyed the original Cecchetti crossing made of concrete and corrugated metal pipe, and the road has remained closed since.
“Rebuilding the Cecchetti Road crossing is complicated and, unfortunately, it is not as simple as putting culverts back into the creek and pouring some concrete,” 4th District Supervisor Jimmy Paulding, who represents the area, wrote in a statement on the county website. “And because the federally protected steelhead trout use Arroyo Grande Creek, the county must comply with additional environmental analysis to ensure that the road crossing does not constitute an impediment to the fish to migrate upstream.”
At Paulding’s request this June, supervisors unanimously approved adopting a budget resolution that included $250,000 for a temporary one-lane bridge on Cecchetti Road. At that June meeting, 5th District Supervisor Heather Moreno questioned whether the $250,000 sum would be used to construct the temporary bridge or for another project instead.
“When it comes back, I can see no reason for why I wouldn’t vote for that temporary bridge, but I’m concerned that you’re bringing this forward now,” she told Paulding at the meeting.
But at the Oct. 7 meeting, Moreno and fellow North County Supervisor John Peschong voted against funding the temporary bridge—the price tag had ballooned to more than $650,000 because of inflation and market conditions.
“When I voted to set aside $250,000 in June, the board understood that a temporary bridge could be installed quickly and provide meaningful relief for residents at a reasonable cost,” Moreno told New Times.
Apart from the spike in project cost, she added that installing the temporary bridge—which also must be removed before significant rainfall and later reinstalled—would be delayed until spring 2026.
“It would only serve residents for about nine months. On top of that, those additional funds would have to come at the expense of other critical bridge and road projects across the county,” Moreno said. “My focus remains on completing the permanent bridge, which already has 93 percent of its funding approved through FEMA and the state.”
The budget adjustment for the temporary bridge needed four votes to pass, but the motion failed with a 3-2 vote with Paulding, 2nd District Supervisor Bruce Gibson and 3rd District Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg in favor.
According to the county staff report, the budget shortfall of more than $400,000 could be met by withdrawing money from the Future Roads Project Designation that has a balance of $1.6 million.
Supervisor Peschong told New Times that he voted against the temporary replacement Cecchetti bridge because it’s expensive and could take away money from other projects. He pointed to a bridge in his district on Chimney Rock Road.
“It’s a much bigger bridge, … we don’t get to remove it like this bridge, but it’s in there because it’s the only way in and out for those people,” he said. “Before we got the bridge in, actually it was three months, they had to take a boat across the lake to take their trash out, to get groceries, to take their kids to school, their cars were stuck back there, they had to get new cars to be able to drive from Lake Nacimiento down to their schools.”
Peschong said that unlike the people affected on Chimney Rock Road, community members near Cecchetti Road have a secondary route even though they’re in a tough situation, too.
At the Oct. 7 meeting, Supervisor Ortiz-Legg called the supervisors’ vote against the temporary bridge a “poor decision,” adding that Public Works should reevaluate the funding mentioned in the staff report.
“I think it’s a shame that when we have storms in all the areas throughout this county, we have all pitched in together,” she said at the meeting. “I feel like $685,000 to help people do their businesses and keep people safe is really chump change, if you don’t mind me saying, in a budget of over a billion dollars that we have.”
The county is working on installing a permanent bridge by 2027, which is expected to cost between $8 million and $9 million.
The county is expecting Federal Emergency Management Services reimbursement for up to 75 percent of participating and eligible costs. The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services would cover an additional 18.8 percent. ∆
This article appears in Oct 16-26, 2025.