A draft plan for Laguna Grande Park faces criticism for missing the forest for the trees.

For the past several years, what to do about the homeless encampments that crop up in Laguna Grande Park has been a vexing problem for the local agencies that own a piece of the park – Monterey, Seaside and the Monterey Peninsula Regional Park District – but they are possibly inching toward a potential solution.

Together, those agencies comprise the Laguna Grande Joint Powers Agency, and on Dec. 6, the agency’s board reviewed a draft trail and vegetation strategy that, once approved, will provide a blueprint for how to manage the park going forward. Though that draft plan, which was prepared by BFS Landscape Architects, is already facing criticism for its lack of focus on the southern woodlands abutting Monterey, which is where the homeless encampments crop up and where nearby residents are concerned they might spark a fire, among other things.

“I’m a little bit concerned/disappointed by what I view as the number one reason we got the whole process going, which was to deal with the southern wooded area, the upland. I feel that was the primary reason we resurrected this JPA,” said board member Kevin Raskoff. “That was the number-one thing in the site walks with the public, and yet it continually feels kind of buried in the lede… Find a way to elevate that, because that is the thing we’re working on here.”

Stephen Cry, president of the Del Monte Grove/Laguna Grande Neighborhood Association and who lives right next to the woods, attended the meeting and was likewise stupefied.

“It still feels like that area the south end is getting pushed off,” Cry says. “[BFS] wants to pick the low-hanging fruit, but I think it’s losing focus on the driving force of the project.”

The next step is for the plan to be tweaked and undergo environmental review, and Monterey Community Development Director Kim Cole expects it to come back before the JPA board next spring.

The JPA, which formed in 1976, reconvened starting in 2019 to make a plan.