Agencies tasked with managing Laguna Grande Park finally get serious.

It’s been a long time coming, but the Monterey Peninsula Regional Park District and the cities of Monterey and Seaside are finally making headway toward a plan to manage Laguna Grande Regional Park.

This comes after years of calls from residents on the Monterey side of the 35-acre park, which has become thickly vegetated over the past several decades, to address the persistent issue of homeless encampments that repeatedly crop in that area, which can present both a wildfire risk and other environmental and public safety issues.

The three agencies each own portions of the park, and together they comprise the Laguna Grande Regional Park Joint Powers Agency, which was formed in 1976 to manage the park “for the use and benefit” of the region.

But exactly who is in charge has always been a gray area, and a complicated and potentially expensive one at that, and so the can just kept getting kicked down the road.

This spring, the three agencies pooled together $109,965 – $60,000 from the park district and $24,982.50 each from the cities – for BFS Landscape Architects to create a trail maintenance strategy, along with an environmental review, which the firm began this summer.

Chris Schmidt, a planner with the city of Monterey, says a key aspect of the work will be assessing permitting hurdles the state will require.

“That’s why it’s taken the time to get to this point,” Schmidt says.

BFS and the city of Monterey hosted a park walk Aug. 14, which Schmidt attended, but he says they didn’t enter the thickly wooded area core to residents’ concerns. Though he does say BFS is looking at the possibility of making formal trails through that area – which neighbors support – it’s not clear if it will be found feasible, both from a cost perspective and in terms of permitting and habitat.

Stephen Cry, a Monterey resident whose backyard abuts the wooded area of the park, has for years been a vocal proponent for action. He is “cautiously optimistic” about the progress and has seen marked improvement over the past two years. “There are still people that still go back there and hide out and sleep,” he says. “It’s nothing to the extent that it was, but it’s still ongoing.”

As he’s talking on Sept. 7, he’s looking at a small plume of smoke near Fremont Boulevard that a fire engine has already arrived at. Monterey Police confirm it was a 2-by-2-foot fire burning vegetation and trash. Lt. Jake Pinkas says it was quickly extinguished and it started from a cigarette.