More Can Be Done to Maintain Cindy Montañez Natural Park, Public Works Director Says

In September 2023, the Pacoima Wash Natural Park was renamed Cindy Montañez Natural Park in honor of the late City of San Fernando council member. Montañez was present for the ceremony and was moved to tears by the gesture. She passed away a short time later, on Oct. 21, 2023.

During the renaming ceremony, Councilmember Joel Fajardo said the pocket park owed its existence to Montañez – a champion of environmental justice – and the park had always been the Cindy Montañez Natural Park in all but name. Sixty milkweed plants were sown into the soil around the entrance on 8th Street to support the monarch butterfly population, which Montañez had a special fondness for.

Ten months after the ceremony, however, some community members are of the opinion that the city has neglected the park. Piles of dead branches and debris found along the walking path, fresh graffiti plastered on the walls and benches and a greenish-colored water flowing from a catch basin on Maclay Street and Bromont Avenue characterize the current state of the park. And the status of the milkweed plants and whether they survived is unclear.

“It’s very sad that the City of San Fernando is doing a poor job maintaining the Cindy Montañez Natural Park,” Manuel Armijo wrote to the San Fernando Valley Sun/el Sol. “It hasn’t even been a year since she left us, and it seems like they already forgot her.”

San Fernando Public Works Director Wendell Johnson came into the position last November, after Montañez’s passing. He said that staff come by the park at least once every other week to do some maintenance, including removing any graffiti they find, but believes that more could be done.

Volunteers from the environmental nonprofit TreePeople also come out around once a month to clean out some of the trash and debris, but TreePeople and Johnson made it clear it’s the city’s responsibility for the park’s upkeep.

The park was built by the Mountains Recreation & Conservation Authority and was completed in 2014. It did the initial landscaping and maintenance for the park for approximately three years before turning it over to the City of San Fernando.

Johnson has put together a “punch list” of things he wants worked on inside the park, including removing invasive plant species, improving the delineation of the trails, adding a restroom, placing lighting that will extend the pedestrian trail path up to Foothill Boulevard and repairing the irrigation system – which Johnson said has been the subject of vandalism.

“I noticed that it looks like it’s been ransacked without going into a deep examination of it,” Johnson said. “Valves are missing, wires were pulled … and it needs to be evaluated to determine if that type of irrigation system that was once installed when the park was less mature is still suitable for a park where the vegetation … has been established.”

To tackle these projects, Johnson is planning to put out a request for proposal (RFP) for the design of the park. He estimates that by the time a company has been selected and plans have been made, construction on the projects likely won’t start until the spring of 2025.

“I’m not looking for heavy equipment to go in there and raise the park,” Johnson said. “I’m looking for selective grading and selective planting of trees, as well as the delineating of the trails and putting in lighting.”

A Park Worthy of Montañez’s Name

Another point of concern is the stream of water on Bromont Avenue flowing into the park. Johnson explained that it’s an issue with the city of Los Angeles, to which he has already filed a service request. He added that the state’s Regional Water Quality Control Board oversees these types of regulations, so he hopes the issue can get resolved quickly.

While plans are in motion for next year’s bigger projects, Public Works crews will be doing some upkeep and maintenance in July and August, including tree trimming, removing tree stumps, cutting overgrown grass, adding mulch to different areas and repairing what they can of the irrigation system for now.

Although Johnson doesn’t think the park has been neglected by the city, he admitted that they could be doing a better job with its upkeep. He said the issues with the park are “high on the city’s radar” and they look forward to having a park that can proudly bear Montañez’s name.

“It’s a natural park, and so there’s a little bit of a learning curve on the expectation of what a natural park should look like, and that’s the goal that we are looking to achieve,” Johnson said. “It [should] not be completely groomed, there’s a natural aspect to it … but it’s going to be something better than what we got out there now.”

The San Fernando Valley Sun/el Sol reached out to Fajardo for comment, but he did not respond by press time.