In my last article, I spoke about the city’s future events. I am excited to announce that a date has been finalized for the Touch-A-Truck event.

The event will occur at Independence Park on Saturday, May 7, at 10 am. It will be a great event for kids and big kids alike!

Another exciting announcement is that our Parks & Recreation Department hosts the Concerts in the Park series at Furman Park every summer. This summer, we plan to add a little something new for everyone to enjoy. We will be adding large-scale games such as Jenga, bean bag toss, and Connect Four so that we can enjoy outside in our gorgeous Southern California weather.

Also, this summer, join me at Golden Park for a fun and exciting movie night! More information will be provided for this and all events through our city’s social media pages.

In addition to these fun activities for family and friends, we also have the following programs and projects happening in the city.

Girls On Fire

In 2019, we held our inaugural Girls on Fire event. We had over 100 girls participate in the summer camp. The camp is open to all middle and high school students who reside and attend Downey schools. The camp is geared to help girls deal with unique challenges they face as young ladies, such as self-defense, cyberbullying, internet crimes, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, self-esteem, suicide prevention, human trafficking, and building healthy relationships.

This year, we will be holding our second annual Girls On Fire Camp from July 25-27. We plan to make it bigger by adding more girls and more activities for the girls. So, mark your calendars and stay tuned for more details.

City Parks and Facilities

We are always looking at ways to improve our city parks and facilities. Thanks to Measure S, we were able to remodel our fire stations, library, parks, and streets. Through additional grant funding, we will also be able to repurpose and replace the playground equipment at Crawford and Temple Parks. We anticipate having a groundbreaking ceremony this summer.

You may have seen much activity through our city’s main thoroughfares. This is your tax dollars at work and part of the three-year street improvement project to repair 264,000 linear feet of city streets.

Tree Planting

Public Works is also hard at work planting trees throughout the city as part of the Urban Forest Management Plan. City parks supported by trees provide a respite from the noise, congestion, and other daily life stressors in an urban environment. Healthy parks supported by trees encourage park use and recreation as shade protects from extreme heat and creates comfortable conditions when people want to be outside.

Our Urban Forest Management Plan has set goals and strategies to ensure that trees continue to increase residents’ quality of life. The goal is to have a tree canopy of 20% in the city by 2050. That is a total of 30,000 new trees.

CDBG

Lastly, I am happy to announce the availability of approximately $155,723 in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds for organizations that provide public services to low and moderate income residents during the 2022-2023 Program Year. The deadline for submitting applications was March 9.

Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to serve you.

Blanca Pacheco
Mayor