Renaissance Ladies Need Financial Help

Faced with an unsightly planter box and an unkempt street median, the self-proclaimed Reseda Renaissance Ladies don’t hesitate to dig right in and make it better.

But faced recently with long, complicated federal grant applications that might make the financial burden of their Reseda beautification campaign a little easier, the Ladies balked.

“It was very overwhelming and a little scary,” Shirley Merz, one of the Ladies, said Thursday of a process she and others undertook earlier this year.

Still, with a little help from friends, the Ladies--Merz, Barbara Varenas and Allison McGean--were named recipients of a $24,000 grant from the Urban Resources Partnership, a program in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

But the grant, awarded in August, comes with strings attached. The women have to raise matching funds to receive any of the money.

Merz said they have been able to get some of it already by reporting their volunteer hours and expenses in exchange for the funds, but they are still far from seeing the bulk of the grant.

“We may not get all of it,” Merz said, adding that the Reseda Chamber of Commerce has agreed to take offers of volunteer help and donations for the group. “But we hope the community will support us.”

Every week since 1995, when the three homeowners met at a community cleanup day, the women have converged on Sherman Way between Lindley and Wilbur avenues to plant flowers, clear weeds and pick up trash from center dividers.

The women hope to use the grant to buy more plants, replace the irrigation system and update a sign welcoming visitors to the business district.

After initially using thousands of dollars of their own money to do the work, the women asked for financial help from Councilwoman Laura Chick, who represents the Reseda area.

Chick, in turn, enlisted the services of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency to write the grant for the women because their work went closely with the CRA’s efforts to revitalize the area.

“I was awed by their perseverance, their willingness to take on a mammoth chore and do it essentially single-handedly,” Chick said of the group.