Today I spoke with Michael Espinosa in The Los Angeles Office of Community Beautification. I worked with him back in 2007 when I was project manager on one of the projects that won the 2007 Community Beautification Grant. If you don’t know what this is, let me explain: The Community Beautification Grant is offered in the city of LA to groups and residents who want to improve their communities. You can plant trees, create a park, a mural, add street accessories– like decorative trash bins, benches or even what they have on the streets in the Liemert Park area– those concrete (unbreakable) planters.
The application for the grant is long and involved. REALLY long and extremelyinvolved, but certainly worth it. To find the link, google Los Angeles Community Beautification Grant. Were I more facile with this wordpress application, I could provide the link, but don’t know how to it myself yet, sorry! It’s not as obvious a procedure as it is on facebook. At least not to me.
You can win up to $10,000 in grant money. However, you must secure “matching funds,” dollar for dollar. But, community volunteer hours can count toward those funds– so, if someone volunteers to help out for a number of hours, you multiply their hours by $15 per hour and this can count toward the matching funds without anyone having to write a check. On a project like a mural or a community clean up, you might have up to one hundred volunteers, so the funds add up.
My project involved a mosaic tile mural, the removal of some old, dead shrubs that were replaced with new plants, and the planting of nine California Sycamore trees. Some of the tree plantings required concrete removal from the sidewalk. All of this, including the trees, plants, and their installation, materials for the mural, payment for the artist and payment for the landscape architect that designed the site, was paid for by the grant. Our project came to roughly $20,000.
Our local Neighborhood Council, the Empowerment Congress Southwest, contributed a few thousand, the landscape architect donated a portion of his services, the artist donated some handmade tile, and we had about 50 volunteers, all of which helped us make our matching funds.
Mr. Espinosa was supportive throughout the entire process and talked me through everything I needed to do. He also even let me vent from time to time without really commenting or judging. As a project manager you are responsible for the organization of everything, which, though ultimately rewarding, along the way can be overwhelming, annoying and a downright pain in butt, hence my occasional tendency to let off steam.
The artist once accused me of “not being professional,” which really set me off, because I never claimed to be a “professional project manager.” I was a volunteer! I’m a professional screenwriter with no experience whatsoever in project management, simply doing the best I could for an under-served community. She, the “artist” was theprofessional on the job, and she was getting paid several thousand dollars, thanks to me, who suggested and hired her for the job, while I was getting paid: ZE-RO.
I’m sure Mr. Espinosa had to hold the phone from his ear when I bitched about that and about the time she showed up at my door wanting me to come outside so she could chew me out face to face or kick my ass or whatever. I don’t know what she was going to do, but I, scrawny writing nerd that I am, glasses and all, cowered inside by my answering machine listening to her hostile rant. When I relayed all of this to him, undoubtedly in elevated tones, he calmly assured me that everyone has a few bad days during the process and it would pass. And it did. He has a personality extremely well suited to his job– impeccable people skills. So, it was, not surprisingly, a pleasure to speak with him again today.
I explained that since Ralphs has been resistant to allowing trees to be planted in front of the site, I had an idea to create a street island that we could green on Manchester Blvd., directly in front of the store. If you want to see this barren site, google map:
1724 Manchester Blvd in Los Angeles.
It will allow you a panoramic view and you will see that this Ralphs has nothing green going on there. A sad sad sight.
Adding a street island with trees would give a similar effect that trees on the sidewalk would have. Well. How naive I was to think this was within the realm of possibility! To create and green an island, according to Mr. Espinosa, would be about as expensive as erecting a building– upwards of $100,000! Who knew? I sure didn’t.
I’ve always had respect for those street islands replete with trees, but my respect just increased exponentially. Inglewood, which is just west of our neighborhood has many of these greened street islands covering large stretches of Manchester Blvd. They’re quite lovely with full canopied trees and yellow Gazanias in the tree wells.
This is going off on a tangent, but what the hell, it’s my blog so here we go… People who aren’t intimately familiar with Inglewood think it’s “the hood,” which it may be, but not the way some might expect. Parts of Inglewood, though its residents are primarily “of color,” are comfortably, firmly middle-class and even upper-middle class. Inglewood is home to some flossy folks, quiet as that’s kept. I’ve long thought that there’s a conspiracy to hide the existence of the black middle class. And it’s been quite well hidden. I’m black and middle class myself, but I grew up in a white community and even I didn’t know there were so many others like me and my family, until I ventured into the world. But that’s another story, for another blog, I suppose.
Mr. Espinosa gave me some helpful ideas to continue trying with the Ralphs. First of all, he told me that there are a couple of organizations that will water the trees. They include Chrysalis, Northeast Trees and Hollywood Beautification (which works citywide). You need to pay them, but he suggested that neighborhood council funds could be used to do this.
So, I emailed the chair of our neighborhood council. We’ll see what he says. Since the main reason Ralphs corporation gave for not wanting to add the trees was that they would not have the store take on the responsibility of watering them, perhaps they’d be open to it if someone else watered the trees and it didn’t cost them anything. Trees only need regular watering for the first few years. After that, the roots are deep enough that the tree can find water on its own.
The other thing Mr. Espinosa shared was the name of the person who runs the Mayor’s Million Tree Initiative, Lisa Sarnow. I’ve been thinking of approaching the Ralphs situation that way, through the Mayor, since it’s the Mayor who has championed the community involvement in tree planting. If I can appeal to them, they might be able to persuade Ralphs Corp. to allow the trees. I am really hoping so and will keep you posted.
In the meantime, in my effort to add trees anywhere and everywhere I can down here, I’ve printed out several copies of a document you can download online called “22 Benefits of Urban Street Strees,” by Dan Burden. I’ve given this document out before, to members of my block club. And I sent it to The CEO of Kroger, owner of Ralphs. But I plan to give out another bunch of them in an effort to continually educate this community on the benefits of trees. Please wish me luck! Thanks. : )
