Funding for Bottle Village Rebuilding Looking Uncertain

SIMI VALLEY — The grant money pledged to restore Bottle Village has been frozen by the federal government, and Councilwoman Sandi Webb on Monday launched a petition drive to ensure that not one penny of the grant ever reaches the junkyard fantasy land.

Webb said she has already collected more than 100 signatures on a a petition that suggests, “Better to Bulldoze Bottle Village than waste $436,500 rebuilding it.”

“I took it to two different events, and people were practically snatching it out of my hands to sign it,” Webb said with a laugh. “I’ve only got to show it to a few people, and they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, give me it!’ ”

But Daniel Paul, curator of the reconstruction project, says he only recently heard from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that the repair grant has been frozen. And last week, Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) introduced a bill asking Congress to cut the project off without a cent.

“I’m in the process of getting to the bottom of it,” Paul said of the frozen funds. “I’ve been in contact with various preservation organizations, the National Trust, the state Office for Historic Preservation, and both are rather shocked.”

FEMA officials could not be reached for comment Monday.

The late Tressa “Grandma” Prisbrey cemented together the fanciful clutch of huts and houses off Cochran Street in eastern Simi Valley, using beer bottles, doll heads, headlamps, toothbrushes and other material scrounged from scrap yards or collected by friends.

By the time she died in 1988 at 92, she had spent the better part of three decades building the 33 structures at Bottle Village.

Six years later, the 1994 Northridge earthquake shattered the place, toppling a few buildings and damaging most of the rest.

Bottle Village now qualified as quake-ravaged “folk art” in the eyes of FEMA officials, who agreed late last year to spend an amount actually closer to $447,000 for work crews to carefully catalog and rebuild it.

Paul said he will begin circulating petitions of his own and soliciting help from supporters of Bottle Village to keep the repair project alive.

“You may dislike the aesthetic of Bottle Village. But are you ready to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars paid into this local economy to show your distaste?” Paul wrote in a letter supporting the project.

But he is up against taxpayers who, in the words of Sandi Webb’s petition, “are outraged” and “demand that FEMA and the California Office of Emergency Services rescind their grant and put a stop to this monstrous waste of public funds.”

Webb suggested the council take up the matter officially at its Jan. 27 meeting and consider writing a letter from the city to FEMA that opposes funding of the project.

Mayor Greg Stratton ordered city staff to report back to the council at that meeting about FEMA’s stance on rebuilding Bottle Village.