Tim English | Cups Coffee Owner

Name: Tim English 

Neighborhood: Manhattan Beach 

Job: Local Business Owner of Cups Coffee in Los Angeles

Age: 32 

1)   What are the top issues facing Los Angeles and why? 

“I would have to go with lack of accountability and lack of responsibility. And why… I think if we had that answer that we could probably change it. We vote for these people in hopes that they better our situations or our communities. It never seems to happen and there is no accountability as to why it did or didn’t happen.”

2)   What do you think Mayor Garcetti should do to address these issues?

“It’s hard to say… like how does one man address these issues? I’d like him to be in tune with the people, like Villaraigosa was much the guy that if something happened, he was there. And a lot of that it was very good to see the voice of our city, in a sense, on site for major things, major accidents, major triumphs, anything that was there he kind of was in the community, and I think that was very beneficial.

I think Garcetti should continue to follow in some of those things but at the same time though build your staff around you that’s going to be accountable and responsible because we don’t have a lot of excess like we used to have in the past and its apparent that the excess we thought we had we never really had, it was just kind of a mythical amount of money, or whatever it is that they were talking about… surplus is the term they used, but we just need to get back on track, and if that means coming and talking to blue collar middle class to the lower class to the upper class, I mean we are all in this city together and just come out and be a part of us and make us unite.”

3)   Did you vote, if so, who did you support?

“I did vote, definitely Garcetti. It’s change, you know that’s been the big word that’s been thrown around and so its just nice to have a new voice and a new face and lets just see if a new regime can build on what we already have going and start some other new things.”

4)   And what is your top personal issue? 

“Probably our public service departments. Being a business owner here dealing with the health department, and building codes, inspectors and things like that, it took us three months to get them out here and that was three months for us to pay a $633 dollar check to one of them and a $700 and odd number amount check to another. If you do the math there it’s almost $1400 dollars and like I said its very minimal but if you’re doing this to every business that is trying to get these people to come out, it’s a lot of money that’s not being collected and put into play at the right time.

I would have to say there’s a lot like that right there personally, just because I’ve just now been dealing with stuff like that and it’s fresh on my mind. But I mean there’s a million things, lets better our public transportation, how do we get more people to use them, how do we clean up the streets, how do we help the homeless people? I mean there are so many things out there and nobody knows which one is the right way to go, which one is the right one to attack first, but hopefully he does.”

Reach contributor Margaux Farrell here.