“It is a good idea. It's poor execution. Their thought process is good to help these struggling cities and to do these things. But what they're doing is not necessarily going to help.”
Well. I mean, I understand what the city and the county and the state are trying to do. I understand that. And I think that in some cases it is a good idea. It's poor execution. Their thought process is good to help these struggling cities and to do these things. But what they're doing is not necessarily going to help. Doing a revitalization of the L.A. River and having people kayak down the L.A. River is not going to happen. I can almost guarantee that no one in their right mind would want to step foot in the L.A. River. OK. Not to mention that taking out the concrete and putting in green space and putting in parks and things like that. Great. But every city that borders the L.A. River is not exactly a good city. And it's just going to make. It's going to give the homeless people more places to stay. And it's going to give more drug use and drug sales and all that kind of stuff that's already happening in and around the L.A. River already. They want to help. And I get it. I think that that's great. But there's other ways that I think that they can do this instead of revitalizing or not revitalizing. The L.A. River was never nice to begin with. So it's mainly just a project to you know spend money that the that the federal government is giving them to do. And if that's what they have to use it for then I guess that's what they had to use it for. I'm not going to see any benefit out of it. Where we are here this is just my office. Thi Is my work. I'm not going to see any benefit of it. The L.A. River's right there. You know I know that but I'm not sure exactly what they're planning on getting out of this whole project. They're also doing a lot of Section 8 housing locally here. Doing one right across the street from me. I'm not excited about that. We already get a lot of homeless people that walk around here all the time. They damage property. They steal things. And that's what I think they should be doing more to help that than anything else. And I just don't think that it's going to do much. I mean I applaud their efforts I really do they're doing something. And I think that that's the right step to do. But spending all this money. To make a green space for people to go buy drugs and you know that's what they want to do it's what they want to do.
OK. So yeah so if. So you would say in your opinion the L.A. River restoration/revitalization should focus on solving the homeless and drug problems before putting in amenities.
I think doing this is going to escalate the problems. OK. It's going to give them more places for them to do what they need to do. Mm hmm. I think it's probably a good thing for the ecological system. The environmental science aspect of it I think is probably pretty good. I think what they're failing to understand is that the cities that are bordering this the L.A. River are, are notoriously not very good cities. Boyle Heights, Southgate, Lynwood, Paramount. You know they're not very good cities when it comes to a lot of this stuff. And if they're going to benefit from this and have a park. That's great. But if you look at all the parks in the cities right now. There really aren't any, and if there are. There's a lot of drug use a lot of homeless people live in there. All right that's all I'm saying. And I don't know what to do with the homeless population. I don't know. I'm not a politician. I'm not an urban planner I'm an urban developer. I don't know. But when we have people wandering into our property and stealing things in the back. Which we have camera systems and I can show you all these people that come here. It's going to be a problem. And they're taking money from the from the government which is great. And obviously there are probably a lot of corrupt individuals that are just probably pocketing a lot of this money. Bell, Bell Gardens they've all been accused of corruption in the past and they've never had to do anything for it. And that's a problem. And I this being a problem just the same. Is getting money from the federal government. People making plans, overages, construction companies. I can see it already. I've seen it too many times since I've been here in and around this this area. I mean that's just my personal opinion. I know it's not exactly what you were hoping to hear today.
A lot of people have brought up the issue of homelessness and drug use. And so it's a pretty common theme amongst people we've talked to about their worry about it. So yeah that's kind of what we've encountered so far.
I think from an environmental standpoint environmental science standpoint it makes sense and knowing what you're doing now on the phone I didn't know your environmental science major. I didn't actually know what that was or what you did. I think from that standpoint it makes a lot of sense and I think that that's probably a good thing to do to get water back in the water table and this and that blah blah. But I don't know if you were born here or from Southern California but the L.A. River is nasty when it rains and it's just you can't go in the beach for a week yeah because of the water.
Yeah. I'm actually not from the area.
Where are you from?
Guam.
OK. Yeah that's a long way away. Quite a bit yeah right.
The L.A. the whole L.A. River is actually pretty pretty interesting to me and pretty interesting topic. So it's nice to hear like what the actual people on the ground I'm thinking and we kind of jumped ahead but I guess you can just introduce yourself your business.
Sure, my name is Steven Ball. I own a business here with my family. We manufacture roller skates in Southgate, California. We've been in this facility since 1980. Before that we were across the riverbed in Lynwood. And we've been in business since 1937. It's a family business. It is a family business has been very good to my family over the years. The fourth generation of my family to be in this business. I'm lucky. I don't take anything for granted. I work my ass off. I do everything that I can. And when you contacted me. Being you know a college graduate myself. I like to give back. I like to do things for for the education system as much as I can. My family or my my father unfortunately or fortunately went to USC. Yeah I did not. I got rejected. I end up playing baseball at a smaller school so I end up doing that little bit different around here though. So I've been born and raised been here all my life. So I'm the one that you probably want to talk to. These types of things that I've been around it for my whole life.
So I guess like on a personal level. On a personal level like have you ever visited the river or use the river for anything?
There's nothing to use in the river. There's like a couple of bike paths on top of it. I did that when I was a kid. I have not done it since and I don't particularly want to. Underneath all the the overhangs, It's where all the homeless people live. And when you come out here and you know the cops you call the cops they know that's where they live. That's where they stay. They don't even want to go over there because they don't want to go into their habitat or habitats not the right word. They don't want go into the territory because of the drug use and needles they don't want to get get hurt and I don't, I don't have a problem with that. But you know nobody wants to to face the facts. Nobody wants to confront the homeless people if you've seen them. If you went on the 710 right over here there's a huge encampment on the side of the riverbed. Where are they going to go. What are you going to do with them when you when we bulldoze that thing and make a nice little park. Where are they going to go. Yeah you know I can see a recreational thing I can see doing something I can really see. As that as being a benefit but in the city of L.A. I just don't see that working. I see that working in Denver. I see that working in you know like. Austin you know in San Antonio in maybe like Chicago area but in Los Angeles with the gangs and stuff that we have here. It's just not I don't think it's you're going to get families to go there and picnic on a Saturday unfortunately. Yeah and kayaking down the L.A. River is by far the funniest thing I saw on that website. And I just kind of thought that was hilarious but maybe it's because I've grown up with the river the way that it is. And anybody who goes in the rivers can get hepatitis. And anybody who's gone in the river who have in the past if you've lived looked it up on the news there's always some kid every year when it rains. Got a boogie board trying to go to the beach on the L.A. River and he always has to be rescued. Yeah. Okay so that's the L.A. River to me. Yeah that's what I see. Now if they want to redo it and make it really nice and actually like a real river there's no real water. That like feeds the L.A. River it's just rain. So that's where you get all the mud and all the nasty stuff that that happens so when that happens in the L.A. River it does flood. It does get pretty high from time to time. I mean what's going to happen to our nice green space that we build. I don't want that to just to be decimated. Yeah. You know I've seen what happens when rivers flood and trees and everything just gets eroded. You know it could be a potential problem. And I'm sure that's where the environmental science major comes in at to figure all that stuff out. And I'm not smart enough to do that. But I know or I feel like I would know about what's going to happen once this is done and my interpretation of it is no one's really going to use it okay.
That kind of jumps in to like the kind of final part of our topic discussion as the L.A. River. It is kind of the way it is the concrete channel because of like flood control. Do you feel like, are you concerned about its flood capacity and the flood control abilities in terms of moving forward in terms of climate change.
I don't know. I don't see it. It's never overflowed as far as I know. I've seen it pretty high. These last big rains we have. It's gotten pretty high but I've seen it higher. So I don't really think that it's going to cause much of an issue where it overflows the banks. In my personal opinion but you know I don't know as far as climate change is concerned. I'm not trying to say that that I'm a skeptic of it. I'm not. I think there needs to be more research involved in it. We can discuss ice ages in the past that didn't have CO2 gas emissions and all that stuff when I was in school. I heard a very interesting talk in my environmental science class and forget who the gentleman was that they got. But he came in and it was kind of sad what happened because in school you know you're not. You're. You're made to kind of think for yourself and to make decisions for yourself and to learn and to to learn that process that goes into the education system and how you get to graduating and becoming smarter. And I liked the fact that at my school we brought in some people who you may not see at a university. In most cases you see someone who would argue the other side. And I really liked that fact because we go down in the education system we always go one direction. We never really get to see everything. You know schools like Berkeley and things like that you're really only going down one side. And I like the fact that to at least address the other side's concern. There is there is climate change and I'm not trying to say there's not climate change because there is clearly there is but I like listening to what someone else has to say about it. So for climate change. I don't know what's going to happen and nobody knows what's going to happen. You know it's our it's our Earth. It's our planet our weather systems. I don't think anyone's really going to know exactly what's going to happen tomorrow. Anything can happen. But I think trying to do things and what we're doing trying to eliminate emissions and all this stuff I think is a is a great idea. I mean you can smell the air here is terrible. You know. But coming from some place like like Guam it's a lot cleaner and a lot clearer outside not as much smog going to Hawaii or things like that it's it's a lot better you know. But this is what we got for right now so we need trying to make the best that we can and in this situation you're trying to revitalize the riverbed. Probably a good idea. More water in the water table. There's nothing wrong with that. You know I think that's a good thing but I'm just concerned about the other side of it.
All right. I think. I think that's pretty much wraps up here. Yeah. Do you have anything to comment.
No not really. I was just going to say that we're also doing like humans of the L.A. River kind of thing and if you're interested if we were to picture a you and just post it on our research, a little profile.
Yeah sure yeah. And if you want. Yeah. And any final thoughts from you are. Pretty much set at all. I mean. No not really. Yeah. I mean I didn't know anything about this. So I don't even know if I voted on this or not. But you know typically. You know it costs money and I'll vote for it but that's just me. OK yeah.
But now we're getting into a whole other side. Yeah. Which is you know poor use of government funds.
That was also something that I've encountered OK. Some people like they're like well this isn't gonna be money to do all these things and this is going to come from taxes. So that's also another concern which is if that is a concern for you like we would also like to hear what you think about that.
What was the someone said something the other day was as a quote from Ronald Reagan. And it was something about like the government doesn't do whatever it just subsidizes everything. So it's like it doesn't actually make any money doesn't actually create something all you do is just spend. And spending money on this is probably a good thing. Although you probably drove up here and our roads are terrible. You know the roads are falling apart every time it rains a fall. I'd rather have money go spent on that. There's supposed to be a gas tax. And all that money's supposed to go to roads. The money from the lottery is supposed to go to the schools. You know I don't see that. I see the schools cutting programs not increasing programs. They cut, when I was in high school they cut athletics from the middle schools. And giving kids something to do after school other than go home and play video games or do drugs is the important thing. And they're cutting those programs. I don't. And then you see. You know kids out on the streets or whatever and then I think it just perpetuates the problem. And you know say what you want about sports or extracurricular activities. They want a lot of kids just to go and learn and to be better at taking tests. Essentially, and I don't think taking a test really gives you a lot of like life skills and life lessons. I wasn't a very good test taker. I didn't go. I went to public school but I didn't get into a good college. I wasn't very smart. Okay. But I wasn't a very good test taker. And my dad didn't bribe the right people at USC to get me in. OK. I didn't do CRU. So you know. I just think that there's other things that the government could spend their money on to kind of help the situations and all they want to do is get elected because they make a two hundred thousand dollars a year being a senator. Yeah. And that's what they want to do. And then you get Bernie Sanders writing a book and makes a million dollars writing a book. What. I have no idea what that book was about. You know you get you get. Like you get Barack Obama and his wife. His wife wrote a book. About what being the first lady I guess. And you make millions of dollars on it. And. I don't understand. You become president. He's president for two years and now he's somewhat retired. I thought she wanted to be in public service. Yeah I thought she wanted to continue to give back. So you just quit. You're 40-50 years old. OK I'm done. Yeah. Interesting. So I just think that it's kind of a. It's like a one way street for a lot of those guys. All they want is get paid. I don't think they really want to give back to the community. It's my personal opinion. All right. Well but prove me wrong. Yes. Let's build a river.