Making Madera A Better Place

By Juan Miranda

HAVE YOU EVER wondered why the community of Madera has a lot of issues?

To begin with, would you like new stores, restaurants, and fast food places? Bringing stores into Madera makes people disagree saying that it would cost too much which is true but can you imagine not going to Fresno, or wherever you go, to buy things you need? Even if people say no to new stores I believe we need new stores, restaurants, and fast food places even if people say no. Stores are needed not just for the residents but for Madera itself.

In addition to wanting new stores and restaurants, we believe that the community of Madera should update its old and abandoned buildings. However, some people in our community feel that updating old and abandoned buildings will be very expensive. For instance, if we updated our old and abandoned buildings it will not just beautify our town, but attract more people. To clarify, if we update more homes/houses, the houses will attract more people increasing the population benefiting Madera.

Besides wanting new homes and restaurants, we should improve the crosswalks to support all members of the Madera Community. Although it is for a good cause helping people, traffic will increase causing chaos in Madera. Similarly, not only will it increase traffic but also increase safety to the disabled, which is more good than bad. So not only will it increase safety to the disabled but increase safety overall; helping Madera one step at a time.

In the same way we want to fix the crosswalks, the Community of Madera shall provide more activities for students to participate in outside of school. Furthermore, it will decrease technology, which is bad and good. The bad side being technology is what we the people rely on these days. As well as decreasing technology it also reduces laziness which helps kids be more fit, healthy and active. Likewise, it will decrease technology as I have said before the good side of this is your kid will be less active on any social media. When kids are less active on technology, they can have more chances to reconnect with their family and friends. 

Some people may ask why does this matter? Why do stores, buildings, and crosswalks matter? Crosswalks are important to help people of all ages and to increase public safety all across the world not just here. Buildings are important because they can change lives by being something such as a homeless shelter or even a new home to people or it can even become a huge supermarket. Stores and restaurants matter because they aren’t here just to look pretty and beautify our town but they are here to give every single one of us better shopping options. These things aren’t just here to beautify our town but to improve it.

Making Madera Better

By Sergio Gomez

HAVE YOU EVER wondered if we, as a community, can make Madera better? Some people might say they like Madera just like it is because it’s calm, but others say they wouldn’t mind if Madera had a little upgrade. In my opinion, I think we should make Madera better because if we have a bigger population it will bring more money to Madera, then the city will be able to build more buildings and roads.

To begin with, we believe all the students of the city of Madera deserve access to an indoor and outdoor activities center. Some people might say we already have access to a community center but it is located on one side of Madera. The problem for some kids is that they might not have transportation to the community center. A new activities center could provide children with transportation to and from the center. Another community center would be great because it would reduce gang activity by reducing the number of kids going into them and other kids might have the chance to meet new kids. Another thing we can do is open some schools on the weekends, which would be a good idea because students would get to see their friends on the weekends. They could also bring their own equipment to play any sport or play on the playground with their friends. 

In addition, our community will benefit from having more people to come or visit Madera. However, some people may say it can cause a lot of traffic, more car accidents, and people can get hurt by car accidents and Madera is too small. On the positive side, if more people come, they will spend money in Madera and Madera will get more money to build better roads, so there will not be a lot of traffic problems or car accidents. If we bring more people to Madera, we can build more stores and more places so people from other places could come to Madera and shop. People will spend money here in Madera. Another positive is if we have more people here we can build another hospital and the people that come and stay in Madera can work at the hospitals. This way the people who live in Madera won’t have to wait a long time to be seen at the hospital.

Furthermore, the City of Madera should put the old and abandoned buildings to good use. Some people believe it could be too expensive because they will have to fix the buildings as well as remodel them from the inside out. However, we can use old and abandoned buildings and put them to good use by turning them into places to shop. For example, if we had a mall or new places to eat, such as In and Out, then we wouldn’t need to go to other places and spend our money. On another positive note, we can use the old and abandoned buildings and turn them into homeless shelters. We could provide shelter to the homeless by having them stay in the new shelters so that there would be less homeless on the street.

I, Sergio, envision in 2030 if Madera got better there will be more places to shop for all the citizens in Madera. I also imagine people coming from other places to our City of Madera to shop and spend their money. Could you imagine how Madera could be if we put all these ideas together in order to improve Madera? 

A Better Madera

By Kali Gomez

DID YOU EVER think about having fewer homeless people, more stores, and better road safety? Well, I have found ways that we can flip the negative situations in Madera around and turn those negative things into pretty positive ideas. I am a 6th grader at James Madison but, I believe I have the power and courage to help fix the problems of Madera. There are many problems, but we, as a whole, can fix our problems. Lots of people in Madera believe that our issues should be fixed. Some believe that it’s not our problem to fix things in Madera, instead, they believe it’s the Mayor and the offices’ problem to fix things. If we just sit and wait around for the Mayor to do something then homeless, road safety, and more stores would not be fixed or solved in a faster amount of time. We can’t just wait for change because change starts when we decide to begin a new life. So I believe we CAN make a difference, we CAN help people in need, and we CAN make our community a better place on Earth.

The city of Madera wants to assist the homeless in our community.

Some of the homeless in our county are homeless because they’ve had tough lives. For instance, some of the homeless might have had a tough life as a child and decided to steal which is how they have become criminals. Just because they were criminals doesn’t mean they aren’t still human beings. They also have homeless shelters but I believe that Madera should provide more shelters. Homeless are still people and shouldn’t be different from anyone else. On top of all of this, I feel we should give more opportunities to the less fortunate such as provide jobs and homes. However, we should give people a higher pay to start a new life. In fact, I believe we should make the homes more affordable for the people that don’t have much money.

We, the people of Madera, deserve a better variety of local stores to improve our shopping. For example, shopping in Madera increases our tax revenue and some of the profit can go to our schools so that students can have more opportunities at their schools. Also, it keeps kids from getting into trouble. Kids get into trouble when they’re bored and when they get bored easily from the old variety of stores we currently have then kids do things they shouldn’t. Besides that, there is a budget that all of Madera has and we can’t afford to buy everything that we want or need in one day. It will take some time to get more money into our budget but I’m sure we can find ways to raise more money.

We believe the citizens of Madera need better roads. For example, there have been many crashes, injuries, and in the worst cases, death. I know that getting better roads is expensive but, as I’ve said before, we can find ways to raise money for our community. In addition, there would be less traffic congestion so we can all get from one place to the other without so much traffic. I also believe we should improve our lights to see better. There can be ditches and someone could be in that ditch and if we crash or swerve off the road they can get seriously hurt.

You’re probably thinking “Why does this matter?” Or “Why should I care?” Well, I think you should care because you are a resident of Madera and we have to face the fact that Madera is slowly, yet surely, being destroyed and it won’t stop until we make a stand! We, as 6th graders, can begin something new in our lives. I believe the people of Madera should take a moment to realize things need to be different. An example of how Madera is starting to deteriorate is the amount of pollution that is being generated by Madera residents having to drive far for food, water, supplies, etc. Imagine how things would be with less homeless, more road safety, and more stores closer to people so we don’t have to worry about the pollution. We can fix this town if we all come together and do something about it. To repeat, Madera needs some fixing and we should help fix it.