Editorial

EDITORIAL - When Home Depot announced they were opening a store in Madera, I was excited like many other Maderans. We needed a good place in town to buy lumber and a one stop shop for home improvement. Then a few years later along came Lowes less than a mile from Home Depot. Now we had two large box stores that would stock everything you would ever need to fix up your house.

The only problem was, despite the large inventory of everything you could ever want; they forgot to stock the one thing Maderan’s want more than anything else, CUSTOMER SERVICE. How many times have you walked the aisles of either of these stores looking for an item, only to have NO ONE around to help you find it?

EDITORIAL – Enough is enough! I was recently made aware of a letter that is circulating through-out the Central Valley high school track & field community accusing the Madera Unified School District, specifically Madera South High School of “institutional racism”. The letter was written by a frequent flyer at the public comments podium for both the Madera City Council and Madera Unified Board of Trustee meetings, Ron Montoya a Medical Social Worker for Valley Home Care.

Montoya was a 2010 board of trustee candidate for the Madera Unified School District but was trounced by Maria Velarde-Garcia in the general election (45.8% to 24.7%) and is now talking about a run for the Madera City Council against Donald Holley in District Six. Montoya was also a part of the recall efforts against Madera Mayor Andrew Medillian (acting along with Khalid Chaudhry of Ripon and developer Michael Pistoresi).

EDITORIAL – It is coming up on three months since the November elections and we still do not have a winner for the Madera Unified School District Area 5 seat. A seat that has been empty since July of last year when then board trustee Al Galvez resigned because of family issues. Yet the tax payers in that district are still paying taxes for their schools despite the fact that they no longer have any representation on the school board.

Wasn’t taxation without representation a big part of the founding of this country? Didn’t we dump tea into Boston Harbor and go to war with England over just that sort of thing? Why is it now acceptable some 245 year later in the little old town of Madera, California?

EDITORIAL – Welcome to the new democracy Madera. In the last few weeks my email box has been filled with messages about what many are calling ‘illegal voting practices’. People are questioning how all of the candidates they backed could have lost their races to a bunch of inexperienced newcomers and apparently, even more important, what am I going to do about it?

Other than reporting the stories, I’m not sure what I am expected to “do about it”. I endorsed four people in four races and three of my candidate won. Other than the loss of one city councilman, I am very happy with the results of the November 6^th election. However while I can see how a certain segment of this community might feel cheated, there is no proof of any illegal activity in the casting of even one single ballot and no one has stepped forward to request an investigation by the California Secretary of State or the Fair Political Practices Commission.

EDITORIAL – President Donald Trump has weighed in on the epidemic of tragic fires plaguing the state of California in the sensitive manner we have become accustomed to from him. He claims the fires are the fault of forest mismanagement and to steal a line from the movie Animal House, “Bluto's right. Psychotic, but absolutely right.”

Trump Tweeted, "There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor," He added, "Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!"

EDITORIAL – When Steve Montes was filing his papers to run for the Madera City Council I learned that the former Madera Redevelopment Agency staff member had a checkered criminal past. I also knew over a year ago that Madera City Councilman Will Oliver was arrested for driving under the influence a short time after his father passed away in 2015.

In the first case, the felony weapons conviction happened when Montes was very young, only eighteen years old. In the second, while it is no excuse, I could completely understand the mistakes of excess a relatively young man is likely to make when grieving for a parent. In both cases I did not feel writing about past indiscretions would lend anything to the issues of the campaign for the Madera City Council.