By Lilia Gonzalez

As a resident and member of the McFarland community, I’ve noticed and lived through the lack of focus that McFarland receives. A lack of diverse restaurants, grocery stores, landscaping, and infrastructure is a problem that needs to be solved. 

For example, if I need supplies, food, or materials, some stores don’t have the supplies I need and that’s when I have to go into other towns that are close by to get the supplies I need. Some people don’t have time to do that and it would be better if we had more stores with more options. 

The only grocery stores that we have in town are Ranchito Market, Fiesta Market, and La Espiga Market. I feel like we need organic food stores and we don’t have organic food options or stores and that’s when I will have to go into other towns to buy organic food. 

Additionally, our community is lacking options in restaurants – both sit-down restaurants and fast food. Our community doesn’t have a lot of options, the only options we have are, snow white, Rosa Silvestre, Fay Yin, Maria’s Pizza, and Poker’s Pizza. We only have five fast food places that would just be McDonald’s, Little Caesars, Taco Bell, Subway, and Snow white. 

Since there are only a few stores in general in our town it gives us fewer options to shop for food supplies and materials we need when we need them. I can go into other towns and buy supplies, that is no problem, but it would be more expensive since I have to waste gas as well and I waste more time in the day.

Aside from food, we also don’t have a lot of trees and we need trees to make our town look decent and pretty. Our streets also need to be focused on as well since there are a lot of holes in our streets and the streets have a lot of cracks it would look good on our community if the streets get fixed. The sidewalks also need to be tended to.

Since I live in this community I try to focus on keeping my areas clean — for example, the sidewalk outside my house. I don’t throw trash into nature cause no one gets anything out of it. People throwing trash is a worldwide issue, not just in our town and it was a big thing before and people started using recyclable bags, recyclable trash.

Recycling changed our world a little more. It did make an effect and what if I was able to make a change for our community throughout the days we go through, how would things look better in our community? 

So, how can I help our town by living in it? What am I able to change to better our community?