There’s a lot riding on the shoulders of the next city manager the Manteca City Council hires.

The announcement — expected in the coming days — comes at a critical juncture for Manteca.

The city needs to stabilize its finances by completing the sorting out of bookkeeping messes that at one point 10 months ago led city management at the time to warn they had no idea where upwards of $60 million was supposed to go.

As the city is almost through sorting the mess out it is clear significant water rate hikes as well as wastewater and solid waste fee increases are needed.

At the same time they need to get ahead of growth in terms of amenities and infrastructure.

That could mean new growth fees and increase of fees already in place. And to come up with existing residents’ share of potential amenities and major road projects the odds are high some type of new taxes will be needed.

Strong growth on pace

to send city to 110,000

residents by year 2030

Manteca is on pace to hit 110,000 residents by 2030.

That’s based on the city adding 2,519 residents annually as they did in 2020 when they tied Tracy as the third fastest growing city in California among those municipalities over 30,000 residents.

Manteca could add 22,671 residents in the next nine years. That’s 6,421 more people than the current 16,292 population of Ripon.

Making that 22,671 number seem a tad conservative are:

*The switch to hybrid remote and in-person work expected to be more common in the post pandemic world. Experts say that will spur more people to live farther from their jobs to secure housing that is more affordable as well as a different lifestyle.

*The arrival of Altamont Corridor Express commute service to downtown Manteca in 2023 and potentially Valley Link being up and running to connect with BART by 2028 via a north Lathrop station literally on the western edge of Manteca’s city limits. More robust rail service is expected to make living in Southern San Joaquin County more attractive as it would reduce commuter stress and cost.

*The fact Manteca has the basic infrastructure in place — surface water treatment and wastewater treatment — that have feasible capacity expansion plans in place. That is a rarity among growing areas on the Bay Area’s outer fringe.

*Developers in a position to provide a steady flow of new homes. There are currently 11,245 housing units that are in various stages of the approval process from fully entitled lots ready to build to new subdivisions and apartment complexes going through preliminary vetting.

*Manteca was the only city in the Northern San Joaquin Valley that kept a fairly strong growth pace going throughout the Great Recession that was triggered by the housing. For three straight years starting in 2009 Manteca had more housing starts on an annual basis than all over jurisdictions combined in San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Merced counties.

The need for a stable, effective, innovative, and visionary city manager to move Manteca forward can’t be stressed enough.

When interim City Manager Michael Harden steps down on Sept. 16 Manteca will have gone through five “long term” city mangers in less than nine years. It includes one — Elena Reyes — the council sidelined within three months and then bought her contract out. The list also includes Miranda Lutzow who abruptly quit in February and has since filed a lawsuit against the city alleging a hostile workplace.

The council has been conducting a search for a new city manager who could be announced before Harden leaves or a short time thereafter.

It goes without saying the immediate pressing nuts and bolts issues that the new city manager needs to address are:

*Making sure all key positions are filled.

*Addressing a nearly $20 million shortfall in the water enterprise account that represents money borrowed from other accounts that must be paid back as well as making sure ongoing water maintenance and operation costs are covered and funds to pay for future replacement projects as pipelines and wells age. That means water rate increases.

*Rate increases are also needed for the wastewater enterprise account that is now virtually running on fumes and the solid waste enterprise account.

*Getting a permanent homeless navigation center and drop-in shelter up and running.

*Coming up with a game plan and instituting it that balances the need for trucks critical to distribution center jobs Manteca is attracting and protecting qualify of life issues.

*Finding full funding to allow the McKinley interchange on the 120 Bypass to be built as well as to pay for the city’s tab of widening the Austin Road overcrossing on Highway 99 beyond the two lanes Caltrans is picking up the tab for and the four lanes the city wants.

Amenities & basic needs

such as adequate police

station are seen as lacking

There is also a long laundry list of what are perceived as either inadequate or non-existent amenities that many want to see in the community.

City leaders were gung-ho several years ago for an $80 million recreational facilities undertaking but dropped it after the city management staff at the time panicked about finances and tried unsuccessfully to get a general sales tax passed instead.

Police station and library

show how growth has

stressed their effectiveness

That is on top of some inadequate needs such as the library and police station.

In both cases, growth long ago passed their design capacity.

Unlike most cities that try to shelter their police departments in one building, the Manteca Police complex is a hodge podge of buildings that require the use of outdoor breezeways to move between. There are two original buildings constructed in the early 1980s are composed of 17,000 square feet, portable buildings, and the new and old evidence buildings.

The new evidence building completed in 2018 gave Manteca some 22,000 square feet. That compares to Turlock, a slightly smaller city that has 57,000 square feet.

Manteca city leaders back in 2000 when Manteca had 49,258 residents — 40,000 less than it does today — determined that the police complex was inadequate. They originally made an effort to address it by looking at a plan to revamp the entire Civic Center but that was nixed for being too expensive.

Then in 2004, the city spent $2.6 million in redevelopment agency money to buy 8.07 acres fronting South Main Street in the Manteca Industrial Park between Wetmore Street and Industrial Park Drive for a future South County courthouse and Manteca Police headquarters complex.

When the Superior Court judges backed out of a plan to build a South County satellite complex and instead diverted available funds into building a new courthouse in downtown Stockton, the city dropped the South Main Street site

Then in April 2006 the City Council spent $3.6 million in redevelopment agency funds to purchase the 57,000-square-foot former Qualex film processing building at 555 Industrial Park Drive for the future home for the police department.

That effort went nowhere as well.

The city in 2002  took a stab at building a $33 million library complex but dropped the effort after failing to secure state library bond money to help build the envision 2-story replacement for the city library. The current library was built in 1961. When it was expanded in 1977 to its current configuration city officials predicted it would be adequate for the city through 1995 when the population was projected to reach 32,000. Manteca’s actual population in 1995 was 45,060 residents. Manteca now has 89,000 residents.

The city since 2006 has used the government facility fees to construct the animal shelter, police evidence building, the vehicle maintenance building, and the Moffat Community Center/Manteca VFW Hall.

Trains and interchanges

are also growing issues

In the last public accounting to the council, the government facilities fee account had a $19.5 million balance as of June 2019.

The city manager besides overseeing day to day municipal operations and prepping for growth will have several transportation issues unusual for a city of 89,000 as well as a more common issue of fairly widespread street deterioration issues that need to be addressed.

That includes two interchanges that need expanding that there is no funding mechanism in place to do — Airport Way and Main Street on the 120 Bypass. That is in addition to three new interchanges that are in the pipeline.

Manteca has been informed by Union Pacific Railroad and ACE to expect to see more than a 100 percent increase in train traffic in the coming years. Manteca has 15 at-grade crossings in the city including 10 on the heavily traveled Fresno line.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com