The state-mandated update required to direct Manteca’s growth over the upcoming 10 years isn’t giving a law firm specializing in government, land use, and environmental law good vibrations.

Nor, if the lawyers are right, will it Manteca residents that will have to deal with a significant jump in truck traffic with screeching Jake brakes, accelerating from complete stops, and sometimes vibrations in their home as some Lathrop Road residents experience occasionally when trucks rumble down the street on deteriorating pavement. 

The general plan document in the process of being prepared for final vetting by the Manteca City Council will lead to heavy-duty truck traffic traveling on segments of all major arterial streets in the city “exposing residents to substantial pollutant concentrations and excessive noise and vibration.”

At the same time the increase in truck traffic that has the potential to be substantial based on proposed zoning will pose heightened dangers to vehicles, pedestrians, and bicyclists.

That is the conclusion of the San Francisco-based law firm of Shute, Mihaly, Weinberger.

Law firm addresses

perceived inadequacies,

flaws in general plan EIR

The June 10, 2021 response to the proposed general plan update is part of official comments regarding perceived inadequacies and failures to ensure reasonable and feasible measures to safeguard the quality of life for current and future residents.

The biggest flaws, based on the law firm’s observations, is the failure to consider alternative land uses as well as seize the opportunity to view impacts on the community in a holistic manner that the general plan process was designed to do instead of on a piecemeal basis when individual projects are advanced.

The piecemeal approach the city has pursued for the last 30 plus years has led to cases where specific projects create significant impacts as part of an accumulative basis on major road segments they ultimately escape paying their fair share to address. As a result, the city has a severe backlog of road projects in already developed sections of the city needed for handle the impacts of growth.

And while much of the observations and criticisms of the general plan update in the 19 page letter was spurred by what the city is trying to do along the Airport Way corridor, it applies to planning for future growth throughout the city and adjoining rural areas hired consultants have identified as being must likely to be annexed to Manteca and developed.

The pro bono work being done for Manteca-based Concerned Citizens for the Airport Way Corridor contends the environmental impact review for the general plan is flawed and does not comply with the California Environmental Quality Act is something the city can ill-afford to take lightly.

Dispute over city’s EIR

work, or lack thereof, landed

Manteca before California

Supreme Court in 1989

When the city in 1989 did not heed the warnings of a law firm doing pro bono work for the Manteca Rural Committee regarding the city’s thoroughness on environmentally vetting the 600-home Chadwick Square neighborhood when it was proposed on the southeast corner of Airport Way and Lathrop Road, a suit against the city ended up making it all the way to the California Supreme Court.

The state court let key lower court decisions stand requiring the city to do an actual environmental review instead of municipal staff concluding there was not a reason to do an EIR.

While the 1989 issue was slightly different in that the city did no EIR at all, the argument is basically the same. CEQA requires a full vetting of environmental impacts of significant projects and not simply dismissing them or pushing them down the road.

The 1989 effort taking on the city was led by Georgiana Reichelt. She was a rural Manteca resident at the time whose home was eventually part of a forced annexation into the city. Reichelt made it her life’s work to battle what she saw as the city’s cavalier attitude toward growth impacts on residents both in the city and surrounding rural areas.

It is an attitude Mary Meninga, who is among Manteca residents fighting approval of the general plan update due to what they see as significant shortfalls in identifying and addressing the negative impact to of growth, has had Mayor Ben Cantu tell her not once but twice at public meetings that essentially it doesn’t matter what decisions are made regarding planning today because both of them likely would not be alive in 30 years when specific problems related to development planning they were discussing came to fruition.

Cantu has made views

known throughout the

general plan vetting process

Cantu has consistently advocated that growth must pay its way 100 percent and that it is inevitable. The mayor believes adhering to best textbook planning practices whether it is a loop expressway of the city or placing a major arterial through an existing neighborhood if it is in the best interests of the overall community.

Since being elected mayor after decades of working as a Manteca municipal planner, Cantu has used his passion for “proper planning” to actively share his views at numerous stages of the general plan process such as laying out his vision for Manteca before the general plan citizens advisory committee, to current municipal planning staff, and periodically at council meetings during discussion of other growth issues not tied to the general plan while the update was being cobbled together.

In the end, Cantu is one of only five people in Manteca as a member of the City Council who have a say in what the blueprint for growth will look like moving forward.

There are alternatives that may make sense. It is what the law firm’s letter basically states needs to be seriously considered by the city.

Early on in the process when the city wedded the general plan update with the truck route study, Del Webb resident Bill Barnhardt publicly suggested pushing truck traffic northward toward French Camp Road along the Airport Way corridor where the city envisions future industrial uses north of Roth Road.

His argument was simple. The French Camp Road interchange on Highway 99 less than 10 years ago was modernized. Developers could foot the bill to make ramps more robust to handle increased truck traffic. Also, unlike Roth Road, the interchange is in place and is not 10 to 20 years down the road, if that.

The law firm’s observation the city could easily have other land uses along the Airport Way corridor that won’t add to the truck volume, points to a potential policy flaw the city has in chasing more business parks.

Manteca, unlike Tracy, is

pursuing business parks

next to residential areas

Manteca’s proposed land use in the general plan update calls for a major industrial zone on the southeast corner of the French Camp Road and Highway 99 interchange. It has direct freeway access and rail access.

As such it would be much like Tracy’s International Park of Commerce with massive distribution centers such as Costco, Safeway, and Amazon on that city’s western flank on Interstate 580 isolated from neighborhoods, schools, and commercial development in the city of just under 100,000 people.

Pushing industrial development — distribution centers — to French Camp Road at Highway 99 gives the city maximum flexibility for smart planning.

Such flexibility, as the law firm points out, is not possible in the city’s drive to shoehorn industrial uses along Airport Way that is lined with existing residential and commercial development.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com