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MANTECA GROWTH NOT EXCEEDING CAP
Rollover clause in growth management ordinance adopted in 1988 means 14,639 homes theoretically could be built in a year
home construction
Manteca would need to build 14,639 homes this year for city growth to stop under Ordinance 800 adopted in 1988.

A case can be made that City of Manteca Ordinance No. 800 — dubbed the “growth management ordinance” — is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

That’s even with 1,306 new housing permits being issued last year.

It’s because it was designed specifically to manage sewer connection allocations and not cap actual homes built in any given year.

Ordinance 800 caps the number of residential sewer allocations Manteca can issue in any given year at 3.9 percent. 

The number is obtained by taking the overall count of housing units within the city limits on Dec. 31 each year — single family homes, apartment units, mobile homes, duplexes, triplexes, condos, and townhouses — and multiplying the total by 3.9 percent.

What allocations aren’t issued, are rolled over for potential awarding in subsequent years.

At the end of last year, Manteca had 31,757 housing units.

Multiply that by 3.9 percent and the city legally can issue an additional 1,238 housing permits this year.

How, do you might ask, is that possible then that 1,306 housing permits were issued in 2024?

It’s due to the allocations that have rolled over since 1988.

The city, to comply with the ordinance adopted 37 years ago to stave off a dueling growth measures from qualifying for the ballot, can issue a higher number of sewer allocation than the 3.9 percent annual allocation allows.

And it will be a long time before the pile of rollover allocations are depleted, if that ever happens.

There are now 14,639 rollover sewer allocations available.

The city in a year would have to build 11 times as many homes as it issued permits to construct last year to deplete the rollover allocation.

That said, while that many allocation exist on paper, they don’t exist in reality.

Interim retrofit improvements are now underway to squeeze more sewer connections out of the existing treatment plant based on new technology and lower water use by addressing issues such as salinity.

That work should be completed in two to three years.

Meanwhile, preliminary work has started on a large scale wastewater treatment plant expansion.

There is a slight possibility that Manteca could hit a point where they couldn’t actually connect more homes on a temporary basis until the current work is completed.

Manteca’s actually housing stock — as opposed to the ability to award allocations on paper — has never grown by 3.9 percent.

The city on an annual basis dutifully tracks the numbers as required by Ordinance 800.

In 2024 based on 12 month monitoring, Manteca’s housing stock — including permits issued for homes not completed — was 3.25 percent.

That might strike people as growing too fast today but back in the late 1970s, it was just a  third of the growth Manteca was incurring.

The 1970s had ended with four strong growth years topped with a 12 percent gain in residents in 1980 that took the city’s population from 20,187 to 25,641 or an increase of roughly 25 percent in 48 months.

The growth rate slowed a bit but then it hit a record 12.1 percent in 1985 followed by a 9.2 percent jump in 1986 that took Manteca’s population up from 29,027 to 35,437 in two years. 

Manteca today — some 37 years later — has almost 93,000 residents.

Almost all other city growth management plans set a firm number tied to actual housing units built.

Tracy, as an example, has a growth management board in place that awards an average of 600 residential growth allocations (housing units) although another 150 can be issued in a given year if they meet affordability guidelines.


How Manteca’s growth

management got started

While Manteca set the trend when it comes to controlled growth in the Northern San Joaquin Valley, its 37-year old cap rule is now arguably the most liberal.

The push for a growth cap started when a group known as the Concerned Citizens for Planned Growth rolled out a plan to put a 2 percent growth cap on the ballot and started collecting signatures. It was countered by developers who wanted a 4.5 percent growth cap instead.

That prompted then Mayor Jack Snyder to roll out an initiative plan that basically mirrored the 3.9 percent growth cap on residential housing. Developers backed down and ultimately the more stringent 2 percent growth cap didn’t qualify for the ballot.

The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back was the city’s inability to keep up with growth. Fees on growth were inadequate or non-existent for a wide variety of amenities such as parks and fire services.

 

Manteca was bouncing back

from near bankruptcy

The city was still recovering from a near-bankruptcy episode in 1980 when the budget reserve was a razor-thin $1,800. Manteca’s financial trials were heavy on civic leaders’ minds during the building boom of 1984 to 1987. 

They didn’t want a repeat of the 1980s experience which forced the city to leave the just completed Louise Avenue fire station unopened because they couldn’t afford to staff it while city police were using old CHP cars with excess of 90,000 miles on them when the city took delivery of them as primary patrol units.

Many residents shared the concern that Manteca was growing faster than basic services could keep up with. The sentiment was Manteca was growing too fast as neighborhoods such as Mayors Park in the triangle formed by the railroad tracks, Louise Avenue and Union Road seemed to develop overnight.

The ordinance went into effect just as the economy started receding. 

Tying into sewer allocations was viewed by legal experts and civic leaders at the time as the easiest way to implement a growth management plan.

Ordinance No. 800 was put into effect on Aug. 16, 1988 as the guideline for how the first phase of the municipal wastewater treatment plant expansion would be utilized to divide sewer capacity. It was subsequently extended in future years to govern how the second phase of the treatment plant would have its capacity parceled out. 

A percentage was set aside for every category in terms of how much capacity of the plant would be allocated to a particular use. Those percentages set aside 60 percent of the overall capacity to housing with no distinction being between apartments, single family homes, duplexes or mobile homes. The other categories — schools, industrial, retail and office divided the rest of the capacity.

Based on the intent and the actual wording of Ordinance No. 800, city leaders view the growth management plan put in place decades ago  by their predecessors as a success.

That, however, isn’t a universal view. There are those who believe the city has been growing too fast.

Originally the growth cap gave projects two windows to secure sewer allocations — one in March and the other in October.

  

To contact Dennis Wyatt, e-mail dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com


TAKE A WINTER DAY TRIP ON HIGHWAY 4 & COMBINE SNOW FUN WITH LUNCH, DINNER & WINE TASTING
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Photo courtesy Calaveras Visitors Bureau Cross-country skiing at Calaveras Big Trees State Park.
ARNOLD — Big snow, big trees, and the big outdoors. It doesn’t get much better for a winter day trip than heading up Highway 4 to take in the 209’s majestic backyard.
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