Ground could break in 2026 on two long-awaited amenities in rapidly growing southwest Manteca — a fire station and an elementary school.

Both will be located near the intersection of Woodward and McKinley Avenues.

The city is working with a developer that is willing to set aside land for the fire station at no cost.

Manteca Unified School District officials and city leaders have been discussing the city acquiring an acre of the Tara school site for the city’s sixth station.

If the developer’s offer ends up happening, it will significantly reduce the cost to the city to develop a new fire station given land prices in the area.

The generosity of another developer — Atherton Homes — provided the city with land for no charge for the building of the Woodward Avenue and Atherton Drive station in southeast Manteca.

The results of the Nov. 5 election are making both the new school and the new fire station possible.

The passage of the $10 billion statewide school construction bond means the school district can now leverage more than 60 percent of the cost of building a TK through 8th grade campus using bond receipts from the community facilities district.

The district in November awarded contracts for architectural and site design for three new elementary schools including Tara, classrooms at Sierra High, and additional classrooms at Sequoia and Lincoln elementary schools.

Based on typical time tables for state-funded school projects that also requires Sacramento to sign off on plans, it is highly feasible physical work could start on the Tara School in 2026.

The passage of the three-quarter cent, 20-year Measure Q sales tax that went into effect Jan. 1 means Manteca will be in a position to work toward a sixth fire station as well as secure a fire engine.

City Manager Toni Lundgren said getting the fire station built is a top priority.

By the time a site is secured and plans developed to allow it go to bid, the city will likely have the funds in hand from fees collected from growth for fire facilities to pay for the station, especially if it doesn’t have to worry about covering the cost of the land.

And if it doesn’t quite have the amount, the city will likely borrow the money from another growth fee account and pay it back with interest.

That is what the city did with the Atherton/Woodward station.

There are roughly 3,000 homes in southwest Manteca outside of the targeted 5 minute response time established to assure the best possible outcomes in medical emergencies and fires can be obtained.

It is not uncommon now for some 9-1-1 responses to take as long as 15 minutes once an engine is dispatched.

Residents in the fast growing area have been pressing the school board for the past two years to build a school that their elementary students can walk to and from.

They pointed to the fact the school district acquired the Tara site and home builders “promised” there would be an elementary school.

The district, without being able to wed local CFD bond money with state bond money would not have been able to build the school.

The districtwide $260 million Measure A bond is only for modernizing existing school facilities.

MUSD theoretically could have conducted a bond sale in the CFD covering South Manteca given adequate property has been added to assessment rolls to allow for bonding.

But in doing so, it would likely have had only enough money to build just one elementary school without state support and not much more.

Not only did that pose a risk of not being able to fund a second elementary school on the Tinnin Road site, but it also risked that the district could have ended up putting the one elementary school they could afford in the wrong place if growth patterns shifted.

The state bond passage now means three new schools and new facilities and three existing schools can be built to accommodate growth instead of just one school.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com