Sometime this year, the Manteca City Council will need to raise water and sewer rates.

They have gone unchanged since 2009 even though a previous council that year put in place a four-step increase over the next four years.

That same council, when 2010 rolled around, opted to put the first scheduled rate increase on Jan. 1, 2010 “in abeyance” due to wage cuts of existing pay and previously committed raises that city employees agreed to take — including those paid out of separate enterprise fund accounts such as water and sewer — to help the city cope with budget shortfalls triggered by the Great Recession.

At the time, city leaders said it was a gesture to help residents struggling with the economic downtown and mortgage foreclosure crisis

The council at the time – as well as a subsequent one — also suspended the rate increases scheduled for 2011, 2012, and 2013.

In doing so, they essentially eliminated funding for needed replacement of aging pipeline that eventually led to emergency repairs of the Union Road line when it failed in 2018 as well as a Louise Avenue line that shortly thereafter was determined to be almost at the point it would fail as well.

Then in 2014 a series of unrelated events took place.

The city’s longtime finance director retired.

Other longtime key employees retired.

The revolving door then started spinning on the senior management level.

An understaffed finance department staff — and some contend inadequate experience at the top  — came into play.

The city then went through five city managers in less than four years.

In the mess, no one paid attention to the need to increase sewer and water rates.

The current council, trying to make sure the city’s infrastructure is properly addressed, commissioned two studies on needs and operating costs for both municipal water and sewer operations.

The bottom financial line of the water master plan and wastewater master plan updates the City Council accepted last month: Manteca needs to spend in excess of $633 million on water and wastewater system improvements through 2045.

Of that, roughly 22 percent or $142 million will need to be covered by existing households and commercial concerns.

The two masterplans also will be the basis for increases in the cost of connection fees paid when new housing or commercial growth is connected to the system

The existing customers through existing rates and future hikes will replace infrastructure  as it wears and nears failure as well as for their share of the cost of updated treatment processes mandated by the state.

 Aging pipeline — include waster system lines that date back to the 1910s — represent the biggest cost items that existing customers will pay to have replaced over the course of the next 22 years.

Both existing customers and growth will pay their proportionate share of a new municipal utilities building at the wastewater treatment plant.

Growth will pay for the projected expanded capacity needs for both water and wastewater.

That $491 million tab does not include new lines to serve growth. Those improvements are put in by developers and turned over to the city. The cost is collapsed into the price of a new home.

The $491 million to accommodate capacity needs will result in higher water and sewer connection fees for new homes and new commercial endeavors.

 The upgrades are designed to allow Manteca to stay ahead of a 2.8 percent annual growth rate.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com