Delicato Vineyards is asking voters if they trust Manteca Mayor Gary Singh as well as the city’s firefighters and police or the corporation with annual sales approaching half a billion dollars.

It is part of extensive poll being conducted by Research-Polls in a bid to help the owners of the world’s fifth largest winery craft a targeted campaign aimed at torpedoing the updated general plan they had issues with because it doesn’t dictate how they want property that they don’t own to be developed.

The winery — that Rocket Research reports having $458 million in revenue in 2022 — is behind the circulation of petitions seeking to gather enough signatures to force a referendum on the state-mandated planning document that was 7½ years in the making.

Those petitions have been cleared by City Attorney Dave Nefouse as of today to start a 30-day circulation period that closes at the end of the month.

If Delicato secures 4,733 signatures of valid City of Manteca voters — or 10 percent of the 47,331 that the San Joaquin County Registrar of Voters had on file as of Feb. 10, 2023 — the referendum will go to a citywide vote.

The updated general plan that Delicato wants  a referendum on was embraced by diverse organizations representing everything from labor and social justice movements to landowners, other farmers, and developers— not to mention  numerus citizens that reside in Manteca.

City officials have repeatedly indicated they never have been specifically  told directly by Delicato Vineyards “what they wanted” throughout numerus public meetings and sit-down discussions over the past six years.

So far, the record shows:

*The winery has an agricultural buffer in the general plan update that consists primarily of land the winery owns.

*No opposition was voiced by the winery’s closest neighbors in Manteca, Del Webb at Woodbridge that is roughly a half mile from the winery property.

*The prevailing winds and underground water flows means that any water quality or smell issues are away from the path of growth.

What may have made the family-owned concern hypersensitive  to what longtime farmers to the west and south of the agriculture buffer do with their land is the $100 million recent expansion of their Manteca facility.

The type of survey being conducted currently by text message and direct phone calls is typically used to plan a line of attack by playing to perceived issues voters may have.

It is molded to be general as opposed to specifically coming out and asking if you support a specific plan of action.

Questions ask specifically about how favorably  respondents view — and in specific cases trust  — Mayor Singh as well as individual council members Dave Breitenbucher, Charlie Halford, Mike Morowit, and Jose Nuno. It also asks the same question about the Manteca City Council as a whole, the Stockton City Council, Delicato Vineyards, firefighters,  police, San Joaquin County winemakers, local small businesses, local teachers, and labor chains.

An example is whether police officers are very trustworthy, somewhat trustworthy, somewhat suspicious, very suspicious in addition to no opinion. The same goes also for Singh and firefighters.

The survey is designed to build the attack on the city based on voter ethnicity as well as how long one has lived in Manteca.

The residency question goes from five years or less with five other options including more than 40 years in addition to being able to check the option “born and raised” here.

They want to know whether you own or rent, your political leanings in terms of being conservative or liberal, your level of education, how much money earned before taxes in 2022, and whether you or a family member is a teacher or a labor union member,

It also asks questions such as:

*Do you think Manteca is headed in the right direction or is on the wrong track?
*Is efficiency an extremely serious problem for the city?

*Are housing costs a serious problem?

*Is traffic congestion a very serious problem?

*Is climate change a very serious problem for you?

*Is paying taxes an extremely serious problem for you?

*Is the loss of community character a very serious problem?

*Is overcrowding in schools a serious problem?

*Is the loss of farmland and ranchland an extremely serious problem?

*Is too much growth and development an extremely serious problem?

*Is crime. drugs, and gangs a serious problem?

*In general, is the rate of growth in Manteca much too fast all the way down to much too slow with an “about right” as an option.

*Is the city managing growth and development well?

*Do you support term limits of two four-year terms for council members and the mayor?
The survey asks question about the potential ballot measure Delicato wants voters to decide.

Various questions repeatedly state the update “envisions an additional 116,000 residents and 64,000 housing units over the next 20 years.”.

That isn’t exactly correct.

The land use allows such numbers but much of it is in reserve for beyond the 20-year coverage of the general plan

It is land included in the sphere of influence that likely candidates for possible annexation at a future date.

Keep in mind, the city still has a 3.9 percent growth cap on annual sewer allocations.

If everything is maxed out, that growth cap at best would add less than half that amount, which is still significant growth.

It should be noted the state Department of Finance’s latest population projections through 2060 — based on 2020 trends — pegs the entire county’s population growth to be 196,119 over 40 years as opposed to 20 years.

Manteca’s proportional share of that growth based on the last several years would be roughly 30,000 residents by 2040 or a population of 120,000 people — and not 206,000 in two decades as the 116,000 number implied in the survey compared to today’s population of 90,000.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com