Did the headline catch your attention?

There is something rather jarring about the population count reaching six figures.

All it will take is another 11,000 people and Manteca will reach that milestone.

And it is likely to happen before eight years from Saturday when the last day of 2030 is marked with New Year’s Eve parties.

It’s a sobering thought on many levels.

First, let’s get some math out of the way.

Today we’re at 89,000 residents give or take a few folks.

That means in the next eight years and one day Manteca will need to add an average of 1,375 residents on an annual basis to hit that milestone.

All Manteca has to do is grow at a numerical and percentage pace lower than the past five years to reach 100,000 people or so by Dec. 31, 2030,

The threshold clearly is symbolic. That’s because things probably won’t change all that much which may be good or may be bad depending upon your perspective.

But one thing is certain. The odds are high we will be sleepwalking our way to 100,000 unless five people who made a conscious decision to convince us they should serve as city leaders step up their game.

That is not to say what has happened to date is bad.

Despite growing the community’s social fabric is fairly strong.

Crime based on the numbers — actual and per capita — is down compared to 25 years ago when Manteca was busting meth labs every other week, gang gunfire pierced the air one summer every other night, and the sheer number of vehicle theft and house burglaries were literally three times higher than they are today.

We did not have a Target 25 years and 40,000 people ago. There was no Costco, no Kohl’s and no Food-4-Less. And as much as we all seem to bemoan chain restaurants, there was no Sizzler’s, IHOP, Applebee’s, Red Robin, Chili’s,  and such but there was a Denny’s.

As far as jobs, there were mostly out of town.

There was no Amazon, 5.11 Tactical, Medline, Ford Motor parts, Millard Refrigeration, Dreyer’s Ice Cream, Lowe’s Home Improvement distribution, and on and on.

Bass Pro Shop, Great Wolf and Big League Dreams not only weren’t on anybody’s radar but almost nobody in Manteca  even knew such entities existed.

People would have looked at you a half century ago as being crazy if you said Manteca would one day have a Del Webb community.

There was nothing south of the 120 Bypass in terms of urbanization except sleepy country roads. Not a single tract home had breached the freeway and Woodward Park was still an almond orchard.

There clearly are things that need to be done that are rather mundane. They are like maintenance homes require over the years such as roof repairs or a new roof, painting, plumbing as well as electrical fixes, and such.

But in the case of a city like Manteca it is street repairs, blight cleanup, aging water and sewer pipes and such that are on the routine maintenance list.

Those need to be addressed and mechanisms put in place to make sure money is set aside as the years go by to make sure when the proverbial roof needs replacing in 40 years that the city at least has a healthy chunk in a bank account to offset part of the cost so it doesn’t undermine the ability to provide day-to-day services.

As for Manteca transferring into the realm of being a small city, it will require the current council to do something that has been lacking for a generation or maybe longer.

They need to build on plans laid by others before them.

Do not misunderstand. Manteca gets the basics right, at least most of the time.

That is why we have water and sewer systems that are functional and positioned to take care of basic needs as long as we make sure there is adequate funding flowing in and resist the urge to cannibalize other city functions so we can make the self-defeating claim that the city hasn’t raised sewer or water rates in 12 years.

What is needed isn’t a plan.

Manteca is good at making plans, not so good at implementing them.

Actually, Manteca as of late hasn’t even been good at even making plans.

The current update of the general plan well into its fifth year is a tragic comedy.

Yes, the pandemic hit. But a general plan is simply a broad-based blueprint that builds on what is already in place and adopts premises that are dictated more by actual growth patterns with a dab or two of outlined endeavors to mix things up a bit such as create more opportunities for jobs with identifying areas that the city could work toward prepping for development as large business parks.

Executing the plan for the McKinley Avenue/120 Bypass interchange this year with the actual start of construction is an example of such long-range planning that requires follow through on decisions put in place literally decades ago.

The council needs to make sure the city staff builds upon the general plan’s framework instead of filing it away for a decade or so until the nest state required update is due.

And while councils are great at ideas, most of the time they lack one essential ingredient to make those ideas become a reality.

It is political will.

More precisely, it is the political will to generate new revenue needed to make those things happen.

Saying the euphemism “generate new revenue” is designed not to trigger automatic anger in some quarters as opposed to the straight forward language of “imposing new taxes.” Or in the case of a city’s limited authority, it is proposing new taxes for specific things that the voters can either embrace or reject.

Manteca, like any other city that is doing its job, does seek out state and federal grants when it can.

The city also puts fees in place to get growth to ginny-up  funds needed to do work.

But the reality is everyone is going after the same pot of state and federal money. Also, the law prohibits cities in most cases from making growth pay for more than the services and infrastructure it creates the need to have in place.

The world is not going to end if the  current council does no more than their predecessors have done in the past.

And with all due respect to Modesto, Manteca likely won’t do any worse than the city of 218,000 to our south as we surpass 100,000  residents and beyond.

But if Gary Singh, Charlie Halford, Jose Nuno, Dave Breitenbucher, and Mike Morowit want Manteca to move on a different projectory they need to not only plot that course now but need to make sure there are the tools in place to make it happen.

And you can’t acquire the tools needed to do the work unless you have the money to pay for them.

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com