Manteca residents pushed city leaders a few years back to outlaw panhandling wherever they legally could under state and federal law.

But it was clear if Manteca could get away with it, they would have preferred a citywide ban.

Presumably, the preference would be that those cited and found guilty would spend time in jail if they couldn’t pay the fine.

The sentiment, at least from some Manteca residents, seems to have changed.

They appeared at Tuesday’s City Council meeting openly calling for panhandling.

Instead of calling a spade a spade, however, they called it “asking for a grant.”

They wanted city leaders to panhandle the state and federal governments for money so they would not have to pay the increased cost of operating the municipal water and sewer systems.

Forget the fact Manteca’s 94,000 residents are among the people the state and federal government take money from in the form of taxes in order to cover the $6 million annual deficit the water enterprise fund alone is generating.

What is being asked is for money to cover day-to-day living expenses.

Treated water flowing out of a faucet is not free.

Nor is being able to flush your toilet to move the No. 1 and No. 2 beyond your yard and assure it doesn’t end up in the San Joaquin River or in drinking water supply untreated.

That said, imagine if all of the 481 incorporated cities in California relied on grants from Sacramento and federal government to cover increased operational and maintenance cost for sewer and water systems.

Clearly, something would need to be cut at the state and federal levels to do so unless they raised income taxes and such.

Then more  money would flow from all taxpayers to the state and federal governments and then be returned to local jurisdictions.

Given no one would want to not secure state and federal dollars to cover day-to-day sewer and water operations, it is likely the extra money taken would be returned to the cities whose residents it was collected from.

The last time there were elected officials in Sacramento and DC actually trying to rein in ever expanding big government using common sense, they launched an attack on President Richard Nixon’s version of federal revenue sharing in the early 1970s.

Nixon’s plan retuned “excess” federal revenue to local jurisdictions on a per capita basis via block grants.

Cities and counties across the country were told they could spend it as they wished.

That, of course, was not true.

They could spend it as they wished as long as it was used in specified manners such as for infrastructure or capital outlay projects.

In other words, there were strings attached.

It actually was worse than that.

The anti-big government crowd of the day that didn’t pay the concept lip service, dug into how the block grants were handled.

They discovered only 80 cents of every “excess” tax dollar the federal government took from a local jurisdiction was returned to the community.

The other 20 cents were kept by the federal government to cover overhead which was the cost of the bureaucracy collecting, processing, and distributing the money.

If local jurisdictions hadn’t been trained to beg for what before that was called federal pork, they might have banned together to apply political pressure.

And it would need to have  been applied to all members of Congress in a unified manner to reduce what one would call money laundering such as when a cartel is shaking down a community for protection money and then “cleaning” it through legit concerns.

Of course, it would have been doomed from the start given almost everyone, even if they deny it, is looking for the proverbial free lunch.

Someone has to pay for the lunch.

It is why the most maddening concept of pseudo populism is the notion we can get more from government without paying more for it without anything that we like that government does getting cut.

A large part of the discontent filling the ears of Manteca City Council members Tuesday was rooted in the belief you can keep doing more with less in perpetuity given it’s been 14 years since the last rate increases.

Forget for a moment state laws such as Proposition 218 put in place by voters to prevent elected leaders from playing fast and loose with dollars collected for a specific purpose and then using them for something else.

If the Manteca City Council could legally do that, what do you want cut to avoid sewer and water rate hikes?

Police and firefighter staffing?

Street maintenance?

Electricity for street lights?

Going 14 years without a rate increase by deferring maintenance work and borrowing money that you have to one day pay back was either a raw act of unadulterated pandering to the Greek Chorus threatening political doom t the ballot box if they were raised or else gross incompetence.

Continuing not to take action, even as painful as it will be for many, will only undermine reliable water and sewer service and do so at what would be a significantly higher cost than the bitter pill now being swallowed.

The unfortunate thing Tuesday was no one in the room had the courage to state the obvious.

Given what is taking place in Washington, D.C., and the fallout of the California Legislature extending Medi-Cal coverage to those in this country illegally, who in their right mind believes  they can secure a government grant to pay for increased operating costs of a local government function?

Apparently those that do not see asking for a grant for daily needs as not being panhandling’s kissing cousin.

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