There was a time 85 years ago when every household in Manteca made its way to the 100 block of Sycamore Avenue.

They did so to pay monthly municipal utility bills for sewer, water, and garbage collection. More often than not they combined the trip with stops at the post office, grocery store, or hardware store.

Fifty years ago a large number of people were mailing in checks and not dropping by city hall once a month.

Today — thanks to the pandemic — no one is making their way to city hall to pay utility bills unless it is to place their remittance in a curbside drop box.

Everyone else is either mailing it in or using an electronic transfer.

Once things reopen you will see a once-a-month rush to city hall making payments in person to avoid a utility cutoff. You will still see people who pay promptly doing so in person. There will also be people starting new utility services, paying dog licenses, processing business licenses, arranging dumpster drop offs, and such.

Such activity accounts for almost all of the in-person visits Manteca’s residents and local businesses make to city hall.

Just a year ago the idea that any city worker could do their job remotely from home was blasphemy in most municipalities. While the work-at-home trend even if it is for only part of the time accelerated in the private sector when the pandemic hit, it was new territory for cities.

There are two clear trends.

*In person contact for routine city business is not what it used to be.

*Many companies, while still seeing value in people reporting to office-style jobs, are exploring a more robust mixture of remote and in-office work for when the pandemic ends.

At the same time there are major challenges facing Manteca.

*As a city of 87,000 that will likely wake up in six years and have 100,000 residents, how do you keep the community fabric from becoming unwoven.

*How does a growing “town” that’s on a verge of being a “city” afford the amenities, services, and community lifestyle that people contend they want.

*Is there a way not just to create a more robust gathering place to bring people together in the central district, or if you prefer downtown, as well as going so in in the outlying parts of Manteca such as south of the 120 Bypass.

Manteca’s municipal leaders appear to have an out-of-the-box answer for the three challenges based on the two solid trends.

The idea of not just a satellite “city hall” downtown but one that is used in such a way that it is a catalyst for community gatherings such as a farmers market or to engage people in Manteca through services such as a visitors’ center is a viable and forward thinking approach.

Exactly what form such a satellite city hall or a neighboring municipal service center will take has yet to be seen. The potential and the possibilities, however, are endless.

And just as important it can be done without creating a major drain on municipal resources.

The city decision to snap up the former public health clinic at 124 Sycamore Avenue that had been remodeled after a May 2018 fire along with an adjoining parking lot from San Joaquin County for $390,000 demonstrates that — with creative thinking —  such municipal service centers can be done inexpensive and effectively.

Had the city pursued such a project from scratch even on land they already owned it could easily exceed $1 million for the building and parking lot alone as demonstrated by the Moffat Community Center put in place six years ago that cost much more than that.

The fact they are looking for partners to make the service center work is another nod to fiscal stewardship. One example being advanced is the city’s need for a visitors’ center to capitalize on even more out-of-town guests that Great Wolf will bring to the tune of 500,000 annual guests.

Cities that want to fill hotel rooms and get those that stay there to spend more money with local merchants and such by aggressively promoting attractions whether it is wine tasting, unique shops like German Glas Werks, dining, recreational opportunities and such to bolster the local economy and increase municipal revenue support visitors’ centers.

But instead of providing a large chunk of city room tax receipts as they once did with the Manteca Visitors & Convention Bureau, they can contract out running a visitors’ center for less money.

The need for municipal staffing per se may simply be to shift a portion of their current front-window finance department staff to man such a service center. It would be tearing a page from the playbook that allowed the American Automobile Association to offers its members the ability to conduct the most common Department of Motor Vehicles business at a number of their select insurance offices.

The AAA model is actually a great example.

They built a large insurance office on Trevino Avenue in 1991. That is back when Manteca had 41,500 residents. The building was spacious and designed for growth.

Fast forward to today. Manteca has 87,000 residents. AAA last year opened a new Manteca office in Commerce Drive that is easily a fourth of the footprint of their previous location.

This underscores how space needs have drastically changed.

It means Manteca in all likelihood does not need a new city hall to replace the current one at 1001 West Center Street. Instead remodeling and expanding the existing campus with the goal of making it more efficient for workers and the public is the better option. This may also include factoring in the ability to have part of the workforce do their jobs remotely whether it is through contract or gig workers that the city is employing more and more to avoid increased pension liability as well as to have the flexibility to drop manpower when economic activity that directly effects the need for a number of jobs ebbs.

Whatever money that can be saved by avoiding building a new city hall edifice can go toward other pressing needs and wants when it comes to capital investment for municipal amenities.

And if anyone bemoans the fact a shiny city hall with all sorts of architectural bells and whistles is needed to make a $40 million statement of Manteca’s municipal vitality, the counter argument is taking city services to neighborhoods and being a cost efficient and effective city is a much more impressive statement.

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