Ben Cantu is not your typical mayor.

That is why there is hope that the “vision” cobbled together by a consultant more attuned to standard planning scenarios as opposed to local realities and strengths to serve as a blueprint for Manteca growth as it pushes northward toward French Camp Road will be changed to actually solve problems instead of adding to them.

Let’s be brutally honest for at least a minute. The joint planning commission-City Council hearing in May on the state mandated general plan update particularly as it relates to land use for future development to the north set in motion was a train wreck.

It’s because for the most part individual City Council members let Cantu do the talking and did not vote on specific marching orders for how the staff and the consultant should go about tweaking land use. As shocking as it may sound to those naive enough to think otherwise staff and consultants aren’t mind readers.

The characterization in this column of Cantu’s proposal to gut housing from the land use north of Roth Road if it was extended eastward toward Highway 99 as being bold still stands. Name one elected Manteca leader in the last 50 years who has questioned a general plan process where the input is skewed to a large degree to housing developers simply because there aren’t any players for development of employment centers at the table. This doesn’t make the home builders evil, quite the contrary. What it does is tip the scales in one direction due to the sheer numbers as well as property owners who understandably view zoning their land for housing as the surest way to get a reasonable price as well as a potential sale in a relatively reasonable amount of time. If anyone doesn’t think money powers major planning decisions from all perspectives and not just that of home builders they need to stop lying to themselves.

That said it is time to put the land use planning north of Lathrop Road on pause and frame it within the economic realities going forward as it pertains to housing, retail, and jobs as well as the city’s ability to cover costs.

When you look at the perspectives of land owners who more often than not also reside in the impacted area, existing and future residents, Delicato Family Wines, Perry & Sons, home builders, and the city’s desire to lure more employment opportunities and do so in a cost effective manner there is common ground that is significantly better than what has been proposed.

First everyone should agree developing business and industrial parks with heavy truck movements surrounded housing is borderline daffy.

Manteca should also not be hell-bent, as the mayor would like to see, to add a third interchange on the two-mile stretch of Highway 99 from French Camp Road to Lathrop Road. Given it would be on the city’s dime, a $30 million plus project makes no sense given a mile to the south the recently completed Lathrop Road interchange has the design capacity for much more truck and traffic movements. The almost new French Camp Road interchange for a fraction of what a Roth interchange would cost can be modified to handle more trucks and cars.

This is where Cantu’s bold vision comes into play. The mayor has the right answer but it’s not exactly in the right place.

Given the Lathrop Road interchange configuration, the fact between the winery and the melon brokerage there are over 400 truck trips a day on Frontage Road that is already a designated STAA route for larger interstate trucks with nary a complaint, light industrial should be zoned along the Frontage Road. A linear park should be added to accommodate a northward extension of the Tidewater Bikeway north toward French Camp adjacent to a connector street to serve as a buffer between light industrial along Frontage Road and future homes to the west. The Tidewater alignment would have to jog slightly to the east. It would also fulfill the original promises that the Tidewater would be developed so workers could bicycle to employment, connect residents to amenities using pedal power with minimal travel on surface streets and to continue the bikeway northward toward French Camp Road.

It’s obvious the Airport Way corridor will likely see more industrial development due to its proximity to the Union Pacific intermodal yard. But in terms of freeway access, minimum mixing of trucks and car traffic, as well as more cost effective business park development Frontage Road seems like the much better option.

As for the Lovelace Transfer Station, put a carrot out there for the marketplace problem solvers — local developers that brought the city a 52-acre park for $1, prevented the shuttered Spreckels Sugar plant from becoming a high profile cancerous sore on Manteca at its front door, cobbled together deals as well as packaging the land that brought Del Webb and Orchard Valley to Manteca.

Manteca may develop its own “transfer station” with a sorting facility at the municipal wastewater treatment plant campus as part of its long-recycling solution.

For the remaining part of the 230,000 tons the Lovelace location handled in 2017, allow the developers to see if they can find another site — perhaps further up Airport Way between French Camp Road and Stockton Metro Airport — to replace the facility. It would put it closer to its primary user — Stockton — and help reduce their costs. In exchange for securing a site equal in size the developers would be given the Lovelace Transfer Station site. At the same time would be placed on all future development in the area north of Lathrop Road when it is annexed to the city to pay for the replacement facilities. The fee on future housing units — assuming 2,000 are allowed — could be $2,500 a pop to raise $5 million. That is in addition to fees on business parks and other developments at the time permits are issued.

And if local developers are able to fashion a Spreckels Park development style agreement with all property owners that want to eventually sell for growth, they can avoid pitting property owner against property owner.

In the case of the 360-acre sugar beet processing plant conversion there were multiple “owners” that had a set percentage of ownership. As parcels were sold off, net proceeds after development costs were divided based on those percentages. Taking an aggregate value of the land involved — assuming developers can get everyone on the same page — and assigning a percentage of the overall value of the final development based on the value of the property each owner brings to the table would mean everyone would get paid as parcels sold. It would allow earnings to be spread over multiple tax years. They could also have the option of selling their future cuts to others.

While such an approach may not be needed, it is a fallback to avoid making it impossible for the development of the area north in a holistic fashion that benefits everyone including existing and future residents.

It would also allow developers to cobble together parcels to create appealing property that will attract business park developers as well as home builders.

It may be the best way to assure the best possible outcome.

Mayor Cantu was right that a bold move is needed in terms of land use and development patterns as Manteca moves north.