Ever wonder why Manteca doesn’t have public safety days, fire responder events such as Ripon is staging on Saturday or even an open house at its police department?

The reason is simple. The police department facility is a joke. It is an embarrassment.

It is woefully inadequate. It is a security nightmare. The city space donated to the animal shelter and its staff is arguably more humane and definitely more adequate in terms of workspace..

Now city leaders — whoever you define them as being — will tell you it’s complicated.

They will tell you they need a consultant to get things rolling.

They will tell you the city has many pressing needs.

Then they will lie to you.

Yes, lie.

There is no other way to describe it when they utter “we don’t have the money for a new police department.”

Yes, the city has a lot of money that is restricted and can’t legally be used for purposes other than what it is collected for.

And yes, the city can’t afford to pay cash for a new police station.

This is where the lie begins.

The city is sitting on $15 million it has collected from new growth in the form of government facilities fees. It is actually $18 million if you count the $3 million that is being paid back from fire facilities fees assessed when building permits to replace money borrowed from the account to complete the Woodward Avenue and Atherton Drive fire station.

There is also close to $4 million a year rolling in from growth that flows into the government facilities fee fund every year.

Given that homes are popping up faster than weeds after a wet winter and probably will do so until well into mid-century there is little chance of that funding source drying up any time soon.

The responsible thing to do is to take most of the money the city has on hand and start executing a plan now so that ground can break on a new police facility within two years.

The city can easily bond for the balance.

Rest assured borrowing money will cost less than construction inflation.

If that is an irresponsible course of action then every sitting council member is fiscally irresponsible when it comes to their respective families’ future.

Not one of them paid 100 percent for the home they live in.

If they had waited until they had 100 percent of the cash needed to pay for it or relied on a consultant to tell them what they need, they’d either be bleeding money or living on the streets.

Manteca is being beyond fiscally conservative.

They are fiscally irresponsible by sitting on large sums of money when there is a pressing need that has a solution that gets more expensive each year due to construction inflation that significantly outpaces the run-of-the-mill inflation we are experiencing with gas and food prices.

The city has a competent staff.

They can get Manteca the police department it needs.

All it takes is three of the five elected council members to stop giving lip service to saying public safety is a top priority.

It will require them to make a clear decision. Either public safety is No. 1 or it isn’t.

They have allowed the valid observation that Manteca has a number of overwhelming needs as well as wants to address to paralyze them.

If anyone on the council — or senior city management — disagrees then let them not act like they are ashamed of the facility they provide the men and women that put their lives on the line every day for Manteca’s nearly 90,000 residents.

Let’s have an open house and celebrate what this city thinks of the security and safety of police and their support staff as well as the crammed doll-house scale work space.

It can start with bringing in groups of four through the front doors. Not because of social distancing, but because the lobby isn’t much bigger than a phone booth. It’s an indisputable fact that based on the COVID-19 protocols allowing two people in the lobby at the time would be pushing the limit.

It doesn’t take an expert to soon realize the lobby is about as solid in terms of security as Swiss cheese.

But beyond that you may be stunned about the lack of sufficient bullet resistant walls and such.

Five city managers ago the city’s top bureaucrat conceded the absolute minimum was a $300,000 Band-Aid to make the world’s smallest lobby for a police station serving a community of almost 90,000 more secure with steel plates and such.

Five years later the money has still not been spent.

The city needs more money to provide basic services which is a legitimate argument yet they can’t spend what money they already have on pressing needs.

The city needs to stop channeling a paranoid squirrel and start spending some of the nuts they’re been stashing away for the last 15 or so winters.

The next step on the tour can be spacious workplaces for police and support staff. The public is likely to be really impressed with converted storage rooms, better known as closets, that are used as offices by cramming in a desk, file cabinet and two chairs.

A trip through the offices wouldn’t be complete without using the main “hallway”. It’s actually a breeze way secured on both ends by wrought iron fencing that placed elsewhere in the city barely keeps out the unarmed homeless.

Then — to demonstrate what really matters — the tour can include the new evidence building that is easily 10 times more secure and functional than the actual police station.

Perhaps those with a passion to be mayor starting in 2023 — of which all three are on the City Council — can be on hand to explain to citizens what they saw on the tour was adequate for a city that will be 100,000 in five years or so that is not located in a Third World country.

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