A fire alarm turned in at 5 o’clock Saturday morning aroused a lot of citizens who rushed around in a fog so thick you could cut it with a knife, only to find out that a false alarm had been turned in and that there was no fire. Nightwatch Oliver thought he saw a fire in the fog - it turned out to be a lantern in a tent full of sleeping Boy Scouts.

Radio station KWG, Stockton, will feature a Manteca program next Saturday night at 8:30 with C. E. Fox in charge of arrangements. This will be the second program to be broadcast by Manteca talent over the same station, and A. L. Escobar will again be the announcer.

The drive for Finnish relief under the leadership of C. E. Fox has been very successful. The amount of $49.10 had been received by last Tuesday morning.

Stricken early Thursday morning in his home on West Yosemite Avenue, Jesse Jerome Overshiner, former mayor and Manteca pioneer, died in the Tracy Memorial Hospital early Sunday afternoon. Mr. Overshiner was born January 13, 1860 in Indiana, and came to Manteca in 1883, long before there was a town here.

A survey being completed by the State of California has officially set Manteca’s population as 8,170. This figure will be used as the basis for apportioning state gas tax money to the city, and is expected to add more than$8,000 to city coffers.

Burial services are being conducted this week for seven Tracy teenagers and one 13 year-old girl from Santa Clara killed when the minibus in which they were riding last Friday night was demolished by a Western Pacific freight train at Highway 120, just east of McKinley Road. The eight were among 10 youngsters crammed into the van, coming to Manteca to take a Lathrop boy home following a Tracy High basketball game.

Raymus Village residents may want to wait a week before investing in bottled water. Retests of the subdivision’s two wells made February 5 indicate the water is within state safety limits for DBCP, with readings of .78 and .005 parts per billion.

What was to have been a debate of issues relating to pre-zoning of a proposed annexation by the Manteca City Council turned into a pre-election argument and debate challenge between councilmen Al Mezzetti and Bill Perry. The clash took place when Mezzetti, responding to resident R. J. Moerkes’ call for more industry and commercial development within the city, called the records of Mayor Jack Snyder and councilmen Bill Perry and Dave Balsinger into question concerned the failed Yellow Freight truck terminal project.

The City of Manteca’s revenue is up and its expenses are down, Director of Finance Lettie Espinoza reports. “This is good,” Espinoza said of the report on Manteca’s $53.1 million municipal budget being submitted to the City Council during Tuesday’s 7 p.m. meeting for review. Expenditures in general fund accounts are running 3.83 percent under projections. Enterprise account spending for services such as water, sewer, garbage collection and the golf course is even less than predicted, allowing expenditures to come under target by 4.6 percent as of December 31. “Our department heads always do a great job every year of keeping expenditures under target,” Espinoza said. “They work hard in keeping expenditures down.”