Rural South Manteca residents believe the city is inducing urbanization in an area where it is not wanted – their neighborhood – by pursuing a proposal for a McKinley Avenue extension to create a future city street connection between the Highway 120 Bypass and Highway 99 midway between Ripon and Manteca.
They promise to fight to prevent the destruction of their farms and rural lifestyles that they thought were protected from urban encroachment due to the area’s tendency to flood when levees fail.
“We are not just a line on a map,” resident Mary Rollins told the Manteca Planning Commission Tuesday. “We have homes and we have lives to live.”
Residents packed the council chambers Tuesday in numbers even stronger than in the late 1980s when rural residents along Louise Avenue and Lathrop Road were protesting the widening of those two streets that had property within the city listed directly across from their homes.
This time around the road is being proposed outside Manteca’s city limits but within its sphere of influence. That means county-level leaders have decided that the land within the sphere is logical as a possible future annexation to Manteca.
The proposed alignment cuts through a 100 percent rural area, slices through a number of working farms and could also render a 40-acre gift to the Stockton Catholic Diocese from the late Antone Raymus and his wife Marie useless as a proposed site for a retreat church and youth center as the alignment splits the property in half.
The commission delayed action on whether to recommend that the City Council back the proposed alignment. More than a few of the two dozen speakers understood the city staff was simply doing its job in proposing the roadway. What they didn’t understand was who was for the roadway that staff said probably won’t be built in segments any earlier than 20 or 30 years from now.
There is an existing alignment for a McKinley Avenue extension that was adopted in 2003 with no rumblings of opposition. That road is much closer to Woodward Avenue and existing areas of Manteca that are developing.
Community Development Director Frederic Clark noted the expressway is needed to accommodate growth as it moves to the south.
What wasn’t around in 2003 was the proposal to develop the 1,037-acre Austin Road Business Park along with the new interchange that would be created south of Austin Road on Highway 99.
Prior to that coming up on radar, there was no effective way to take large volumes of future traffic from areas south of Manteca to reach Highway 99 that far south of the existing city limits.
They promise to fight to prevent the destruction of their farms and rural lifestyles that they thought were protected from urban encroachment due to the area’s tendency to flood when levees fail.
“We are not just a line on a map,” resident Mary Rollins told the Manteca Planning Commission Tuesday. “We have homes and we have lives to live.”
Residents packed the council chambers Tuesday in numbers even stronger than in the late 1980s when rural residents along Louise Avenue and Lathrop Road were protesting the widening of those two streets that had property within the city listed directly across from their homes.
This time around the road is being proposed outside Manteca’s city limits but within its sphere of influence. That means county-level leaders have decided that the land within the sphere is logical as a possible future annexation to Manteca.
The proposed alignment cuts through a 100 percent rural area, slices through a number of working farms and could also render a 40-acre gift to the Stockton Catholic Diocese from the late Antone Raymus and his wife Marie useless as a proposed site for a retreat church and youth center as the alignment splits the property in half.
The commission delayed action on whether to recommend that the City Council back the proposed alignment. More than a few of the two dozen speakers understood the city staff was simply doing its job in proposing the roadway. What they didn’t understand was who was for the roadway that staff said probably won’t be built in segments any earlier than 20 or 30 years from now.
There is an existing alignment for a McKinley Avenue extension that was adopted in 2003 with no rumblings of opposition. That road is much closer to Woodward Avenue and existing areas of Manteca that are developing.
Community Development Director Frederic Clark noted the expressway is needed to accommodate growth as it moves to the south.
What wasn’t around in 2003 was the proposal to develop the 1,037-acre Austin Road Business Park along with the new interchange that would be created south of Austin Road on Highway 99.
Prior to that coming up on radar, there was no effective way to take large volumes of future traffic from areas south of Manteca to reach Highway 99 that far south of the existing city limits.
