Manteca Councilman Charlie Halford made an observation several months ago that bears repeating.

He made the astute observation given all the needs and wants when it comes to municipal facilities, the last thing Manteca residents are going want to see built is a new city hall.

And there is an extremely practical financial reasoning behind it.

Costs have ballooned significantly for the new police department that is breaking ground this year in the 600 block of South Main.

Measure Q with its 20-year run and need to step up day-to-day services citywide, likely will only be able to help retire a bond for the police department and sixth fire station as well as one or two big ticket recreation/park items.

Bonding, of course, will be wedded with growth fees already collected and to be collected.

There is no argument that the design of the current city hall was not brilliant by a long shot.

And there are clearly space needs.

That said, spending any money toward an entirely new city hall at the current location or elsewhere needs to be at the absolute bottom of the priority list.

It doesn’t mean city hall space needs shouldn’t be addressed after police operations move off the Civic Center campus.

But the idea of a new city hall per se needs to be taken off the table.

And the cornerstone of such an argument is in the $120,000 city hall needs study conducted in 2004, assuming anyone knows where it was filed.

The bottom line of that assessment was Manteca needed to build a four-story city hall on the southwest corner of the Civic Center campus at an estimated cost of $34 million.

That didn’t include parking needs that the general consensus at the time could be addressed by buying the vacant parcel under the PG&E transmission lines across the street.

You’ll never guess how long the experts Manteca hired said that $34 million investment would meet city hall space needs.

It was projected to do so through 2025, which was last year.

Clearly, a nice shiny city hall had it been built in 2002 with additional space to handle growth, wasn’t that of a pressing need.

Then in 2019 the city spent another $100,000 on a consultant for an assessment of city hall needs and a very preliminary look at other possible sites for a new city hall.

Want a rundown of those three sites that then City Manager Miranda Lutzow suggested could be looked at?

uPlacing it in Union Road Park next to the city parks corporation yard next to the golf course and Morezone baseball field.

uRepurposing Library Park and Wilson Park plus Manteca Avenue.

uUsing the city-owned parking lot that is behind the south side of the 200 block of West Yosemite Avenue and the west end of South Maple that dead ends before the Tidewater Bikeway. It would require a parking structure to make it work.

The city will have additional square feet they can use at city hall once the police department moves out.

The City Council needs to preempt any effort that would look at replacing the Civic Center campus building and limited to remodeling the current police station space and adding new space in the quad.

Halford knows all too well what happens when you go whole hog when you know very well you don’t have adequate funding to do anything.

He was police chief in 2002 when the then City Council declared the police station was woefully inadequate not just in terms of space needs but also security and officer safety.

Before Halford retired in 2008, the city spent $5.2 million on property at two different sites on efforts that went nowhere after deciding they couldn’t afford to proceed.

The need to be pragmatic extends beyond ending any thoughts of a new city hall being built from scratch within the next 20-year horizon.

Perhaps it needs to be applied to the library as well.

The city commissioned conceptual drawings in 2002 to replace the current library with a two-story, 30,000-square-foot structure with temporary buildings to house library operations on the tennis courts across the street during construction.

That would have almost doubled the library’s space.

The price tag back then was $33 million.

Fast forward to 2024.

The city put together a list of needed municipal facilities to adopt a nexus to justify what legally can be collected from growth fees.

The overall tab was $266 million.

The cost of a new library on Center Street had swelled to $65.7 million.

The same list placed the cost of a new police station at $56 million.

The expectation now when everything is done, the new police station will cost in excess of $90 million.

Clearly Manteca’s proverbial eyes are bigger than what they can financially stomach even with Measure Q.

It’s time the council interjects realism into the process when it comes to facility needs.

It will require conceding that there will have to be some things on that $266 million list that doesn’t include the cost of long-term financing that the community would be better served by approaching them with the idea it is better to get something instead of nothing.

That may mean adding on to the library by expanding into Sycamore Avenue (where the food truck parks) and the courtyard to create space from scratch more attuned to 21st century library needs and then remodel the existing space.

There is one thing for sure.

A new city hall, per se, should be the absolute last item on the city’s priority list for new facilities.

Such a decision doesn’t preclude making additions or repurposing existing space.

And it would assure that a big city hall project early in the game doesn’t significantly reduce the odds of other needs being met.

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