Susan Mallory — Manteca’s finance director before accounting and bookkeeping procedures starting going south at the city — has returned from retirement to help unravel the mess.

The city has been struggling to determine exactly where money is supposed to go and correct fund balances since October 2020 when then City Manager Miranda Lutzow announced “roughly $67 million” in cash deficit had been identified.

Some of the issues go as far back as at least 2015 — the last time there was a hard closure of the municipal books.

Since then the city has determined expenses and revenue had not been posted or were improperly attributed to the wrong accounts. Many projects due to how they had been budgeted were either duplicated in spending plans in subsequent years, were never fully funded, or had been completed but not closed out.

Among the most glaring issues was inter-fund borrowing that for the most part took place without the City Council’s knowledge and apparently not the city manager’s office as well.

The biggest issue — and the one that will hit ratepayers the hardest — is nearly $20 million the water fund owes in loans plus interest to other city accounts that must legally be paid back.

The money went for replacement of aging lines as well as new system improvements. The largest chunk of that money, according to the city earlier this year, was taken from the streets fund and road projects.

Manteca has had neither a water rate or sewer rate since 2008. The council did adopt rate hikes at the time that accounted for funding capital projects to be implemented over a three year period but then suspended them each year they were to go into effect.

The justification at the time was to cushion the impact of the Great Recession on Manteca households and businesses given the accounts had adequate funding for routine maintenance and operations. City leadership neglected the fact the rate increase was designed to set aside money to replace aging lines and expand the system.

Interim public works

director to be named

The City of Manteca is preparing to name an interim public works director to fill in for Panos Kokkas who has resigned.

Kokkas, who was hired in August 2020, has accepted a job to serve as Nevada County’s public works director.

The job is closer to his home and fits with the fact much of his career he has worked in county public works departments.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com