Passage of the Ripon Consolidated Fire District parcel tax came two months before the automatic aid arrangement between the district and City of Manteca is set to expire.
Automatic aid — unlike mutual aid — is where the closest available engine responds to an emergency regardless of the name on the side of the door.
Because it is automatic, it shaves minutes off a mutual aid style call where a request is made for help and a decision has to be made by the agency being asked whether to respond.
Software automatically on an automatic aid call dispatches the closest available engine.
During the lead up to the Measure Q three-quarter cent sales tax election in November 2024 where one of the stated goals was making Manteca’s fire service response more robust, data showed the automatic aid was virtually a one-way street going from Manteca to Ripon.
There was strong public sentiment voiced for Manteca not to continue the arrangement if Ripon voters didn’t approve a parcel tax hike to fund a second engine company.
Passage of Measure Q has allowed Manteca to hire nine more firefighters to staff a sixth engine company, secure new fire engines, and has put the city in a financial position to break ground this year on a fire station in southwest Manteca.
There were 965 calls in Ripon in 2025 when an engine from another jurisdiction such as Manteca, Escalon, or Salida was dispatched to Ripon as Ripon’s only available engine company was already committed to another call.
Ripon, when available, would respond as the closest engine in terms of travel time especially when accidents occurred on northbound Highway 99 to the 120 Bypass interchange.
The automatic aid agreement expired in October 2025 but was extended for a year with changes due to construction work on the new Austin Road interchange that further impaired Manteca Fire responses into the southeast portion of the city.
City Manager Toni Lungren said Manteca will be evaluating the automatic aid agreement in place instead of just automatically extending it.
Lundgren noted the goal is to get emergency medical help and firefighting crews as soon as possible to Manteca residents. The opposite holds true for Ripon Fire from their perspective.
Ripon expects to have a second engine company staffed by February now that the parcel tax had passed.
That, as retired Manteca fire captain and now councilman Dave Breitenbucher noted, will mean Ripon will be able to cover the majority of its basic calls. That would bring the automatic aid closer to being a true two-way street.
Critics of automatic aid in 2024 noted when Manteca engine companies were responding to calls outside of their assigned station coverage areas to handle a call in southwest Manteca — combined with one of the high number of automatic Ripon calls — it created situations for longer than normal response times in the city.
Rank-and-file firefighters are quick to swat down a suggestion some made at the time that even mutual aid be dropped as that would essentially make Manteca an island when it comes to fires and other emergency calls.
Not only does mutual aid put in place a formal agreement to help neighboring fire protection services when they may have all available engine companies committed, but it assures the strong likelihood a typical structural fire would have the optimum firefighting personnel of 14 to 15 on scene.
Lathrop Manteca Fire, City
of Manteca automatic aid
The Lathrop Manteca Fire District and the City of Manteca have had an automatic aid agreement in place for several decades.
At one point in the 1990s, the Lathrop district’s board — that was operating under its old moniker of the Manteca Lathrop Rural Fire District — expressed unhappiness with the arrangement after several years of calls going 60-40 in the City of Manteca’s favor.
That changed somewhat when the Union Road fire station was built.
Eventually, growth in southeast Manteca created more instances where the Lathrop Manteca fire engine responded from Union Road south of Nile Avenue.
The city noted there were years when their engines responded more often into the fire district’s territory.
That said, the responses have never been as one-sided as Ripon-Manteca in recent years.
That was even true in 2011 when Lathrop Manteca reduced staffing at their two non-City of Lathrop stations in rural Manteca going from three-man to two-man engines and occasionally having to brown out one of those the stations.
Just like Ripon-Manteca, the Lathrop-Manteca automatic aid dispatches the closest apparatus based on where it is at in relation to a 9-1-1 call.
In addition, the Lathrop-Manteca automatic aid includes dispatching additional engines to structure fires.
The second Lathrop Manteca fire station that sends engines into Manteca is located on Lathrop Road near Austin Road to the east of Manteca.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
