Folks staying overnight in Manteca hotels are contributed enough in room taxes to cover 1.6 percent of the $25.8 million the city needs to provide general fund services such as police and fire.

But if projections are correct and a Great Wolf Resort is built in Manteca, the percentage of Manteca’s general fund expenditures covered by out-of-town visitors via room taxes would soar to 14.7 percent.

Preliminary analysis of data gleaned from other Great Wolf Resorts when Manteca started the negotiation process with McWhinney Development to build between a 400 and 600 room resort with a 75,000-quare-foot indoor water park plus a conference center projected room tax revenues would range from $4 million to $6 million a year.

Assuming the lower end, that would add $4 million to the current $415,000 in room taxes Manteca collects each year. That would jump the overall city revenue to $30 million assuming nothing else changes.

Current visitors pay 9 percent on top of their room rental in transit occupancy taxes.

But if Great Wolf builds, guests staying there would be subject to a special 15 percent entertainment zone room tax. That is how Manteca staff pegged the room tax potential at Great Wolf of being between $4 million and $6 million a year. That is based on Great Wolf’s performance at other locations including Grand Mound in the State of Washington.

City leaders are negotiating with McWhinney Development to locate a 400 to 600 room Great Wolf Resort on 30 acres owned by the city directly west of Costco along the 120 Bypass. The project could ultimately provide 500 permanent jobs, draw 400,000 visitors annually, create 1,000 construction jobs, and cement Manteca as a legitimate tourist attraction.

To put the $4 million of additional room tax in perspective, Manteca collected $7,389,414 in sales tax from all taxable retail sales in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2011.