The Lathrop City Council already gave its blessing to use tax dollars to install a traffic light at Harlan Road and Stonebridge Lane and renovate a pair of popular Lathrop Parks.
Now it’s up the independent committee that controls the purse strings to decide whether the $470,000 expenditure is in line with what voters wanted when they approved a one-cent sales tax increase for public safety and community benefit projects in November of 2012.
Next week, Lathrop’s Measure C Oversight Committee will decide on whether the $300,000 purchase and installation of a traffic signal at Harlan Road and Stonebridge Way – which would help control the flow and speed of traffic that accesses George Widmer Elementary School as well as the Stonebridge neighborhood that surrounds it – will fulfill the public safety ideal that was set forth in the language that was overwhelmingly approved by voters to help generate an estimated $2 million-a-year in additional sales tax revenue for the City of Lathrop.
With a handshake agreement, the Lathrop Manteca Fire District, who lobbied on behalf of the measure, receives 40 percent of the money taken in – which has been used to pay the salaries of firefighters that would have been laid off as well purchase equipment that would have been impossible after the housing crisis caused property values to plummet and decimated the department’s budget. The Lathrop Manteca Fire District relies almost exclusively on property taxes to fund its operation.
That particular stretch of Harlan Road, which allows traffic to turn off of side streets onto the road, has been the scene of several bad accidents, and the council has been approached more than once about how to do something about limiting the speed and protecting homeowners and parents who turn off of those access roads.
The additional $170,000 would pay for rubberized play surfaces to replace sand or bark, and ADA-accessible playground equipment that will allow for the most used feature of the park to be accessible to all.
Staff believes that both projects are in compliance with the intent of Measure C.
If both projects are approved, the Measure C fund will have a remaining balance of $49,200. There is currently $1.3 million in the fund, but 25 percent of that must be retained for a reserve in case of emergency or unforeseen expenditure so as to not impact the city’s existing general fund reserves – which were previously used to fund projects like the ones that have been approved. 

To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.