Is the majority of the Manteca City Council getting cold feet when it comes to following through on what they expressed was a priority earlier this year of finding a long-term workable solution to reduce homeless issues?

The same council that is playing beat the clock with what they believe is securing the best possible site to institute a homeless navigation center designed to get homeless off the streets, to be able to enforce qualify of life laws such as illegal camping without having homeless advocate lawyers from cleaning out the city coffers, and to work to prevent people from becoming homeless is balking at spending $172,035 on someone to shepherd the effort full-time.

Yes $172,035 is a lot of money but it pales in comparison to the $2 million to $3 million that is likely to be needed to buy the Qualex site and make it workable as a homeless navigation center. Then there is the issue of running the place. It will require staffing and overhead expenses. If the city gets away with running the place for $500,000 a year it would constitute a major miracle.

On top of that the city is spending $382,866 on salaries and benefits including overtime of $63,196 based on 2019 expenditures on two highly trained police officers assigned to homeless issues.

It is safe to say that if Manteca continues on the course the council has started it down, over the upcoming two years the city will be spending right around $4 million on homeless related issues between the two officers, getting a navigation center in place, and at least one year of operational costs.

Yet when they got blowback from taxpayers about spending $172,035 on a homeless program manager they balk saying they need more details on what that person will do. If that makes you confident they have thought this out and are committed to seeing it through you’ll also likely to believe that come this Monday Gov. Newsom is announcing everything can reopen and that face masks and social distancing are history.

First only a truly naive elected official would not have expected that the idea of spending $172,035 on a homeless position that is essentially the same cost of each of the police officers assigned to the homeless beat to send the majority of taxpayers into orbit. The council would have preferred that the cost not have been blasted in large type as it overshadowed the concept. The problem is you need to be completely upfront with taxpayers and deal with the most toxic issue first which is spending a lot of money — a salary range of $102,000 to $124,000 with the balance of the $172,035 covering benefits and retirement — on someone with the expertise to pull off what the council wants done.

The council has spent the last two years talking about trying to get government agencies such as the school district to chip in money, securing state and federal grants to cover much of the tab, reeling in big corporate donations, and expecting a non-profit to step up to run the navigation center without being bankrolled by the city. The odds of any of that happening in any amount large enough that tapping into the city’s general fund would be minuscule is about as good as the long promised private sector investment materializing so the high speed rail project only costs California taxpayers $9 billion.

The top city management they have put in place is not well-versed — nor should they expected to be — in the nuances of winning the grant battle for what homeless money there is from the state that is typically siphoned 100 percent by coastal areas such as Orange County or how to run a navigation center.

A homeless program manager would need to have that knowledge.

And given most of those who would that fit the city’s needs work for larger cities that have been doing such work for a while, the salary range is probably reasonable.

While you could do this on the cheap and have either the deputy city manager, assistant city manager, or a program analyst currently working for the city try to do the job, it is clearly something that needs to be a full-time endeavor.

Of course, the council sentiment was to have staff “better explain” what the objective is to “educate the public.” That prompted Councilwoman Debby Moorhead to suggest staff to bring the position back at a later council meeting. Her colleagues quickly concurred. Given where we are in the calendar and the fact no one asked for a specific date that staff thought it could be brought back by as the council usually does, it is clear the homeless program manager is highly unlikely to be vetted before the Nov. 3 election.

That nicely ignores the fact every council member except for David Breitenbucher believes the absolutely only workable site for a homeless navigation center for political reasons — read that the least amount of community objection — and located so the homeless can access it is the Qualex property. As it stands now they must acquire the property for $1.125 million before Dec. 31 or the state will seize it an auction of off to the highest bidder.

That means two things will happen. Their grand homeless solution will slip through their fingers or else they may take possession of the Qualex property with no one at city hall that can make it work the way it should or have the expertise to gather info needed to battle successfully for grants.

The council needs a reality check. They need to compete against larger cities that can make their case for government grant funds. There is no corporate sugar daddy waiting in the wings. And while it certainly will be more cost effective to have a non-profit run it if for no other reason you avoid increasing the city’s retirement liability as well as pay higher wages, it will still take the city bankrolling the ongoing operations unless they really believe they can start a GoFundMe campaign to raise the money.

And while there is certainly sentiment out there that is justifiably placed that Mike Kelley is an ideal fit and works wonders with the homeless within the current parameters, he is going to one day retire.

The city needs to build a program that can make headway toward their lofty goal of reducing Manteca’s homeless numbers by 50 percent in 10 years from the ground up that will keep moving forward despite whatever turnover occurs.

Kelley is impressive and effective in his job but what the council professes what needs to be done can’t be carried on the shoulders of just two men — Kelley and his fellow community resource officer.

Nor can you say you want to try out the homeless program manager position for two years and then yank it if grants don’t cover the homeless program manager’s compensation while at the same time you have invested $3 million just to secure property and create a homeless navigation center.

Either the council has become gun shy just like their predecessors did, they want to back out of the navigation center idea, or they clearly haven’t thought it through although they are willing to spend $3 million to buy and retrofit a building that taxpayers in this town via the city’s now defunct Manteca Redevelopment Agency already had $5 million of their tax dollars poured into buying it and doing seismic work.

The current council sounds just like the one back in 2006 that balked at an expenditure to make the Qualex building work as a police station and then ended up flushing $5 million down the drain.