They wish they were Manteca.
Departing Doctors Hospital of Manteca CEO Nico Tejeda made that observation before he packed up his family and headed to Texas to take advantage of a job promotion.
It was in reference the inferiority syndrome more than a few harbor about Manteca in relation with other places such as Pleasanton, Livermore, and Tracy.
Tejeda noted more than a few municipalities wish they had a Bass Pro Shops, a Big League Dreams sports complex and - if all the planning of the last five years comes to its conclusion in a favorable manner this fall — a Great Wolf Resort.
That isn’t just chamber of commerce hype although Tejeda made his remarks as the outgoing resident at the annual Manteca Chamber of Commerce dinner.
Bass Pro brings in sales tax by the wheel barrow with more than 98 percent of it paid by non-Manteca residents. Big League Dreams books out-of-town tournaments every weekend with a string unbroken for nearly six years even during holidays such as Christmas. That has filled up Manteca hotel rooms and generates almost $600,000 a year.
The Great Wolf deal and juts 500-room hotel with an 75,000-square-foot indoor water park, a 15,000-square-foot outdoor water park and 20,000-square-foot conference center is anticipated to generate 414 permanent full-time jobs, 156 part-time jobs, an annual payroll of $9.4 million, and net municipal coffers $750,000 annually.
The high profile 1-2-3 combo in terms of luring cash spending visitors to Manteca is only the tip of the iceberg.
Location central to 17 million consumers in 100-mile radius makes Manteca and nearby communities ideal for distribution centers when you add in the freeways, two major railroads complete with intermodal truck-to flat car operations - Union Pacific’s on the edge of Manteca and Santa Fe’s 10 miles northeast of Manteca - plus the nearby Stockton Port as well as Stockton Metro Airport that are both within 20 minutes of downtown Manteca.
But location and the ability to snag enterprises such as Great Wolf that can pretty well locate where they wish within regional markets would be worthless if it wasn’t for the underlying care given to the nuts and bolts necessary for a community like Manteca to actually grow during the Great Recession while its neighbors stagnated, retreated or slipped into bankruptcy. Part of that is forward thinking not just to secure capacity with state-of-the-art treatment for wastewater and drinking water but to do so in such a frugal manner that rates have gone unchanged for six years. It is the same approach that has allowed Manteca to go a decade without garbage rate increases.
It takes the ability to leverage creative private sector investments plus solid and stable finances backed up by consistent growth.
If you doubt that, consider what impartial assessors of local government financial health - bond raters - have concluded. Buying bonds from the City of Manteca, Manteca Unified School District, and South San Joaquin Irrigation District involves very little risk.
Standard and Poor rated MUSD as a AA risk. The only things higher are AA+ and AAA ratings. Moody’s gives the MUSD an Aa2 rating. The only better ratings are Aa1 and Aaa.
This past week with the same of new bonds and refinancing of existing bonds, MUSD taxpayers saved $6.7 million.
The Standard and Poor rating of the City of Manteca’s wastewater bonds is AAA and water bonds is AA-. The next closest city in the region is Tracy with an A1 rating for its wastewater treatment bond. Stockton last year had their wastewater treatment bond upgraded from BBB to A-. That allowed bonds to be refinanced from a 5.09 percent interest rate down to 3.64 percent saving Stockton ratepayers $5.6 million.
SSJID has little debt and typically sits on cash reserves in excess of $60 million or almost 2.5 times their annual operating budget thanks to prudent long-range investment decision infrastructure and water rights.
Their bond rating is AA. They have been encouraged to increase the rating to AAA with the purchase of bond insurance but the returns - slightly lower interest rates — don’t cover the cost of the insurance.
However, the rating the SSJID has will allow it to secure funds needed to acquire and upgrade the local power distribution system when leveraged with Tri-Dam Project receipts to lower retail electrical rates in Manteca, Ripon, and Escalon by 15 percent.
PG&E’s bond rating, by the way, is six notches below SSJID’s AA at BBB.
If you are a taxpayer and you live in Manteca, you should feel confident knowing your money is being handled prudently by public servants and elected leaders on the city, school district and irrigation district levels.
They don’t go for the quick return but instead engage in long-term strategies that have positioned us well compared to the rest of California during not just the Great Recession and for future growth but also during the current drought.
Disclaimer
This column is the opinion of executive editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Bulletin or Morris Newspaper Corp. of CA. He can be contacted at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com or 209.249.3519.
