It’s nice to know that a political mercenary based in Hilmar is spending the waning days of October orchestrating a mud smearing campaign across all platforms in a bid to alter the Manteca mayoral election for deep-pocketed developers.

What could be more American than using innuendo, guilt by association, fear, and hiding behind a curtain pulling levers to manipulate voters?

It’s what elections are all about these days.

In fairness, political campaigns since the dawn of the republic have been about as pure as a dairy farm water retention pond.

Campaigns emit foul odors.

And now, thanks to developers and devout followers of the “there is no such thing as a needed tax crowd” and their kissing cousins in the “we are entitled to a free lunch” cult, the stink of political action committee vulgarity at its worse is hard at work in Manteca via the harmless sounding name of the California Homeowners Association Political Action Committee.

The ominous videos attacking Manteca Mayor Gary Singh popping up on social media and websites twist reality in a manner that would be the envy of a clown hell-bent on fashioning the world’s most contorted Dachshund dog from a balloon.

Do you think the people that are siccing the PAC on Singh care about Manteca?

It’s all about money.

Or, more precisely, how much money they can make off of Manteca before packing up their trucks and moving elsewhere to build.

The less money developers need to leave on the table to benefit the community of Manteca, the more money they make.

So why do they want to get rid of Singh?

Is it because of the moral turpitude issues surrounding an employee of a city vendor?

Given Singh doesn’t run the city day-in and day out — that’s a job belonging to the hierarchy of the City Hall bureaucracy — the guilt by association is a stretch that makes the vastness of the Milky Way minuscule in comparison.

Even more so when the rallying cry of many that oppose Singh is that he devotes too much time to the part time job of serving as Manteca’s mayor.

Or is it the fact Singh is arguably the mayor that has been the most successful at making development invest in Manteca as a whole in exchange for being able to make money building on the back of 108 years of municipal investment by generations of people that have called this city home.

Development is a risky business that requires years of investment and hard work to advance a subdivision to the point earthmovers can flatten and compact former almond orchard land.

Times are challenging for builders just like everyone else.

But if the City of Manteca led by Singh and Mike Morowit — the other part of the City Council’s economic subcommittee —are successfully negotiating development agreements that have made it impossible for builders to make money in Manteca, then why are there so many developers making their way here?

The short answer is because they are making money.

So, what are Singh’s sins it comes to development?

The mayor has led efforts to:

uget new subdivisions to cover the cost of new fire engines and new solid waste trucks so existing Manteca taxpayers and existing Manteca city utility ratepayers aren’t stuck with the bill.

uhave new growth provide an ongoing revenue stream in perpetuity to hire more police and firefighters beyond what the city’s general fund is able to cover.

umaking sure development, when legally possible, can be required to do off-site improvements that they can get reimbursed for as other development moves forward to avoid creating gaps in the width of arterial so and to complete missing links in wastewater trunk lines.

uhave developers put as much as $16,000 per home on the table for community benefits that can pay for amenities and such.

The list goes in an and on.

But that last item — community benefit — means the city has funding at its disposal to help cover the cost of new projects such as the police department that legally can’t be charged in adopted growth fees that are limited under California law to the proportionate share of cost incurred to serve a new home.

As such, the community benefit goes a long way to covering the tab for replacement facilities and new amenities that are essentially the responsibility of existing residents.

Singh’s signs from the perspective of the anti-tax crowd?

He advocated strenuously for support to:

upass the three-quarter cent 20-year Measure Q sales tax.

usecure approval of the downtown business improvement district.

Both are still relatively new, but they have already led to a flurry of new projects, road work, additional frontline public safety staff, and changes downtown.

Doing things, by the way, that some of Singh’s harshest critics have demanded the city do for years.

It takes money to deliver what people need and say they want.

Singh, in that case, is guilty as charged for taking steps to make sure Manteca has the funding needed to provide services and amenities.