Most of us don’t give a first thought about leaving a penny on the counter or on the ground let alone a second thought.

A penny is of little value in the moment.

But if there were a pile of, let’s say, 1,200,000,000 pennies dumped in front of us, we might view the value of a penny quite differently.

And if you knew the last pile of pennies that you came across had 1,890,000,000 pennies, you might have thoughts about why there are 690,000,000 less pennies in this particular pile.

It is why the powers that be should heed an astute observation Councilman Charlie Halford made in the first public examination of how the windfall of pennies voters approved to start showering down April 1 on 1001 West Center Street is budgeted, accounted for, and spent.

Halford’s point was simple math.

If the city receives 1 cent on every $1 collected for its basic general sales tax and 0.75 cents on every $1 collected for the Measure Q sales tax, shouldn’t the actual projected dollar amounts be proportionate?

The city’s current budget projects Manteca will have received $18.9 million in general tax when the 2024-2025 fiscal year ends June 30.

Math would dictate if the Measure Q sales tax had been in effect, the city would have collected 75 percent of the general tax or $14,175,000.

Yet in budgeting scenarios for a full year of Measure Q tax receipts, the council was presented with three scenarios — $11 million, $12 million, and $13 million in revenue.

The reason, they were told, are consultants retained by the city to do the economic wizardry to make revenue projections with models that are conservative, middle of the road, and — for want of a better term — optimistic.

They believe economic uncertainty will mean a retraction in taxable sales is on the horizon.

But for the first full year of Measure Q to come in at $13 million — the top range of three scenarios laid out the council and the citizens tax oversight committee — the city is forecasting taxable sales in Manteca to crater 16 percent in the fiscal year starting July 1.

Even during the Great Recession, Manteca’s retail sales didn’t tank in double figures.

If anyone is left around city hall was counting the public’s sales tax pennies at the time, it was because Manteca — unlike the vast majority of cities in California — kept building and selling homes to Bay Area buyers.

For three consecutive years, Manteca developers built and sold almost 300 homes a year.

That was more than all other jurisdictions in San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Merced counties combined.

The abnormality reflected a unique micro-economic climate Manteca created using its strategic location on the freeway pipelines wedded with ACE to ferry workers at Bay Area jobs to and from the Bay Area’s de facto affordable housing solution of South San Joaquin County.

The somewhat unique local factors are still in play.

Perhaps instead of a boilerplate approach to crystal balling, consultants digging a bit deeper into economic oddities might not have yielded projections that are more on “the sky is falling down” meter than expecting things to slow down.

All of the five proceeding paragraphs may have been forging around a bit too much in the proverbial weeds.

But here is something that is clearly not.

Transparency demands the use of consistent numbers in budgeting the public’s money.

If $13 million is indeed the least cautious scenario for a 0.75 cents on a dollar sales tax collection from Measure Q between July 1, 2025 and June 30, 2026, then that needs to be reflected in budgeting throughout the city.

That means we can expect the general fund budgeting for next year to have an optimistic $17,290,000 in taxable sales receipts.

Halford asked the question Tuesday and it needs to be asked again: If this is the city’s transparent position on budgeting, then is city hall preparing to make $1.6 million in cuts based on optimistic sales tax loss?

There wasn’t even a peep of such a catastrophic situation being on the radar Tuesday even though the meeting was all about putting together priorities for overall spending in the coming fiscal year.

If it were a real concern, then someone should have said forget about talking about adding nine firefighters. Manteca may have to lay off six firefighters or make the equivalent of cuts elsewhere.

Perhaps the smoke cover for saying that won’t happen is the city expects a lot of people to get high — or at least more relaxed — by visiting the three cannabis dispensaries that have allowed to open.

The bottom line is not using the same numbers and applying math in sales tax projections isn’t transparency. It reeks of playing a financial shell game.

A financial shell game, one might add, the city spent the better part of four years straightening out and working to regain the public’s trust.

Halford’s concerns about how upfront everyone is being doesn’t stop at having one sales tax projection for the general fund and an entirely different one for Measure Q.

The biggest of his remaining concerns — and there were several — centers on a Measure Q spending plan name for one “bucket” of sales tax receipts.

The name of the bucket is “remaining to send to general fund.”

It is what is left over after a 5 percent reserve and $11,850,000 in annual expenditures that includes an annual infusion of $2,663,244 from government facility fees to help pay off a bond to build a new police station.

It starts at $1,220,744 at the $11 million scenario, $2,220,744 at the $12 million scenario, and $3,813,244 at the $13 million scenario.

As Halford noted, that’s a lot of money just dumped into the general fund without any indication being given to the public in terms of what it will be spent on.

There is no indication of anything nefarious going on.

And to be clear, the city has a lot of dedicated hard working people who are serving the community.

However, the initial post-election rollout of the framework of how Measure Q funds will be spent is using some frosted glass instead of going with 100 percent see-through glass.

As for not using the same assumption to calculate sales tax, the city is playing with fire.

No matter how reasonable and conservative they believe they are being, if you conclude a Measure Q sales tax dollar has a value that is 16 percent less than a general fund sales tax dollar you’re not exactly being straightforward with the public.

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com