The water is still flowing from the tap.

Garbage is still being collected.

The sewer lines aren’t backing up.

Police and fire still respond when you dial 9-1-1

Funny how things work, isn’t?

Manteca burns through four city managers in less than four years yet the things that matter most to us in day-to-day municipal services are still working fine.

Well perhaps major streets aren’t doing as well as measured by the shake, rattle, and roll experience or the clogged artery syndrome.

One is tempted to slam elected leaders for what appears to be a couple of questionable moves to fill the city manager’s position. But when apparent red flags started popping up they chose not to worry about political optics and decided to pull the plug.

It is better a council own its mistakes rather than force the city to go down with the proverbial ship.

To be clear this is not absolving any elected official of any responsibility for hiring city managers that for whatever reasons may have morphed into perceived liabilities or turned out to be a dud.

It’s just that refusing to act when something you embraced appears to be heading south isn’t leadership nor is playing the blame game by deflecting responsibility to others or your predecessors instead of finding a way forward.

The public may never know exactly what went wrong this time. It could be personality clashes, interaction with personnel — you name it.

What matters — and always has — is to make sure the city keeps on top of basic services while trying to lay groundwork for the future.

So how does the city — or more precisely — the council go beyond just being “good enough” when it comes to amenities and economic growth?

This is not a problem for a rocket scientist to resolve.

Manteca’s leadership has done it before.

Even Mayor Ben Cantu concedes this when he has repeatedly said Manteca gets something done right every 3 to 5 years or so such as Spreckels Park, the Stadium Retail Center-Big League Dreams, surface water, Woodward Park, the Costco deal, the Union Road interchange, Bass Pro Shops and Great Wolf.

The common thread all of the aforementioned have is they weren’t the brainchild of the city manager at the time. In fact more than a few of the initiatives were opposed by staff.

That initial opposition didn’t stop previous city managers from delivering on council directions. Yes there was a lot of due diligence done to make sure the numbers worked before the proverbial trigger was pulled.

So why didn’t  Spreckels Park, BLD, Great Wolf and other endeavors wilt and die even after in the case of BLD it took seven years to reach construction and for Great Wolf it took 10 years?

The answer is simple. It was because of the commitment of council leadership.

It wasn’t always unanimous. It was 4-1 on Spreckels Park and 3-2 on BLD.

For the better part of two years the rancor over BLD based on the original proposed location of Woodward Park got so intense council meetings typically went past 1 a.m. with one setting a record with a 3:24 a.m. adjournment.

There were criminal investigations over reported phone threats to proponents of the project. At one point a council member vehemently opposed to BLD claimed they were being threatened with physical harm when a speaker pointed a finger at them during a heated exchange at a council meeting. After reviewing a subsequent police investigation the district attorney thought otherwise and no charges were filed.

What kept councils committed to moving toward a goal with the staff focused on making it work to ultimately deliver what could qualify as moonshot projects in the world that is the City of Manteca were mayors that worked hard at building consensus.

The late Mayor Bill Perry did the heavy lifting when it came to keeping the council on track for RDA funding for Spreckels Park.

The end result was the ability to leverage RDA bonds for additional borrowing based on the increase property tax base Spreckels Park created. That made the original Daniels Street extension possible to allow the Stadium Retail Center to be built, paid for the BLD complex, financed three affordable housing apartment complexes including one for workforce housing, and  allowed smaller projects to take place,

Former Mayor Willie Weatherford was able to prevent a deeply divided council from imploding to get BLD built as well as accomplish a number of other significant endeavors such as the deal that for Costco to build a store in Manteca and not along Interstate 5 in Lathrop.

The driving force behind Great Wolf was former Mayor Steve DeBrum who worked to keep the council’s eye on the ball which in turn focused staff efforts to snare a major community investment.

In each case staff delivered because the directive was clear and the political support was there.

The lone wolf approach doesn’t build consensus.

At the same time don’t mistake agreement on “smaller” issues to be a sign of commitment for bigger endeavors.

Councils need to come together and be committed to goals. They also need to resist the temptation to pile everything including the kitchen sink on staff’s back. A clear set of precise objectives as opposed to warm and fuzzy goals that leave a lot of room for guessing or the ability to bend the will of council are essential.

And while Cantu for whatever reason has not opted to use the bully pulpit that the mayor’s seat is to approach municipal issues the same way as Perry, Weatherford, and DeBrum he deserves credit for pushing successfully for a holistic examination of the handling of municipal finances.

That exercise laid bare some of the reasons why more than a few projects aimed at improving roads and getting amenities in place have struggled to move forward.

The reality, however, is that Manteca now needs consensus building and commitment to providing the political will among the City Council majority to focus on a do-able list of major municipal projects.

It is clear based on the gestation period of major Manteca municipal accomplishments in recent decades that this requires leadership that doesn’t put being right above doing what is right.

There is a big difference as mayors such like Jack Snyder, Bill Perry, Willie Weatherford, and Steve DeBrum understood.

 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