Charlie Halford, a city council member duly elected by the people of Manteca, brought a concern of several residents before his colleagues at last week’s council meeting.

Several Manteca citizens wanted to be allowed to have 7-foot high fences for enhanced security and privacy. It was similar to a request made in 2015 that staff back then — after people put in place by a previous council on the Planning Commission agreed it was a sound move — successfully batted down without the help of a consultant.

Halford got the consensus of the council to have staff bring the fence issue back before them as an itemized agenda discussion to provide direction to staff.

Halford apparently was unaware what he was asking of staff was rocket science.

Chris Erias, the city’s director of Community Services, informed Halford that the city needs to have its new general plan update in place. He said it could take one or two years or so for staff to essentially get around to addressing a need their collective bosses appeared to deem important enough to warrant their attention.

Halford’s retort: “Better sooner than later.”

The exchange should convince you the “purge” at City Hall was for naught. You remember the purge? It’s the one Mayor Ben Cantu referenced by noting “like it or not, my mission is to legally fix the fiscal condition of this community before I leave office, and I started that process with a new administration.”

Funny, but in some ways the “new” administration doesn’t operate much differently than previous administrations and might even have bigger disconnects with the people they serve when it comes to issues beyond police, fire, garbage collection, as well as basic water and sewer service.

The burning question from Tuesday’s meeting is what on earth is so complicated about increasing allowable residential fence height from 6 to 7 feet that requires 24 months plus to weigh?

Earlier this year Ripon, was able to address a similar issue without benefit of a general plan update or taking half the term of a council member to do so.

Besides, Manteca still has a valid general plan. A general plan, one might add, that apparently was adequate enough just six years ago to allow staff to weigh the pros and cons of residential fences being 6 or 7 feet.

Staff’s immediate response reflects a “can’t do” attitude even before they approach the proverbial starting gate.

In a way, it’s a big improvement. Three years ago next month another “council consensus” that staff said they heard loud and clear was for staff to research and devise a potential ordinance outlawing non-compostable food containers and requiring people to use either re-useable containers or to be charged extra for one-use cups whenever they hit places like 7-Eleven, Starbucks, and McDonald’s for soda, coffee, and such.

The request was initially made by a local Democratic Party group and enthusiastically embraced by the then newly minted council. Staff said it would take six months or so. There clearly was a miscommunication. The City Council was hearing months based on Earth years. Staff was apparently speaking about months based on Neptune years. For the record there are 60,182 Earth days in a year on Neptune. It means just 0.035 of the six month timeline staff gave as a guesstimate has elapsed. That is why the council request is in the black hole where all initiatives advanced by elected leaders that paid staff isn’t crazy about are jettisoned into so they can languish for eternity.

This is nothing new for Manteca residents to experience. Remember the truck route study the city needed before they could effectively “crackdown” on renegade truckers that was supposed to take a year to complete? That promise was made shortly after Donald Trump was elected president. It’s adoption is now being tied to final passage of the general plan update that — depending on whether you put more stock in the pre-purge or post-purge deadlines — was promised to be completed six or 18 months ago.

It should be clear by now the biggest impediment and deterrent to an “improved Manteca” based on what current residents would like to see is neither the development community nor elected officials.

It is the municipal bureaucracy.

The scathing Grand Jury report issued last July only looked at one side of the equation which was the day-to-day meddling of individual council members in the day-to-day operations of the city. It never touched on the inability of the city to be more responsive than a dead snail to a wide array of citizen concerns or their addiction to consultant studies.

Again, the city does the day-to-day stuff well and effectively. We’re talking police and fire response, park maintenance, the ability to deliver water and allow toilets or flush, as well as the collection of garbage.

Perhaps it is because those services are conducted by many people who actually live here and don’t view working on behalf of the citizens of Manteca for a paycheck as simply biding their time before they move onto the next big thing. And as amazing as it might sound, those ranks include mid-management people — and even some in senior management — that don’t reside here but give it their all.

That’s because they have their egos in check and understand Manteca isn’t Galt, Livermore, Ceres, or Turlock.

It was mid-management as well as rank and file that came up with in innovative solutions such as the food waste to fuel program, the diverging diamond interchange at Union Road, locating Big League Dreams on surplus wastewater treatment plant property, enhancing crossings by Manteca High without first hiring consultants, and a long list of regional “firsts” dating back to incorporating storm retention basins into new neighborhood parks to tame for the most part what was once Manteca’s vexing storm flooding issues.

They even came up with a holistic solution to Main Street through downtown that addressed traffic flow, public safety (the movement of ambulances and fire engines), local flooding issues, downtown aesthetics, and even lower construction costs as well as keeping long-term maintenance costs down.

Of course, the new crop of “saviors” don’t like such a solution for Main Street because it doesn’t fit into the tunnel vision they’ve embraced where one city they land in is an exact carbon copy of cities that have hired them before. And if they aren’t then come hell or high water they will make sure they are even if it requires subtlety manipulating the council so they can sledge hammer a square peg into a round hole.

It is not the place of the city council, as the grand jury pointed out, to manage the city on a day-to-day basis or to legally act as individuals in setting policies as it takes a majority of the council to do so.

At the same time senior management is treading on seriously thin ice by trying to act as if they are also those who the people of this community empowered to set the city’s agenda and address concerns they see as important rather than simply following policies and goals established by the City Council.

 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