At one point in Tuesday’s mild version of the Tower Of Babble — better known to listeners as the Manteca City Council meeting via Zoom — a department head of which they are many more today that a year ago  blurted out a remark that is worth noting.

First of all, it wasn’t dripping with all of the promises of forward thinking or even out of the box thinking we’ve all been promised that would occur after the purge.

It was highly myopic for someone yanking down a cool six figures.

Worse yet — although hopefully not intentional — it fell into the category of trying to scare  elected officials away from finally having a gut wrenching heart-to-heart with their constituents even if it is simply residents listening while they hammer out Manteca’s future.

The comment was rather pointed. There was an inferred assertion if the council diverted the runaway train which is growth continuing to gnaw at the financial foundation of the city to maintain day-to-day municipal service levels that they’d be creating a category of second-class citizens.

The remark had to do with making community facilities districts more muscular to cover funding gaps for general fund services tied directly to each new home built by elevating police and fire services along with street maintenance to the same priority given the upkeep of decorative landscaping that makes a subdivision less sterile as well as maintaining neighborhood parks.

The council was essentially told — advised, admonished, or whatever verb matches the frustration level you may have with watching as the city you live in struggles to stop sinking ever so slowly into financial quicksand — that collapsing street maintenance into a CDF for new homes was the equivalent of inequity.

There is no other bottom line interpretation of the comment that if you require newer homes to contribute specifically for street upkeep in their neighborhoods that you might as well as make them “gated communities.”

For starters, why didn’t the top-level bureaucrat speak to the same issue of CFDs covering neighborhood parks or students from non-CFD households being able to use school facilities paid for by such districts?

Manteca had that conversation, once upon a time, when several residents paying into CFDs argued their neighborhood parks should be 100 percent exclusively for people in their neighborhood. After all, they had the price of the park being built collapsed into the price of their home and were being charged 100 percent for ongoing maintenance.

The short answer is the courts have declared such use of CFDs legally just as they have taxing the property of people who are childless to support the public education of children.

The long answer is such a solution was crafted by the California Legislature in 1982 in the form of the Mello-Roos Community Facilities in the wake of the seismic shift in taxation which was the passage of Proposition 13 in 1987 so local government could continue to function.

The bureaucrat’s comment — while likely passing in one ear and out of the other ear of elected officials given the jibber jabbering feel of council meetings conducted virtually — could easily give community leaders something to grab onto to kick the can further down the road.

With all due respect, rarely in the past 30 years have elected officials at least appeared to be willing to have the courage to pursue a long-term holistic answer to city funding issues caused by growth instead of playing chicken. Council members don’t need nudging from staff one way or another on the ethics as opposed to the legality of a supercharged issue such as taxes and/or fees.

Previous councils when given the chance have resorted to being “friends” instead of “good stewards” for the public when adopting fees based on real projects costs and then suspending them. This is why the City of Manteca is facing a combined $20.3 million deficit in the water and sewer enterprise funds when June 30 rolls around.

Mayor Ben Cantu, who has taken on a preacher mode of sorts when it comes to the necessary evil of taxes, is not immune from injustices, perceived and otherwise, when it comes to taxes.

At one point Tuesday he questioned the fairness of creating CFDs involving subdivided lots when the only vote was that of the developer. Cantu felt it was unfair that the future homebuyers would have no say in whether the fees should be levied. He also mused about its impact on a subject near and dear to him — the affordability of housing for working families.

First of all, the homebuyers do have a say. It is fully disclosed when they are thinking about buying a freshly built home. It factors into what they can afford to pay over 360 months. And it is disclosed in both the sales and loan documents.

Simply put, they can say thanks but no thanks and not buy the home.

As for the affordability of housing, that ship has already sailed. The mayor had no issue slapping a $69 police and fire services city fee on 1,237 homes being built in Manteca Trails. Many of those homes will be on smaller lots and therefore loosely classified as affordable housing.

The mayor is clearly conflicted on fees and affordability as are a lot of people including those several pay grades above everyone in Manteca government who have wrestled with the Rubik’s cube know as California’s housing crisis for decades.

But we should not forget the mantra that Cantu started rolling years ago as the lone voice in the wilderness warning Manteca’s continued failure to impose adequate fees that was driven primarily by the political concern to keep the price of new housing down would come back to bite the city big time.
And that time is fast approaching.

Not only is just 15 to 17 percent of the property tax paid on a home going to the City of Manteca depending on the rules in effect at the time the house was built, but the dynamics of sales tax has changed with more and more people stampeding to online shopping.

Property and sales tax account for more than three-fifths of the revenue needed for run the city on a day-to-day basis.

The moral dilemma facing the council is not whether someone getting into the lifeboat next month or next year is paying more to be there than someone who got in it 20 years ago, but whether as captain of the ship they are letting people pile in without covering the current tab for their added weight in order to keep if the boat afloat.

 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