There are a lot of different reasons Manteca voters will have when they decide to vote for either Gary Singh or Jacob Naven for mayor on Nov. 3.

And, as always, there are reasons that simply don’t make sense or are extremely un-logical as they are rooted in wild assumptions.

Right up there is the assumption that Naven, should he be elected, will save Manteca taxpayers money by working to terminate the city’s automatic aid agreement with the Ripon Consolidated Fire District and dropping any mutual aid as well.

It’s almost laughable given Naven — who has been ribbed over the years for the “this is Jake from State Farm” commercial where a suspicious wife doesn’t believe her husband is chatting on the phone with an insurance company rep at 2 a.m. — is a State Farm insurance agent.

Manteca having automatic aid likely plays into placing downward pressure on insurance rates as response times are wrapped up in Insurance Services Office decisions on how much exposure an insurance underwriter determines exists in extending coverage to a homeowner or business.

State Farm sustained record losses in the 2025 LA wildfires. And like other impacted insurers, State Farm is weighing massive premium hikes and reducing exposure in California by not writing new policies or — in some cases — withdrawing from the market altogether.

Manteca — just like Ripon or Lathrop Manteca Fire — can ill-afford to have 100 percent completely standalone fire protection.

And by ill-afford, that means not just in practice but financially as well.

Some erroneously believe since Manteca is not in a high risk wildfire zone such as Tracy Hills was placed in last year that the city is golden when it comes to the potential of massive home losses in a fire.

Back in 2008 a brush fire along Interstate 5 near within the City of Stockton destroyed 36 homes. Stockton is even farther than Manteca is from the nearest high risk wildfire zone.

To fight a basic structure fire — which in Manteca primarily involves homes — four engine companies are needed.

Manteca now has six engine companies. Lathrop Manteca Fire, that is in a separate automatic aid agreement with the City of Manteca, has five engine companies.

The automatic aid agreement between Manteca and Lathrop Manteca Fire was renegotiated to address the need for four engines to respond initially instead of wasting precious minutes going the mutual aid route.

As such, it improves the odds of the best possible outcome in a structure fire in either city.

Ripon Consolidated Fire is a different cat given they have been limited in recent years by having just one engine company. That will change in February when a second engine company is added after passage of a parcel tax earlier this month.

The automatic aid agreement has been lopsided in Ripon’s favor in recent years.

When the current council asked for statistics that proved what they had been told by rank-and-file firefighters, they did the responsible thing.

The agreement was due to expire in October 2025.

And while there was strong sentiment among council members to pull the plug, after carefully weighing what was at stake when it came to Manteca residents, they extended it for a year with a clear warning the arrangement would end this year if the Ripon Fire district didn’t pass a parcel tax.

Was extending it a gift of Manteca tax dollars?

Not by a long shot.

The 120/99 connector construction that took out the Austin Road bridge that was being replaced made responding to northbound Highway 99 accidents and some fires — both within southeast Manteca city limits — even more problematic.

The city intends to carefully look at the automatic aid with Ripon as even with the interchange back in place there are response time issues with traffic accidents and even fires in southeast Manteca that are not going away.

The second engine company in Ripon will change that dynamic.

It means that engines from Manteca, Escalon, or Salida under separate automatic aid agreements will see their response to emergency calls in Ripon plunge.

Ripon has 965 concurrent calls in 2025 when their only engine company was already on a call.

Had there been a second engine company in Ripon, that number would have been close to zero given the odds a handful of this concurrent calls were three incidents happening at once.

Manteca has a big stake in automatic aid along the Highway 99 corridor and even an engine company responding to a fire from Ripon in the eastern and southeast portions of the city once the second company is in place in Ripon.

All of those scenarios and more will be weighed.

As a parting note, Ripon has resources Manteca does not have that they can call on such as a water tender truck and — in the event of a repeat of the 2018 massive Tesoro apartment complex fire — a second aerial truck.