Here’s a novel idea.
Maybe instead of electing three council members in November 2018 voters can eliminate the middleman and elect consultants.
The problem isn’t Manteca using consultants as it is how much common sense at times they appear to be abdicating when dealing with hired guns.
First, let’s be clear on one point. A lot of “consultants” per se are hired because Manteca’s municipal staff has been on the starvation funding diet as more and more reserves are created for things such as “economic revilitalzation”  so more and more money can be squirreled away at 1001 W. Center St.
All the money Manteca is “saving” by creating general fund reserves beyond 25 percent forces the city either to hire extra engineering help on a consulting basis for relatively minor projects or delay smaller projects for years. That has the added bonus of eroding the purchasing power of dollars set aside for projects such as the Northgate Park group picnic renovation thanks to construction inflation
But the real flagrant failure in using consultants is how elected leaders at times forget they are the policy setters. They are the ones elected to shape the city by adopting broad direction and not consultants.
Is anyone really surprised that the city that has been reciting the mantra “Manteca is business friendly” so many times to the point that they believe it, came up with fees that would send potential retailers running for the hills — or more precisely — Lathrop, Tracy and even Ripon?
If you give a consultant a blank slate, they will do what they do best — take the easy way out.
The $306 million road fee fiasco — which by the way is more like $750 million or so when you include the rest of the tab Manteca would need to come up to actually build the road projects — is a textbook case.
Give consultants a map, some color crayons, and tell them to draw lines to come up with uses and road needs and they will do it by the book.
Let’s see what that book has given Manteca.
Start by driving Union Road at Lathrop Road to the 120 Bypass. It is nearly three miles. It really isn’t a hellish consumption of time. Toss in the fact Manteca has been sitting on $2 million or so in federal funds to upgrade and coordinate traffic signals in real time — something cities three times Manteca’s size are the ones that typically have such capabilities— and traffic flow will get even better.
If you look at the120 Bypass it will be smack dab in the middle of Manteca when the city’s population pushes 125,900 as projected by 2040. There will be four interchanges a mile apart. Given floodplain restrictions and the City of Ripon’s sphere of influence, the farthest homes will be built from the Bypass in the south part of Manteca is right around three miles. It’s the same distance Lathrop Road is from the 120 Bypass. Most of Manteca’s heavy traffic flows involve people trying to get to and from Bay Area jobs — not jobs in Modesto.
There is no need for a new interchange costing $150 million between Austin Road and Jack Tone Road especially given upgrades planned for Austin Road. The issue is getting to the Bay Area and not Modesto.
Even if the 350-acre business park planned along Austin Road goes in, the Austin Road interchange improvements will more than suffice. There will be no need for a Raymus Expressway per se unless Manteca intentionally wants to create Lathrop Road 2.0 south of the 120 Bypass as a truck route.
Common sense — as Councilman Richard Silverman pointed out — screams to drop the Raymus interchange as well as the one planned for the future extension of Lovelace Road. It is clear that the farthest future tract home being less than three miles from an interchange won’t create traffic hell given how well a four-lane Union Road moves traffic from neighborhoods north of the 120 Bypass.
Killing the expressway itself makes sense for several reasons. It is so far south there will be hardly any development to the south of the proposed alignment. It doesn’t really do all that much to enhance traffic circulation for future residents. And dropping it would eliminate a lot of problems associated with the 200-year floodplain.
If the council simply decided the three road projects were overkill and admitted they are out of Manteca’s ability to pay for them, they could save themselves, the city, as well as residents  — both current and future — a lot of grief.
Instead they hire consultants who flip through the general plan, see the council has decided having a loaded Lamborghini Huracan level for traffic movements as their goal, and then design according.
That’s fine is you can afford the $268,000 price tag of a Lamborghini Huracan.
But if cut your desires down and go for Ford Fusion level traffic movements, it will cost $22,000 instead.
The speed of traffic movement is not optimum with the Ford Fusion but it is reasonable and doable. Go with the Fusion and not only can you build what you need as oppose to what you want, but you have money left over to perhaps put in that aquatics center you’ve always dreamed about.
Elected leaders need to stop passing the buck — literally and figuratively — to consultants. Instead they need to make no nonsense decisions on what will work for Manteca and stick with them.

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This column is the opinion of executive editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Bulletin or Morris Newspaper Corp. of CA.  He can be contacted at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com or 209.249.3519.