Economic Development and Jobs

By Benjamin Joseph Cantu

Overzealous investments focus on new development while depriving Manteca residents of community amenities

While in the pursuit of new development and jobs for the community, I do not believe that it is necessary to commit excessive amounts of municipal resources and funds to that end, while the existing community does without many desired amenities and must tolerate a reduced quality of life. The historic investment of excessive amounts of present and future municipal funds to new private development projects, has resulted in the lack of numerous social and cultural amenities, a community sized library, a stable municipal budget process, a new city hall and police station, improved traffic circulation, a revitalized downtown, a neighborhood maintenance program, a veterans memorial, landscaping along Highway 120 and at the Highway 99 and Yosemite Avenue over-crossing, and so on.

I do not begrudge the developers, and in fact have and will continue to welcome them to Manteca and to support their efforts and their projects. New development is a good thing, it is an integral component of healthy growth, and is extremely important in maintaining a fiscally balanced community. It is not necessary to be obsessive with municipal funds because Manteca is situated at the core of one of the last under-served regions in the state, we are the last virgin economic center in this region for new development to take root. As such, the natural progression of new commercial, industrial, and housing development to Manteca is a given; it is therefore not necessary to commit all available municipal funds to new development and to forfeit the community's level of service, the quality of life, and community amenities, to have new development.

I feel that the measure of success is not the number of new developments and developers under one's belt, the measure of success is how effective have the residents' needs been addressed. Leadership should be able to manage both concurrently, not one or the other.

As your Mayor, I pledge to support new private development and to improve jobs in Manteca while also bringing to fruition the many missing community cultural, social, and service amenities, not one or the other. I will also establish an efficient and business friendly development review and permitting process.