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Expensive items on Buckeye Council’s consent agenda

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A lengthy list of expenditures could be approved by the Buckeye City Council Tuesday night without any discussion.

The Council’s consent agenda for Tuesday's regular 6 p.m. meeting includes more than $4 million in expenditures, mainly for aspects of infrastructure upgrades and annual contracts.

Consent agendas are lists of action items typically voted upon as part of a single council motion, and are considered routine and non-controversial. However, a Council member can move, at the start of a regular meeting, for an item to be removed from the consent agenda and addressed and discussed as a separate action item.

One of the highest-cost items on the consent agenda is the purchase of 36 replacement vehicle vehicles and/or large, complex pieces of equipment, totaling almost $2.21 million. This includes 11 replacement vehicles and equipment as well as 25 supplemental vehicles and equipment that would accommodate new staffing positions approved for this fiscal year.

Those purchases would be made using funds from a few different sources, and would be for vehicles for more than one department.

The purchases include one cargo trailer, four SUV-type vehicles, one tow trailer, one utility cart, one mower, 14 pickup trucks, one Gannon trailer, one barricade trailer, one three-cubic-yard dump truck, one high- speed brush cutter two sweepers, one backhoe and one sewer jetter trailer.

Another purchase item on Tuesday's’s consent agenda is a $120,000 annual contract with Cummins, Inc., to provide backup power with a generator to provide adequate water pressure if APS power is lost.

A $138,000 change order is on the consent agenda. It’s for the architectural engineering contract with Arrington Watkins Architects, LLC, for construction administration services on the police training facility.

The city is set to spend $223,000 with Vertech Industrial Systems, LLC, for consulting services on well system improvements, $433,000 with MGC Contractors, Inc., to complete the rehabilitation of two tanks at the Hopeville Water Campus and $600,000 with KP Ventures Well Drilling & Pump Company, LLC, for planned well rehabilitation.

Water Resources is set to spend $350,000 each with both Itron, Inc., and Badger Meter on water meter-related equipment and maintenance.

An annual contract with SHUMS Coda, Inc., for building inspections, plan reviews and other development-related tasks would cost the city $750,000.

A fire station is currently planned to be a three-bay, single-story, 12,750-square foot building on 2.3 acres, off of Yuma Road, in the master-planned community of Blue Horizons. It will have full quarters for eight firefighters and will include a biohazard room.

There is $400,000 in the Fiscal 2022 city budget for the fire station.

In some cases, departmental budgets rise dramatically for one fiscal year when a city devotes some money to relevant capital improvement projects.

Buckeye’s Public Works Department had a budget of $4.35 million for Fiscal 2021, but $10.3 million for Fiscal 2022. The Police Department budget increased by about $5 million to $25.4 million.

There is also an item on the consent agenda to form a street-lighting improvement district.