The future of City Hall in Buckeye remains undecided after city leaders heard clear feedback from residents this week — and it doesn’t fully align with what some officials envisioned.
During a Tuesday workshop, Mayor Eric Orsborn acknowledged the tension between public opinion and policymaking.
“Sometimes we have to make decisions that the public doesn't appreciate,” Orsborn said during a lengthy discussion with council members.
On Tuesday, Orsborn and the rest of City Council heard the findings of an in-depth survey conducted by SmithGroup, one of the top architectural firms in the country.
The city and its 1,000-plus staff has outgrown its downtown location on Monroe, which prompted the move to rent office space at The Landing, a business park off Verrado Way, a move that was initially meant to be temporary.
Charged with finding a long-term solution to the city’s space problem, SmithGroup unveiled the first phase of the solution on Tuesday.
“We believe it warrants a progressive model, what we call a "hub and spoke" model, where services can be brought closer to the residents,” said Kerri McShea, a member of SmithGroup team.
In general, the Hub and Spoke model would lump Administration and Council Chambers into one location then locate other city services throughout the city, such as Verrado, Old Buckeye, the burgeoning Teravalis community, or other locales.
Other models floated before residents were as follows
- Central Campus: This could be a small cluster of buildings in one location that each have a designated function, including Council Chambers – where public meetings take place, City Services, Community Programs and Services, and Administration Offices.
- Separate Council Chamber: This would spread all city functions throughout the city, perhaps with an administration building serving as a hub with outlying buildings in other parts of the city.
The Hub and Spoke model resembles what City Hall currently looks like with a central location in downtown Buckeye on Monroe and an “outpost” at The Landing business park off Verado Way south Interstate 10.
Efficiency came up several times during the discussion with Orsborn suggesting that a Central Campus somewhere in the city might facilitate the most efficient way for the city to interact with staff and residents.
The SmithGroup study revealed that Buckeye residents preferred engaging with city services virtual or digitally “for everything except for community programs,” Dunsmore said. “Even long-term residents two to one favored utility billing to be virtual. Newer residents that's ten years or less, they want even more for that to be virtual utility billing frequent visitors to see.”
Dunsmore said that when residents do visit City Hall, “they come for council meetings, permits and licensing, and zoning and planning. And, you know, we heard in the workshops that downtown people, residents of downtown feel strongly that city service should be delivered in person. But in the central and north we didn't hear that quite as strongly. We heard it should be a mix of digital and in-person. So overall, we heard that residents really prefer to engage digitally and virtually with government because they want to engage with each other.”
“Now is not the right time for a new City Hall,” Dunsmore said. “But we do want to move forward with the facilities master plan, flesh out some of those things that we talked about: the service delivery model, what's in those outposts, what services, how big are they, where are they, how many you need.”
“There is still some work on planning there and also planning for staff growth’ Dunsmore said. "Kerri mentioned you will at some point space is getting tight at a certain point you will be at capacity. What planning can we do now to help make sure?”
“But the purpose I thought of this study was to say, ‘Yep, here's the timing on that. Here's what you're going to need at that time. Here's how all this fits together to have employees efficiently working together, not having two offices, one building here, and getting everybody together under one roof.’” Orsborn said. “To the extent we can still have the outposts and North Annex, West Annex, East Annex, whatever those are. … but this is still a business and it's not efficient as a business.”
“I thought part of this was to determine what that timing was,” Orsborn said. “Figure out what that looked like. Is it this building that is essentially the higher city management, the council chambers? And then maybe like a building that has all of the back office staff someplace? Or do we consolidate all that in a central location?
“The next phase, what we've talked about here, is the facilities master plan,” said Doug Sandstrom, Buckeye City Manager “That's really going to go through with what our growth rates are, where how many employees we had a year, what type of employees, and what type of facilities and what services they provide.
Sandstrom said at that time the city can answer the question of “do we plan for a big statement piece city hall that would be in our five- , six-year CIP, that's a $300 million facility. Or do we look at building your standard office tech complex?” Sandstrom said.
“What we got out of this was the residents and what we hear is, ‘we don't want that big statement piece; we want functional, decent facilities at the areas where the services are provided in a manner that we're keeping people together in a way that makes sense.’” Sandstrom said. “And that's what the next facilities master plan will be.
“We're not going to be looking at building one big massive facility that will accommodate everybody, but we are going to be looking at putting facilities where they belong in a way that makes sense for us as we grow,” Sandstrom said.”
No date has yet been made public on when the facilities master plan will be revealed.
Background
City officials have pointed to the rapid growth of the city as the impetus for the project, saying the current building is no longer suitable for a city center office building.
The city already has 100 people working at The Landing.
Current facilities “were designed for a much smaller city and are now reaching their limits,” according to statements on the city’s web page. “Many city services are spread across multiple locations, which can be inconvenient for residents and businesses trying to get business done.”
Since its founding in 1888, Buckeye has seen at least five different City Hall sites, with the most recent location acquired in 2009 with the city adopted a stalled commercial development, “repurposed it for public use as a temporary Town Hall.”
Additionally, since 2000, Buckeye's population has "grown from a mere 6,537 to a thriving community of 125,000 reszidents today," SmithGroup stated in its presentation. "Buckeye continues to be one of the fastest growing cities in the country and is only 16.7% built out today. At full buildout Buckeye will be more than 1 million in population."
2 Responses
Sometimes we have to make decisions that the public doesn’t appreciate,” Orsborn said during a lengthy discussion with council members.
Sometimes We, the public, have to voice opinions about decisions that the City doesn’t appreciate.
We know what the city council members are up to. They want everything located in Verrado, which is a community and not a city or a town so that way I wish they would just an Amsterdam place and leave us alone. We know what you’re up to. we’re not stupid you should all be ashamed of yourself and because Mayor Mack owns several properties in Verrado. That is why everybody wants to go there the police chief lives there the fire chief lives there. Why not that’s where you guys all go and you forget about everybody else while I’m tired of paying my taxes I’m tired of building your $5 million fire stations. I’m tired of building your $5 million schools that can’t look like the rest so as long as you keep sending bonds out, I’ll keep voting. No you guys are ridiculous.