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Buckeye adds eight full-time positions

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The city of Buckeye’s continue growth is justifying the West Valley community in adding new positions.
The city, by virtue of a 6-1 decision at the Jan. 18 regular Buckeye City Council meeting, is recognized as growing fast enough to add eight new full-time positions.

Even with many parts of the city’s growth, economy and analysis in flux, the council accepted testimony of employees from several departments struggling to keep up with work flow.

After a lengthy discussion, only Councilor Jeanine Guy voted against the action to add the new positions.

Buckeye will add two positions in Development Services, four in Engineering, one in Community Services and one in Water Services, costing a total of $380,000 during fiscal 2022.

Those eight positions likely will appear on proposed fiscal 2023 departmental budgets as well.
No one at the meeting disputed whether the departments need help.

The debate was between using consultants or agency labor, which is more expensive but more easily terminated, versus adding staff the city expects to keep during more sustained growth.

A few councilors seemed unconvinced of the need to go with full-time positions after an initial presentation from Deputy City Manager Dave Roderique. However, after Mayor Eric Orsborn called several managers up to the podium to describe the needs in their departments, a nearly unanimous vote followed in short order.

Buckeye has doubled in size during the past 10 years and now has about 101,000 residents, with many commercial and residential construction projects in various stages of development.

Guy said she’s concerned the intense growth Buckeye is enduring could be short-lived. While the city is receiving a huge increase of income in development fees, that is not sustained income, as Buckeye will only get property tax from those developments once construction is complete.

“Aside from a major retailer and these (11) residential projects, that’s it,” Guy said. “What happens when police and fire hit us for more staff, and we’ve committed so much money to development-type employees?”

Orsborn said he recently attended a “come to Jesus” meeting, at which developers blasted the city for being slow at approving, processing and delivering permits and other key construction documents.

Councilor Craig Heustis said he’s concerned businesses could go elsewhere if the city’s reputation of being slow continues.

“If we hire too many people, and we turn out to not need them, then we’ll fire them,” Heustis said.

While Orsborn and some councilors made a variety of faces when Heustis made that statement, the conversation continued, and other less-drastic compromises were introduced.

Noting it might take at least one or two months to advertise for, locate, hire and train eight new employees, Guy recommended a cap of $500,000 on a combination of new positions and consultant/agency labor funding.

Councilor Clay Goodman said it might be time to “pump the brakes” and evaluate labor needs, as the city is expecting a full labor and practices independent study to be completed within the next month.

Roderique said the estimated consultant/agency fee for the rest of fiscal 2022 would be $570,000. He also said continuing along that path will have a limited impact, as the work of some positions cannot be farmed out to consulting firms.
The council approved adding a permit technician II and a building inspector III to the Development Services Department, which remains at “critically high volumes” in workload, a staff report states.
The Engineering Department will hire a development agreement/impact fee manager, an addressing technician, a project engineer and a permit technician II.
Water Services will hire a senior civil engineer to handle plan reviews, water and wastewater capital improvement projects and water inquiries. Community Services will hire a “planner I,” who will be responsible for making sure city plans are followed in terms of quality development that has usable park space, connecting trails and preserves open spaces.