The Town Council approved a cooperative purchasing agreement for concrete services with Vincon Engineering Construction at its Jan. 15 meeting.

The agreement includes $600,000 for work to be completed in the current fiscal year including replacement of damaged concrete in the Centennial Circle in the Civic Center. Staff reported it would cost about $150,000 to replace the concrete with pavers. An additional $200,000 would include sidewalk infill work this fiscal year. The other $150,000 would include smaller projects.

Public Works Director Justin Weldy told the council that the town has historically had issues with securing contracts for commodities such as concrete work.

“By utilizing state, county and city government cooperative purchasing agreement contracts the town has been able to simplify the process and take advantage of competitive pricing from other municipalities,” Weldy said.

This contract is “piggybacked” on a contract the City of Scottsdale recently awarded to Vincon. Weldy said the town has worked with Vincon and is happy with the work.

Weldy said the town’s CIP program has several projects scheduled over the next four years that would use this contract.

The contract approved by the council has a four-year term with the initial amount not to exceed $600,000 and the renewal terms not to exceed $2.4 million over the four years.

While he joined the rest of the council in approving the agreement, Councilman Alan Magazine said he has some concerns regarding the cooperative purchase agreements.

“If we were not using the cooperative purchase, how much would it cost?” Magazine asked Weldy.

Weldy said he could only speak hypothetically, but based on his experience he believes the costs would be higher.

“I don’t think this process works well and needs some changes,” Magazine said.

Magazine summarized his concerns in a separate email to The Times.

“Council makes a determination of what projects we want to fund as part of the budget process,” Magazine said. “My concerns are those decisions are made at the beginning of the budget process. How do we know what will transpire the rest of the year?

“Last [week] we were essentially ratifying the decision nearly eight months after the decision was made. Things change.

“For example, when Golden Eagle Park was flooded we had to transfer money from other funds

into the CIP to cover the costs to repair it. The result was that some of the previously approved CIP expenditures had to be delayed.

“The alleyway paving project, the sidewalk infill project and the Community Center drainage

project were all postponed in order to provide funding in the Capital Fund

for cleanup.”

Magazine goes on to say that the list of infrastructure projects needing funding is extremely long and there is no way they can be totally funded.

“When we discuss during the budget process which [projects] to fund they are based on staff recommendations. We are not given the opportunity to review that list to determine if the ones recommended are, in the opinion of the Council, the highest priority,” Magazine said.

“It is not clear to me what criteria are being used to determine what should be funded.”

Magazine did offer a suggestion in his email on how to address his concerns.

“One way to deal with this is that, quarterly, we get briefed on what has previously been approved in the budget. If, for instance, a council member thinks there might be another project that is worthy of funding, that person can address it with the full council,” Magazine said. “For example, the approved list from this year's budget doesn’t include any traffic signals. Based on the discussion [Jan. 7], we don’t have the funding. What if council decided, for example, that a signal is more important than alley paving? We shouldn’t have to wait until the next budget to fund it.”