BUCKEYE, AZ — The City of Buckeye is looking to build a brand new 911 communications center downtown.
“The city is one of the fastest growing cities in the country and our population is expanding immensely. So to meet the needs and keep the community safe and to provide opportunity or room to expand, we need this center,” said Deputy Chief Bob Sanders of the Buckeye Police Department.
The new 12,000-square-foot facility will cost $16 million and will be located next to the police evidence and training facilities in downtown Buckeye.
Police are currently using the existing building about a mile away to house their 16 dispatchers and four dispatch supervisors. But say the space is getting crowded and they simply do not have space for any new hires.
Calls for service are only increasing.
“We did increase 23% of the calls coming into our 911 dispatch center, so with that 23%, we continue to expect that to continue to the year 2030 and beyond,” said Sanders.
“It’s grown tremendously like it went from like 20,000 people I believe to already 100,000 people,” said Shelby Burkett, who was born and raised in Buckeye.
Police say even with more calls, their response times have not suffered; they are still within 30 seconds per dispatch and will continue striving for those numbers and handling all the stress that comes with it, according to Sanders.
The new center could be done as early as next year, and residents just hope the city can handle all the expansion.
“In the future, we’ll get better just because they’ll get used to it and they’ll start learning,” said Alejandro Ochoa, who was also born and raised in Buckeye.
