The city of Maricopa officially opened its new maintenance facility on Edison Road with a ribbon cutting ceremony Tuesday evening.
The new facility serves as a hub for Maricopa Fire Department’s maintenance team, as well as the city’s Public Works Street Maintenance and Fleet Services. The building will be used to perform maintenance on government vehicles and equipment, as well as a dispatching center for the “Streets Crew.”
“[The new maintenance facility] means so much to us as an organization and to the maintenance staff in particular who spent many nights and many hot days trying to repair vehicles on hot asphalt,” City Manager Gregory Rose said.
The facility also includes a 180-foot communications tower to provide better radio reception for public safety and emergency services. The tower will also allow the Maricopa Police Department to control their own dispatching services later this year.
“If there’s ever a problem that’s going to occur in public safety, it’s going to be due to lack of communication,” Maricopa Police Chief Steve Stahl said. “When I came here we had police officers standing on the hood of police cars trying to get radio reception. So I pledged to them four years ago that we would get that fixed.”
Dozens of Maricopa residents attended the ceremony, and city officials including Mayor Christian Price and members of the Maricopa City Council were on hand to cut the ribbon and officially open the facility.
“Our mission is to deliver better products and better projects than we have now, and to do it in a way that is on time and under budget,” Public Works Director Bill Fay said.