The grant application for the Buckeye Main Street Coalition Fast Trac Grant has changed. As part of the application process three bids are now needed for each part of the project covered by the grant. This was a result of raising the grant amount from $5,000 to $10,000. For example if you asked for assistance with paint, doors and signage you will need three bids for paint, three bids for doors and three bid for signage. These are governmental regulations that we all must follow with no exceptions. The Main Street Coalition will provide you with a list of local contractors when you receive your grant application. As has been the case, if you are approved for a Fast Trac Grant the money will come from the Town to the Main Street Coalition and the Coalition will pay your contractor as each part of the project is completed to the Main Street Standards and Town Code. Any money left over after completion of the work will be redirected to other projects only by a vote of the Town Council.

The Coalition continues working to create a strategic plan for the future of downtown Buckeye. We’ve done a lot of meetings in the past and some plans have been created, but they simply were not detailed enough to move us into the future that Buckeye is seeing. The last plan was good if the Town of Buckeye saw maybe 10,000 new people. Since then we’ve seen at least 20,000 new faces and they keep coming in everyday.

The intent is to have a plan that gives us direction property by property to lead to the new downtown we all envision. The main goal of the plan is to decide if we want to work to be an historic downtown or do we want to change direction and work toward more of a new downtown with removal of some of the older dilapidated buildings. The Coalition Board wants to work with the Town Council on making this decision so that we are all on the same page about what is our forward direction.

The Coalition Promotions Committee is also beginning to plan for our fall events. We’ve been contacted by the Super Bowl ’08 Committee to see if we’d like to have David Calvert bring the Super Bowl football into our community on his high powered lawnmower. I f you’d like to help plan this event please attend one of our Promotions Committee meetings on the Third Thursday of the month at Noon at the Chamber Office. The next meeting will be February 22, 2007 at Noon.

The Promotions Committee is also in the planning stages for several smaller events and they are working to come up with new ideas for the Holiday Glow on Monroe Electric Light Parade. Our parade this past year was the best one yet and we hope to do even more this fall, please come and get involved! I know, it’s hard to think about fall festivities in February, but planning makes the event go a lot smoother!

For more information about the progress of the Buckeye Main Street Coalition please call me at 623-386-0526 or go online to www.buckeyemainstreet.org 24 hours a day. We always welcome new volunteers and remind you that you can be as busy or as not busy as you would like. A few minutes or a lifetime, every little bit helps make downtown Buckeye a better place!