Amarillo City Council is set to consider spending nearly $22 million during their first meeting of 2024.

The largest of these items, 8M, is a 9-year contract with Axon Enterprises for “body cameras, car cameras, interview room recording, digital evidence management, and police records management systems.” The contract is worth $14,384,860.57, which will be paid out over the nine-year span of the contract.

All other spending items are on the “consent” portion of the agenda which means they may all be approved with a single vote. The largest of these is a $1.8 million contract with Amarillo Arborlogical for a four-year contract for tree management and maintenance for the city’s parks department. Close behind this item is a $1.7 million 5-year contract with Tickets.com for ticketing services for the Amarillo Civic Center Complex box office.

Two other spending items on the agenda have price tags greater than one million dollars. One of these is a $1.1 million contract with Aqua-Aerobic for rebuilding three traveling bridge filters at Hollywood Road Wastewater Treatment Plant. The other is a nearly $1.1 million contract with CommTech Co. for installing a microwave radio network to monitor the city’s public water system.

A table summarizing the spending items can be found at the end of this article.

Other notable agenda items include an ordinance allowing customers to opt-out of the city’s new automated digital water meter system without paying a fee, sunsetting of the Traffic Advisory Board and Pedestrian Bicycle Safety Advisory Board, an amendment to the MPEV agreement largely focused on incorporating recently approved plans to make improvements required by the MBA, approval of a proposed new version of the city’s agreement with Randall County for jail services, dissolution of the Amarillo First Responders’ Excellence and Innovation Fund, and adding a non-voting ex-officio member to the board of the Amarillo AEDC board of directors.

Starting at 4:00 pm, the council is expected to receive presentations from recruitment firms picked as finalists to help Amarillo pick its next city manager.

At this time, there is no item on the agenda regarding proposals to pass abortion restrictions, with members of Amarillo City Council having expressed their intentions to table discussions pending an ongoing petition on the item.

The meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, January 9th at 3:00 pm on the third floor of City Hall. Those wishing to speak at the meeting are encouraged to sign up at this link. The full agenda and agenda packet can be found at this link. Unlike other recent city council meetings, there is not a closed-door executive session meeting set to precede this week’s meeting.