ENGINEERING EFFICIENCY AND INNOVATION Infrastructure drives Albemarle’s forward momentum. “We are a full-service city,” Rhodes says.“We manage our own water, sewer, and electric services, which gives us control and flexibility.” Major projects are underway, including a significant wastewater plant upgrade and the replacement of a 75-year-old raw water line to increase capacity.“We are also adding a new water line to provide more redundancy to our system,” Mayor Michael notes. The city’s commitment to modernization extends to its use of technology.“We are installing smart meters for water and electric services,” she says.“That gives us real-time information about outages and usage, improving communication and efficiency.” trails throughout the city, so those are the top three big priorities.” Kiser adds that, “ When you’re thinking about attracting people to a city, you want to make sure that there’s stuff to do in the city and the parks and recreation in those cities are what makes a city alive and brings the community together.” “ You want to have nice parks. You want to have plenty of recreation programs for the children to be involved in, and then those special events where the family can get together and meet up with the community, that’s important. When they come to see us and visit our parks, they’ll also visit restaurants and other retail locations and spend money in Albemarle,” she elaborates. 24 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 06, ISSUE 11
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