By Brad Dountz

brad.dountz@salisburypost.com

KANNAPOLIS — Assistant City Manager Wilmer Melton gave the Imagine Kannapolis Infrastructure Focus Group Presentation to the Kannapolis City Council on Monday night. This is just a part of the city’s Imagine Kannapolis Strategic Planning Process, which has a goal to “establish a future vision for Kannapolis.”

“We’ve looked at a lot of our overall infrastructure needs through out the city, trying to really come in and determine holistically from the city’s perspective not only just maintenance, but long-term in terms of future growth and vitality of the city. How do we manage those requests?” Melton said.

The projects range from simple maintenance to full property expansion undertakings. Melton said he is trying to prioritize what needs to be done for city council to take the appropriate action when it comes to funding all the different kinds of plans.

During his presentation, Melton categorized the projects around Kannapolis into urgent, critical and important. They looked at each individual plan to figure out the necessity each one has toward the community to see what needs immediate attention and what can wait.

“We look at timing of the project. Need, impact that if it were in the event to fail then how soon do we need to get this replaced or in place so there are no potential problems?” Melton said.

Imagine Kannapolis has made sure to get local citizens’ input to ensure that they have a voice in the process.

“We took our citizen concerns from talking with our staff when they go out in the field. So we incorporate that into looking at is this a private issue that we just need to give advice or is this a public issue where we need to look at it a little more extensively, but we try to take that into consideration in what we’re factoring in as potential projects for the city,” Melton said.

Melton said the money for these projects will mostly come from the state and the city, depending what is actually being done.

“You have some state dollars that are allocated and city dollars in combination if it’s a joint project. Some of it is rate dollars if it’s a maintenance project that’s in place,” Melton said.

Melton said the next steps for the infrastructure plan is to address the questions and concerns the city council had during the meeting and to elaborate on certain projects that were proposed. However, this project goes beyond infrastructure according to Melton.

“Our strategic plan is not just the infrastructure that we had this evening, but it is multifaceted with fire and police. You have to balance that with all of these other needs city wide and determine where those projects fit in that overall strategic plan for council for the next two to six years,” he said.