General Manager's Note - August, 2007

General Manager's Note - August, 2007

By Sara Aleman Tuesday, 07 August 2007

Community stories impact our local quality of life

My husband and I have been renovating our home. New paint, flooring and rearranging furniture are some of the ways we have been accomplishing this task. Just as we seek to create a nice place for our future, the cities of Round Rock and Pflugerville have visions that accomplish a similar goal on a larger scale. The new buzz word in urban design is “placemaking.”

The concept is being used to form future downtown city plans for Round Rock and Pflugerville. Implementing this strategy has the potential to affect motorists, pedestrians and shoppers.

It is our privilege to give information to our readers that not only helps them prepare for their future, but also improves their quality of life. Tremendous feedback was received from last month’s Pflugerville water story in which we provided residents with information on how to set their water softeners. People continue to tell me how they used our map to reset their softeners. This story was also included in a water technology online publication, as well as by channel KEYE 42. It is encouraging to know this story helped so many.

Last month, we also received constructive feedback from a reader who notified us of an error made on an aerial map for our Community Corridors. The railroad was incorrectly identified as Gattis School Road. This reader mentioned that through his experiences in the military, he learned some newspapers in foreign countries plant errors “to keep the readers sharp.”

We do want to keep readers sharp, but not at the expense of providing accurate information.

As always, we value your feedback and look forward to hearing from you.

Sara Aleman