Buda's new city engineer will tackle issues related to the town's explosive growth, he said.

John Nett worked for the city of Killeen as a drainage engineer since 2002, and was promoted to City Engineer in 2006. In July, he began working in Buda.

Buda city engineer John Nett was hired as Buda city engineer in July.[/caption]

“Although (Buda)’s a tenth of the size (of Killeen), just the dynamics and diversity and pace of growth are very similar,” Nett said.

Some of Nett's top priorities as city engineer are the 2014 voter-approved bond projects, which include new municipal and public safety facilities, as well as drainage and street improvement projects throughout the city.

"Now, these projects are coming to maturity in the design phase and the citizens and the council are expecting ground to be broken and the projects to progress pretty rapidly," he said.

Nett will provide the in-house engineering support to help get those projects off the ground. He is also working on projects to improve drainage.

“We’ve all, in Central Texas, experienced floods over the past few years,” Nett said. “The projects that are moving forward for drainage improvements will alleviate some of the capacity issues in areas of town that were hit pretty hard during those floods.”

Nett said the new public facilities will be especially useful for Buda residents.

“Having a new city hall, a new library and a multi-purpose area is something that everyone in the community will use and take great pride in once that project’s complete,” he said.