NEWBERRY — David Eldridge officially joined the City of Newberry on Aug. 1 as the Assistant Utilities Director – OT/IT. Eldridge comes to the city with over 25 years of Information Technology experience.

Prior to the City of Newberry, Eldridge served over 14 years in various senior positions for a large financial services firm, completing projects across all aspects of Information, Solution, Infrastructure and Business Architecture. These included numerous postings in Asia to drive the construction of new capabilities for the firm.

Eldridge has worked as a private consultant providing clients with strategic and tactical IT consulting. He has also served as a Chief Technology Officer for an internet software and service company in Seattle, Wash.

With having traveled for work for around 10 years, Eldridge said the city’s position appealed to him because he was ready to spend time back in Prosperity, where he calls home with his family.

“It was fun for a while, but I’d rather just be at home every night to have dinner with my kids,” Eldridge said of his prior work.

Eldridge said that for its size, that the City of Newberry had a surprisingly advanced IT department as far as its forward-looking nature.

His focus as the Assistant Utilities Director he said will be on building on the technology that has already been identified such as the department’s new prepaid billing system and putting a process on how certain IT developments are completed such as a ticketing system to track incidents and issues so that they can report key performance indicators to City Council and staff such as the City Manager.

“I’m really looking forward to helping build out the fiber network to go with some of the new industries moving into town, such as Samsung,” Eldridge said.

When he’s not working, Eldridge enjoys reading, cooking and spending time with his family.

“We enjoy living here and are looking forward to supporting the community and helping everyone to have a better experience here at the city,” Eldridge said. “It (Newberry) is certainly a growing town.”

Utilities Director Tim Baker said he was pleased to have Eldridge join the city’s staff.

“We look forward to his assistance in continuing to develop new technologies to meet the needs of our customers,” Baker said.

City Manager Matt DeWitt said he was excited that Eldridge has decided to join city staff.

“We feel that his experiences will be what the City needs to advance our current projects forward and help Newberry remain an industry leader in municipal utility services,” DeWitt said.

David Eldridge
https://www.newberryobserver.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/web1_David-Eldridge.jpgDavid Eldridge

By Elyssa Haven

For The Newberry Observer