The City of Covington is making plans on how to best spend the $750,000 the state recently allocated to the city to help it deal with the impending closure of the 4th Street Bridge (scheduled to close next week) and construction related to the Brent Spence Corridor Project.
Recent public discussion also suggests the city plans to have a readily accessible way for the public to track where and how the money will be spent.
“We were able to obtain support for $750,000 worth of reimbursable funds, which we can put towards supporting business initiatives, neighborhood improvements and also special events and advertising promotional campaigns to reduce whatever negative effects may exist as a result of those projects,” said Covington’s Director of External Affairs Sebastian Torres at the meeting of the Covington Board of Commissioners Tuesday night.
The city announced in early December it had successfully secured the extra money from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Several local city and county leaders, including Covington Mayor Ron Washington, had been lobbying for a cushion against the economic downturns that the infrastructure closures may induce.
Tuesday’s meeting served as the first public window into where that money may eventually go.
The Cabinet will disburse the money on a quarterly basis over the next five years. This means the city will have to first spend the money from its own coffers and then make a formal request to the Cabinet for payment. There are no limits on how much the city can request each reimbursement cycle, but there’s a hard stop at the $750,000 limit.
Documents submitted to the commission lay out several broad categories for how the city can spend the money: neighborhood enhancements; business development; management of communications, planning and economic development staff within City Hall; special events; promotional campaigns and “any other lawful purpose directly related to the improvement of Covington’s business districts and the mitigation of traffic congestion within Covington.”
The commission still had questions about the specifics, however.
“Is there any sort of discussion on how we’re going to determine where this goes?” Commissioner Shannon Smith asked, adding that members of the public had already inquired about it.
Torres informed the commission of a “stakeholders group of local business owners within the urban core of Covington” formed in September to better explore possible solutions, as well as separate internal committee within City Hall to consider how best to spend the money.
“These solutions [from the stakeholder group] range from special events programming to improving our parking capabilities here in downtown to special events and even neighborhood place making, artwork, things like that,” Torres said. “We ended up walking away with several pages worth of potential solutions.”
Torres also talked about a recent request for proposals from marketing firms for “consultation in relation to promotional campaigns to get folks coming in from suburban communities to visit our downtown businesses.” This call for proposals was forwarded directly to six Covington-based firms for consideration.
“Is there a way that, as we’re spending this money, that the public can actually see where the $750,000 is being spent…?” asked Mayor Washington. “We could create a page or something that shows that $5,000 or $10,000 went to this organization or that organization to get the message out.”
“We can actually do that in a formal way,” Torres said.