The Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce held a government forum with Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval Friday morning.
Pureval spoke of how governments on both sides of the river must work together to move forward with regional projects — and also about the area’s challenges.
“The work that you’re doing in Frankfort to get dollars here to Northern Kentucky is really extraordinary,” Pureval said to the room of business leaders. “It’s got to be celebrated how effective your government and civic organizations are in telling the story of Northern Kentucky.”
He went on to say the City of Cincinnati is trying to replicate that on the north side of the Ohio River by directing more money to the Queen City from Columbus, Ohio’s capital.
One thing that separates Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky is that Cincinnati has a centralized government, which leaders on this side of the river regularly discuss. With many towns and cities across the region, it leaves multiple governments competing for the same resources, as opposed to larger metro areas, such as Cincinnati and Louisville, that have one metro government.
“I do think that having that centralized government does give us more of an efficient process to get big things done,” Pureval said. “When you have so many different governments kind of competing with different interests, I think, it slows things down.”
But, any conversation about Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati is met with how the two must work together. One big example is the Brent Spence Bridge project. The federal grant process recently opened up to apply for funds from the Infrastructure Bill. Kentucky and Ohio will jointly apply for the Multimodal Project Discretionary Grant, which has been a top priority for the NKY chamber for more than two decades.
“Thanks to our NKY Caucus, the state of Kentucky has committed $250 million to help compete for the project,” Brent Cooper, president and CEO of the NKY Chamber, said recently to LINK nky. “Now that the federal grant process is underway, we are in a position to compete for federal funding and hopefully get construction started next year.”
Pureval said it’s important that the administration hears from local leaders about the project. During the breakfast, he also mentioned that it’s important for business leaders in the region continue to push and have a collaboration strategy.
“I think the Brent Spence Bridge and the dollars coming from D.C. is a wonderful opportunity for us to be on the same page about what our strategic priorities are and how we can work together to leverage our business community,” Pureval said, “because frankly, most of the legislators listen to their business community more than they’re gonna listen to their local elected officials.”
The Northern Kentucky Chamber recently sought letters of support for the project from chamber board members and board of advisor members. Once collected, the letters will be submitted to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet.
Earlier this week, Pureval visited the White House for a Rose Garden Celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. After breakfast, he had plans to head back to the nation’s capital.
“There’s a prioritization of growing our region, getting as much resources as we can from Frankfort, Columbus, and D.C. so that we can all succeed,” Pureval said.
