The Director of Communications and Governmental Affairs at CVG Airport, Seth Cutter, came to the regular Fort Wright City Council Wednesday night to showcase all the new improvements at the airport. He said he is tasked with visiting the area governmental council meetings to up date them and this is one of those meetings.
The most important takeaway from the presentation is that people will need either a passport or a special real ID compliant driver’s license/permit/identification card, or another acceptable federal form of ID to be able to fly domestically by May 3 of 2023.
He explained to council that CVG is the seventh largest cargo airport in North America, with over 14,000 badge workers that are working on the campus, which he proclaimed to be no small asset to the community.
Cutter added that CVG now has more nonstop destinations than any of their competitors, and for the last 4 years they have the lowest average airfares.
“That’s a huge improvement,” Hatter said. “I was getting tired of driving to Dayton or Indie (Indianapolis) all the time.”
Cutter said that Amazon made a 1 1/2 billion investment in the fall of 2020 as the first phase of their airport project, with more to come.
Red Tree investments
Joe Violand and Ryan Nelson from Red Tree Investments came to the Fort Wright city Council meeting Wednesday night to explain the city’s investments and how they are doing after one year.
Red Tree is an independent investment adviser dedicated to public funds.
Fort Wright decided to use Red Tree because they have money in the bank that the mayor and council thought should be earning interest. They signed with Red Tree in March of 2021 with an initial portfolio of $3 million. They wanted a report at a public meeting in the interest of transparency.
“We do provide monthly reports to (CAO Jill Cain Bailey) and her team,” Nelson said. “US Bank acts as the third party custodian. We serve as the investment adviser for the city’s funds, and US Bank sets between us and the city, and that’s what you want, a third party custodian.”
Violand gave a little information on the economy, saying the US economy grew 6 percent last year, then in quarter one of this year it actually contracted minus 1 1/4 percent.
He mentioned some concerns, the biggest being 8 1/2 percent inflation year over year. He said they haven’t seen those type of numbers in 40 years. Along with that news comes higher interest rates.
“Our three main objectives, and it is the same with all investments, is safety, liquidity and market rate of return on investments,” Violand said. “What does that mean? The first is to protect the funds, the second is to make sure the city has access to those funds, should they need them, and the third is the market rate of return, how much interest do they earn.”
He said they have a .52 percent average yield of current investments in under two years. This means that their initial investment of $3 million has a year to date interest of $7,900, and a projected net interest in 2023 of $17,000.
Mayor Dave Hatter thanked Nelson and Violand for their help to understand what the city is doing with residents’ money, and then he thanked Councilmembers Jay Weber and Bernie Wessels for helping to hammer out an investment strategy for the city.
Cleanup update
Councilmember Margie Witt told council that she and the cleanup crew had 37 volunteers on April 23, and they were able to do some work on almost every major road in the city.
“In 3 hours we were able to collect 135 bags of garbage,” Witt said.
The most unusual find was a 30 year old check, completely legible, although they always find some interesting things along the roadsides.
The clean up day was so successful, Witt said they are considering holding one in the fall.
