The city of Covington is officially taking applications for a committee on transitioning the government from its current city manager form to mayor-council form of government.
The city announced it was seeking applicants on Tuesday just before the city commission met for its weekly meeting. Mayor-elect Ron Washington, who will be chairing the committee and eventually making appointments from the pool of applicants, encouraged people to apply at the commission meeting.
“We’re asking our citizens, take a look at that article,” Washington said. “If you’re signed up for our emails, you should have received an email on it. You can find it on social media. There’s a link within the article that will take you right to the application page.
“If that’s not your cup of tea, we have several other boards that we would love to have your expertise or your interest in. I think the [mayor] would agree that that’s probably one of the hardest things to do, is to fill the many slots on our boards. So, we do encourage people to take a look and participate in their government.”
The commission voted to establish the committee at their meeting last week. The action comes following a vote from Covington residents in November to transition the government from its current form to a mayor-council form, which is more common in Kentucky. About 7,500 Covington voters, roughly 61% of the votes cast, voted in favor of the transition.
Broadly speaking, the mayor-council form places more executive authority in the mayor's seat, granting the mayor greater latitude in running the city on a day-to-day basis. As a result, the mayor-council form is sometimes referred to as the strong mayor form of government.
The committee, called the 'Committee on Form of Government Transition,' will consist of nine yet-to-be-appointed Covington residents who will give recommendations to the city commission on how to go about the transition.
Washington will chair the committee and appoint the committee members. City Attorney Frank Schultz, City Manager Ken Smith, and City Clerk Susan Ellis, plus the newly-elected city commissioners, will also staff the committee as non-voting members.
The mayor will appoint an administrator, who will also not have voting power, to coordinate meetings and handle other clerical duties. The group will meet once a month beginning in 2025.
Recommendations made by the committee will be passed onto the newly elected city commission members, who will be responsible for creating ordinances that will determine the number of seats on Covington's new city council. Powers, duties and expectations of the council members will also be established by the new commission following recommendations from the committee.
They will also advise on whether the new city government will have a city administrator to help manage Covington's day-to-day operations. Finally, the new commission will need to determine if the new council seats will be at-large positions, meaning they represent the city as a whole, or if the seats will represent specific wards or districts within the city. The current commission seats are at-large positions.
The new commissioners must establish these ordinances by the end of their two-year terms, at which point a new election will take place to fill the newly created city council seats. City councils in Kentucky can have anywhere from six to 12 council members.
The committee will be responsible for the following duties, according to the municipal order establishing it:
- reviewing the structure of the current city manager form
- identifying areas that need to be changed in order to better conform to the mayor-council form
- research "best practices and case studies" from other cities that use the mayor-council form
- interact with and incorporate feedback from residents, businesses and other parts of the community to better inform the commission's decisions
- prepare an initial progress report for the city commission by June 30, 2025
- prepare monthly progress reports for the commission after the initial June report has been delivered
- recommend the number of council seats to the commission by Oct. 17, 2025
- prepare a comprehensive final report for the commission by May 1, 2026
The commission also completed the first reading of an ordinance at their meeting last week that would delegate greater powers to the mayor's seat during the two-year transition.
Specifically, the ordinance "delegates to the mayor the necessary authority to inquire into the conduct of duties and actions performed by the city manager between meetings of the board of commissioners."
The ordinance text characterizes this as a way of enhancing communication between the city's elected representatives and the city administrative staff and preparing for the transition.
It also states that the "Mayor shall be recognized as the official head and representative of the city for all purposes. Such recognition shall not, however, include any duties considered an unauthorized delegation of executive or legislative authority from the board of commissioners."
In other words, the mayor will serve as the city's official head insofar as it does not interfere with the commission's typical legislative and executive powers.
The commission will complete a second reading and cast a vote on this ordinance at the legislative meeting next week.
Besides Washington's comments, there was little discussion of the committee Tuesday night. Washington, however, gave more of his thoughts in the city's announcement.
"We have a lot of things to figure out and state law gives us a lot of leeway, so it’s important that this committee get up and running soon and be composed of serious-minded people who are ready to start researching best practices and case studies,” Washington said.
“Voters set this change in motion, and now they’ll be able to shape how it’s implemented,” Washington said at the conclusion of the city's announcement. “We need to take direction from our citizens.”