The initial structure of Covington’s new mayor-council form of government, slated to begin operating at the beginning of 2027, has been officially signed into law.
Specifically, the current five-member Covington Board of Commissioners voted on Tuesday to establish several key measures related to the new government’s legislative structure and the compensation of elected officials.
The ordinance came out of recommendations from the city government’s committee on government transition, which Covington’s Director of External Affairs, Sebastian Torres, presented to the commission early this month, which themselves came following a period of public comment.
The ordinance passed on Tuesday, the full text of which you can read here, establishes the following:
- Six council seats
- Non-partisan elections
- Primary elections for council seats, if 13 or more candidates run
- At-large council representation, meaning seats would represent the city as a whole, rather than particular districts or wards
- City-issued laptops and phones for council members and members
- A vehicle or a transport stipend, plus healthcare benefits and a retirement plan for mayors
- An annual council member’s salary of $17,787.15 without retirement and healthcare benefits
- An annual mayor’s salary being the maximum allowed by state law, which is currently $95,335.76
Recommendation documents from the committee state that council member and mayoral salary recommendations were based on the salaries of similarly sized cities. Torres called these cities “peer cities.”
Specifically, Torres said, the peer cities were Independence and Erlanger due to their proximity to Covington, as well as Florence, Georgetown, Elizabethtown and Hopkinsville, as these cities were the largest cities in the commonwealth that used the mayor-council form.
Besides the proposed changes in compensation levels, what’s notable is that new council members will not receive healthcare and retirement benefits, even though they do under the current form. Healthcare costs for the current commissioners, including the mayor, run the city about $74,000 a year.
No discussion of the ordinance took place at Tuesday’s meeting. The vote to pass the ordinance was unanimous.