Walton officials shared details about their plans to move forward with hiring a city administrator at a Tuesday evening City Council meeting.
According to Mayor Terri Courtney and the council, Walton is working on crafting the job description and salary for the city’s first-ever full-time city administrator, with the intention of accepting applications in the coming months.
Typically, city administrators are responsible for assisting in creating budgets, managing personnel, enforcing policies and ensuring the city meets its goals, as well as working with officials to develop new laws and policies.
For Walton specifically, officials said that the biggest priorities are for a city administrator to take charge of grant writing, assist with policymaking, be present at all city meetings and represent Walton in larger political venues, such as state and county meetings or even at Frankfort.
Walton’s elected officials work their positions part-time and aren’t always able to attend meetings. The city administrator would be a full-time position, reporting to the mayor but serving as the city’s face every day.
“Over time, my hope is that it pays for itself so that we reduce the attorney fees, so that we potentially reduce the engineering fees,” said Courtney. “I believe Walton has fallen behind the map and we’ve never really had a seat at the table, and so we’re being overlooked. That representation will be a huge bonus to us.”
According to City Attorney Michael Duncan, the city administrator would be appointed by the council and could only be removed by the mayor with sufficient reason for doing so. The administrator would not be affected by terms of office like other elected officials, and so could work with various administrations “consistently” over the years, said Councilmember Amy Long.
Many Northern Kentucky cities already have city administrators in place, and the council said that it has been discussing the position with nearby municipalities to learn more about their operations.
“Union is going to be huge because we’re so close in population,” said Councilmember Dan Martin. “I’ve had good conversations with Chris Moriconi up in Independence, although obviously it’s a little different because they’re larger and have a police force, but he’s talked to me multiple times about what his day looks like and his expectations and he’s offered a helping hand for whatever we need to do.”
Walton began taking steps to consider hiring a city administrator in June 2024, when the council established a city administrator committee to decide the responsibilities of and eventually appoint someone to the position.
The call for an administrator was prevalent at city council meetings at the time, following an investigation into misuse of city funds by former Mayor Gabe Brown. Over the course of weeks, various citizens, including another former mayor, Mark Carnahan, alleged that the misuse might have never happened if Walton had a city manager to oversee the daily operations of city business.
Although Walton has yet to begin accepting applications for the role, Courtney said that the best-case scenario would be to have the position filled by September.
“I definitely don’t want to rush. It’s a big move for the city to create this position,” she said. “If it’s not the right person, we’ve done a huge disservice to our people, for our taxpayers. We’re not feeling rushed.”