- Covington is in the process of creating a communications initiative called “Bridging the Gap” to help residents, businesses and community groups stay informed about bridge projects
- The city plans to take several steps to increase venues for information delivery to Covington
- The city commissioners had questions about timing, and the board will likely continue planning in the coming months
Covington is gearing up to launch “Bridging the Gap,” a new communications initiative designed to keep residents and businesses informed as two major bridge projects reshape the city’s landscape.
The Brent Spence Bridge and 4th Street (officially known as KY-8) Bridge projects will both launch in the next few years, and officials want to keep residents informed.
“The reality is, we’ve got residents asking us now about a lot of these… kind of details,” said City Commissioner Tim Downing at this week’s Board of Commissioners meeting.
City Manager Sharmili Reddy gave an overview presentation of the initiative to the commission on Tuesday. Reddy admitted that at this point, the city was lacking in details, but she outlined what the city hoped to accomplish with the initiative.
“We understand more than anybody can imagine the need for communication and outreach,” Reddy said. “We know we have a very robust community that has a lot of concerns about it. So, we are working on several different things when it comes to communication.”
While it’s true that the Brent Spence Project and the state already have websites up that detail timelines, design documents, affected roads and other information about the projects individually, there are no formalized channels within the city itself a resident can access if they have questions.
Reddy laid out several steps in her presentation that the city would take, ideally before the closure of the KY-8 Bridge in January.
The first step is to create an online “Bridging the Gap” portal, where information on the two projects and their impact on Covington can be centralized. The second is to collaborate with community businesses and neighborhood associations to create venues for disseminating important information and announcements.
“We don’t think that we have an answer to everything, which is why we’re asking for a business group to come together and help us through what might really help their businesses weather this period,” Reddy said, “and we’re going to do the same with our neighborhoods, and we’re trying to figure out a good way to communicate with the leadership in these neighborhood groups so that information can be disseminated in an effective manner.”
Reddy projected a graphic showing businesses and institutions the city had identified for potential partnerships.
Finally, Reddy recommended the creation of an email newsletter and social media campaigns to regularly update the community.
The commissioners had questions about timing and details. Commissioner Tim Acri wanted to know when the city expected the first communications to the city would come in from the projects, and Downing asked Reddy to provide a more exacting report on when the city’s communications efforts would be rolled out by next week.
“If folks are looking for help in these situations, who should they reach out to?” asked Commissioner Shannon Smith.
Reddy said the online portal would have information about whom to contact within the city for concerns, whether that was businesses looking for incentives to “weather the storm,” as she put it, or residents”worried about how the detour is going to happen and things like that.”
Smith also asked about ways to communicate with all of the business owners in the city, such as consulting information on their city occupational licenses, for the purpose of keeping people informed about the bridge.
Reddy didn’t know off hand, but said, “we can certainly look into it.”
Discussion of the matter ceased there. No official action took place at the meeting, but the commission will likely take up the issue again in the future.