- Covington city staff are projecting a monthly cost of between $7,500 and $9,300 to maintain a common consumption area, not including one-time upfront costs.
- Most of the recurring costs would be associated with staffing police to patrol the area.
- Legislation on the CCA has stalled, and if implemented the CCA would take between four and five months to functionally implement.
Covington has released projected expense figures for maintaining a public drinking area – known officially as a common consumption area, or CCA – in the Central Business District.
The projections were presented to city commissioners at a special meeting Saturday morning. City staff projects an upfront cost of between $5,800 and $6,400, followed by a monthly cost ranging between roughly $7,500 and $9,300, mostly to bankroll police patrols.
The move follows a vote from the Board of Commissioners in November to investigate the monetary costs and safety risks of establishing such an area. Covington Commissioner James Toebbe first proposed the idea of investigating the costs. Vice Mayor Shannon Smith, who owns a business that serves alcohol in the proposed CCA, recused herself from the discussion on Saturday.
Most of the upfront costs would come from waste collection infrastructure (i.e., installing more trash and recycling canisters), installed by the Public Works department. City Manager Sharmili Reddy characterized the public works projections as a “broad brush best estimate.” Monthly costs after the initial installation of the infrastructure was estimated at $733 a month, mostly for trash pickup.
Police expense projections were another matter.
The patrol estimates were based on the most recently proposed operating hours of the CCA: in the evenings on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays (and sometimes Mondays during Bengals and Reds games). Police Chief Justin Wietholter said he deliberately created the projections using salary figures of the highest-paid patrolmen in the department. That way, the city could peel back expenses in the future if the initial patrol presence proved to be excessive.
“This was to provide the worst-case scenario of the cost up front,” Wietholter said.
Projections called for a three-month trial period that could be revised based on how things worked out.
Some of the commissioners weren’t keen on the costs.
“We can’t spend $9,000 a month for the CCA,” Commissioner Tim Acri said, asking why the city felt it had to include police costs.
“I’ve talked to lots of municipalities that have this in place, and they do not have additional police,” Acri said. Acri was the commissioner who first proposed the CCA in April of last year.
Wietholter said that CCAs in other cities had a variety of layouts.
“Cincinnati, their area, they have a sub-station sitting right in the middle of it, so it’s a little bit of a different scenario,” Wietholter said. “Some of the others that I talked to said – and this is another reason for the upfront portion – is they said, when the newness of it was very popular… they had initial stuff that they dealt with. But as the newest wore off, it tended to be like the novelty of the area wore off, it got less and less.”
Toebbe said that cost was important to consider, but qualified that by saying “we typically over budget things.” He was skeptical that the city would need those figures long-term.
“We’re very conservative with our numbers…,” Toebbe said. “We’re looking at $25,000 for a three-month period, which I really don’t think we will need that here.”
The board indefinitely tabled legislation on the CCA in August, and no legislative action related to the CCA occurred at Saturday’s meeting. The city manager estimated that the area, if ever enacted by legislation, would take between four to five months to functionally implement.
Read a more detailed breakdown for projected costs of the CCA, furnished by the city manager’s office, below.