The City of Covington is looking to hire a sidewalk assessment specialist.
Mark Ward’s name appeared as a walk-on item to this week’s caucus meeting; his name had not appeared on the meeting’s agenda beforehand, meaning immediate information about him was limited. A vote to hire him (or not) will take place at the legislative meeting next week, and comments at this week’s meeting suggested that if hired he will get started as soon as possible.
“We would like for him, of course, to start next Wednesday, to start right away inspecting our sidewalks and creating a database,” said Covington Neighborhood Services Director Walt Mace.
Mace said that Ward “comes with some great recommendations” and that “he was interviewed by the assistant city manager and the code enforcement manager.” A representative from the city later informed LINK nky that Ward worked for Cincinnati/Altafiber from 1997 to 2025.
His potential hire is the latest in a push from elected leadership to take a more proactive approach to sidewalk improvement in the city. The commissioners set priorities for the city’s future at a meeting at the end of February; sidewalks were among the priorities named. Former Strategic Infrastructure Initiatives Director Keith Bales stated at that time there was about 800,000 linear feet of sidewalk in Covington.
The new sidewalk specialist’s primary role to start will be to catalog sidewalk conditions throughout the city for the purpose of centralizing such information into a database. City staff and elected officials could then use that information to determine how to handle sidewalk infrastructure moving forward.
Conversations about sidewalks earlier this year included explorations of possibly reforming city ordinance about sidewalk maintenance, which currently mandates that residents repair and maintain sidewalks in front of their properties, but no new ordinance changes in that regard have come before the board.
Sidewalks have also appeared among the campaign priorities of candidates to the new Covington City Council.
“I know that this has been a problem for Covington for quite some time, and the efforts that we’re putting against it, I think, are going to pay dividends for years to come,” said Commissioner Tim Downing. “The idea that we have a community that is walkable, where our sidewalks are safe, that is something that every resident looks for.”
