Inside LINK is a regular column from our CEO, Lacy Starling. If you have questions you’d like Lacy to answer, email her at lacy@linknky.com.
In my favorite song from the musical Hamilton, Aaron Burr sings of his longing to be “in the room where it happens” – where decisions are being made for the future of the United States. Burr is not in that room, and he finds it deeply frustrating.
In Northern Kentucky, like in all communities, we also have rooms “where it happens.” Whether they are official government meetings or groups of business leaders gathering to discuss strategy, decisions are being made every day for the future of our community.
LINK tries to be in as many of those rooms as possible, reporting on what is happening at public meetings. I’m also privileged to be in some of those non-public rooms in my role as publisher here at LINK. (I’m rarely the most popular person there – I’ve been not-so-subtly referred to as “the press” more times than I can count.)
In those rooms, we usually find about 200 or so people – active, engaged leaders who I believe care deeply about Northern Kentucky and our future. It may vary a bit from county to county, or issue to issue, but the circles overlap quite a bit.
When I am lucky enough to be invited in, I make the same point over and over again. (People are, I’m sure, sick of hearing me say this by now.) It is great to have those 200 active, engaged leaders in our community. However, we cannot forget the 405,000 other residents of our community, without whom real change will not happen.
No matter how visionary the plan, or bold the strategy, if our community feels like something is being done TO them instead of WITH them, it will fail. In order to move NKY forward, all our voices must be heard and considered, and we, as a community, must agree that’s the direction we want to go.
That’s where LINK comes in. We were created to be the voice of Northern Kentucky. The job of a local newspaper is to not only tell the community what their leaders are doing, but to tell those leaders how their community feels about what’s being done.
We do that any number of ways, from interviewing residents to publishing Op-Eds and letters to the editor. But in the past six months, talking to one or two people at a time has not felt like enough. The room still feels too small, and we want to take bolder action to bring the voices of our residents to the leadership of our community.
To that end, I’m very excited to announce the first LINK Community Quality of Life survey. This month and next, we are asking everyone in NKY to hop on their smartphone or a computer and take a five-minute survey that covers everything from how likely you are to leave NKY to how you feel about things like crime and housing.
LINK worked with NKU’s Center for Economic Analysis and Development to create this survey, and our plan is to conduct it every two years, as a measure of how things are improving (or not) in our community. We also had it translated into Spanish, to help capture the voices of our Spanish-speaking population.
Please go here to take the survey in English or Spanish – https://linknky.com/survey/.
We will be sharing the data gathered with other organizations in the community to help them in their decision-making, and will be using what we have learned to direct our coverage over the next 18 months. In 2025, we’re launching an event series called LINK Community Conversations, and the topics and speakers will be chosen based on the survey results.
Not everyone has the time, the ability or the privilege to be a part of community decision-making, but by taking this survey, you can ensure that your voice will be heard in the room where it happens.
