It is time to allocate the funds.
In January, the Covington Commission created certain categories or “buckets” to invest in its American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), things like City Operations, Community Outreach and Public Health.
On Tuesday, as part of their scheduled caucus meeting, commissioners kicked off how to spend money on 11 of the 31 buckets, which is about $6 million of the roughly $36 million in funding.
The main ones include:
“So what everyone needs is our ordinances that authorize us to pass them, so we can remove them from this budget for the fiscal year and the processes can begin,” said Mayor Joseph U. Meyer.
The town heard a proposal to rent Prus Construction to upgrade the brick pavers at the intersection of Madison Avenue and Martin Luther King (12th Street) with concrete.
For $217,365, Prus Construction will remove the existing brick pavers and concrete subbase and upgrade them with new concrete siding. Additional paintings will come with pavement layout and paint barriers will be located between the concrete sidewalk strips at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. (12th Street) and Madison Avenue.
Two bids were received, Hendy for $306,960 and Prus Construction for $217,365. 00.
Staff presented the value to Prus Construction and the proposal will be on the approval schedule next week.
parking amnesty
The Covington Motor Vehicle Parking Authority (MVPA) commissioners grant a parking amnesty in June.
This means that other people with notable fines can resolve them by paying the original fine and would be exempt from duplication as a late payment penalty.
“Essentially, there are 10,000 or more parking tickets that go unpaid in the city and in total more than $300,000,” said Kyle Snyder, executive director of the Parking Authority. “Almost all of them have doubled, as they have been paid for more than two weeks due to COVID. “
Snyder said he has shown that deals like that work.
“We think it will motivate a lot of other people to come and do this,” he said. “Research has shown in other municipalities that 30-50% of other people benefit from this. “
The Commissioners have the proposal on the consent schedule for next week.
Two rivers
The town is requesting the issuance of $13 million in commercial earnings bonds to fund the redevelopment of the Two Rivers construction at 535 Scott Street.
Developers need to recreate the area in a 68,550-square-foot advertising and Class A area.
The proposal has been included in next week’s consent agenda.
Academy of Heritage Professions
A national representative made a brief presentation on the workforce research in the Covington Academy of Heritage Trades proposal.
Consultant Donovan Rypkema of PlaceEconomics said, “Virtually all of the findings of this report are the creation of the Covington Academy of Heritage Trades. “
The city announced the Academy in October 2021, that by “recognizing the growing need for specialized structure skills amid the slow extinction of the so-called ‘lost arts’ of historic preservation” it hopes to create a solution that “also addresses the needs of the city. “Cursed challenge of underemployment. “
The message is simple: Learn an industry and a job.
Among the findings, Rypkema noted:
• 94: The number of jobs per year already supported through permitting activity in Covington National and Local Historic Districts since 2013 alone.
Next meeting
The next assembly of the Covington Commission will be a legislative assembly at 6 p. m. May 24 at the city building at 20 W. Pike St. in Covington.
The meetings can be followed on Fioptics 815, Spectrum 203, the Telecommunications Board of Northern Kentucky (TBNK) website, TBNK Facebook page @TBNKonline, and TBNK Roku channels.
© 2016 Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism. All rights reserved.