By Greg Paeth
NKyTribune reporter
The Covington City Commission took two quick steps Monday that will create some continuity in the finance department while the city searches for a replacement for Lisa Goetz, who has directed that department for about 19 months.
Goetz resigned as Covington finance director last week to take a position with Boone County Schools.
In a special meeting that took about five minutes, the commission voted 4-0 to appoint operations director Lisa Desmarais as interim finance director. In a second order that was approved by the same margin, the commission approved a temporary $5,000 pay raise for Desmarais and assistant finance director David Matthews.
Each will receive a pay raise of less than $100 a week until a new finance director is hired.
Mayor Sherry Carran and commissioners Bill Wells, Chuck Eilerman and Jordan Huizenga attended the meeting. Commissioner Steve Frank did not.
City Manager Larry Klein said the city needed to have a finance director in place in the event that checks or legal documents needed to be signed by someone holding that title.
Klein said he didn’t think any of the candidates from the late 2013 search for a finance director would be considered for the job this time around. He said the search committee didn’t recommend any of the candidates in 2013, which prompted him to recruit Goetz for the job.
Klein told the commission that it might take three months to find a replacement for Goetz. After the meeting he said he hoped that the city could find a good candidate in a regional search.
Goetz was hired shortly before Christmas in 2013, in the wake of the scandal involving former finance director Bob Due, who is now serving a 10-year prison sentence for stealing nearly $800,000 from the city over a period of about a decade.
She is credited with revamping the finance department procedures and initiating a system of checks and balances that were designed to ensure that employees couldn’t embezzle money in the future.
Goetz said that she and Klein started examining every check that is written and that she routinely examined the documentation that indicates why a check is being issued.
Goetz said the city’s long, sometimes contentious debate over the 2016 budget, which took effect July 1, had nothing to do with her decision to go to work for the Boone County schools.
She said she is a wholehearted supporter of the city and believed the back-and-forth debate over the budget was healthy for the city.
“I’m doing it (changing jobs) for personal reasons. It’s a good opportunity for me. I’m going to be closer to home and I have young children,” said Goetz, who added that she often worked 12-hour days with the city and frequently worked on weekends.
Goetz said she was proud of the fact that she was able to renegotiate some variable rate bonds so that they now have fixed rates of return, secure favorable terms on a bond issue for streets and roads, and reach an agreement on the city’s $3.5 million tax anticipation note, which provides temporary funding for city operations.
Goetz and Linda Schild, director of finance for the schools, said Goetz would begin work on Thursday as an account supervisor who would be overseeing the school system’s payroll.
“We are very fortunate to have someone with her expertise going to work for us,” said Kathy Reutman, a spokeswoman for the schools.
Although Covington, with a population of about 40,000, is the largest city in Northern Kentucky, it is smaller than the school system when measured by the amount of money that it handles every year.
Goetz said the city’s general fund budget is about $47 million and that the city handles another $15 million that comes in from grants, vouchers and other sources.
The school system is the third largest in the state with about 20,000 students and oversees a budget of about $200 million from taxes and other sources, Schild said.
The scandal involving Due surfaced in August of 2013. Due eventually pleaded guilty to charges in a 15-count indictment in March of 2014 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in June of last year. He also was ordered to repay the city to cover its losses on the money that was stolen.
Due said much of the money went to pay for medical expenses and for college tuition for his children. There is no indication that the money was spent for other purposes.