By Ryan Clark
NKyTribune reporter
After appearing 15 minutes late to their Tuesday night Commission meeting due to what the Mayor called an executive session to discuss personnel, the group added a surprise item to their agenda — Business Manager Allison Donaldson’s resignation, which was met with unanimous acceptance.
Mayor Joseph U. Meyer then went on to explain that a city employee had recently been investigated for “abusing” a city credit card.
“What I want to do now is to address the issue of the reports of a city employee who was abusing the city credit card,” he said. “This problem was uncovered by a city employee and raised immediately through the chain of command. The city manager immediately initiated an investigation and found enough to justify his concerns.”
He said the city manager and others met with the employee and “she resigned on the spot at the request of the city manager.”
He noted that there is an independent law enforcement agency investigating the matter.
“As we speak now, unfortunately, our hands are tied on the details because of the ongoing investigation,” he said. “There’s very much that we simply do not know at this stage and it would not be wise or appropriate to make any comments on the specifics.”
But Meyer did not mince words when it came to his disappointment.
“This case is a fundamental breach of the public trust,” he said. “It is a betrayal of the obligations of every employee and every elected official to the public that we serve. One of my principal goals as a candidate, it seems like many years ago, was to restore the public trust and we have been working hard to restore and maintain that trust through a whole variety of actions that we as a government collectively have taken … This situation is a major setback.
“The public is less likely to believe us when employees steal taxpayer dollars, no matter how small,” he continued. “From the perspective of this entire Board of Commissioners, this will not be tolerated and after the investigation and we know of the full facts — and it may take months — it will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law as the circumstances dictate. We will aggressively to seek to recoup any losses of the taxpayer dollars that may have occurred.”
He did not stop there.
“Unfortunately, this is something that we are also angry about,” he said. “All of the work that we as a body and so many honest, hardworking employees of the city have put in for the past several years has been wiped away through an act that words fail me to describe. It is appalling. So I’m sure we’ll hear more about this as time progresses.”
Also at the meeting:
2:30 a.m. liquor fee
Commissioners heard a first reading of an ordinance that would lower the 2:30 a.m. liquor license fee from $5,000 to $3,000. City staff are also using the opportunity to revise the ordinance to align the annual permit term with the ABC license renewal schedule, which is Dec. 1 to Nov. 30.
In February, Commissioner Ron Washington suggested lowering the 2:30 a.m. liquor license fee to help those with businesses that have been hurt because of COVID.
The ordinance will have a second reading in two weeks.
Dyer promoted
Due to the death of Engineer Dave Studer, the Covington Fire Department had a vacancy in the position.
Commissioners approved the promotion of firefighter Krista Dyer to the position.
Reappointment
Commissioners approved a reappointment for John Steinman to the Covington Motor Vehicle Parking Authority.
Next Meeting
The next regularly scheduled Covington Commission meeting will be a caucus meeting held at 6 p.m., March 15, at the City Building at 20 W. Pike St. in Covington. The meetings can be followed live on Fioptics channel 815, Spectrum channel 203, the Telecommunications Board of Northern Kentucky (TBNK) website, the TBNK Facebook page @TBNKonline, and the TBNK Roku channels.