By Ryan Clark
NKyTribune reporter
After discussing a possible allocation at their regular caucus meeting last week, then meeting to discuss it further in a special session over the weekend, Covington commissioners approved the first set of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding at their regularly scheduled legislative meeting Tuesday night.
In January, the Covington Commission created certain categories or “buckets” for their ARPA funding, things like City Operations, Community Outreach and Public Health.
On Tuesday, Commissioners talked about how to spend money for 11 of those 31 buckets — which represents about $6 million of the nearly $36 million in funding.
Projects included things like parks and playgrounds, a farmers’ market facility, expanding city wi-fi and social service agencies.
But on Saturday, Commissioners decided it made more sense to simply authorize the spending that will be done this fiscal year — which amounts to $140,177 — then authorize spending for about a dozen other programs and projects over the next fiscal year.
“There’s been distributed an amendment, and rather than appropriate the entire $6 million for the balance of this year, the amendment identifies specifically what staff asked for and would appropriate $140,000 and authorize staff to initiate action on about a dozen other programs that will be funded during the next fiscal year,” Mayor Joseph U. Meyer said.
Programs that got funding within the next five weeks:
City Operations: Information Technology Initiatives $30,000
Community Outreach: Community Engagement
$8,000
Public Health: Expand Recreational Programming
$36,216.
Social Services: Read Ready Covington $20,000.
Social Services: Read Ready Covington $5,000.
Tourism Aid: Support for BLINK $40,961.
The city also recommended that they initiate the following 12 prospective programs and projects during the end of this fiscal year, “subject to the limitation that staff are not authorized to spend the city’s ARPA funds on these programs and projects until funding has been formally allocated as part of the city’s annual budget”:
Expand Access to Wi-Fi: Expand Covington Connect
Public Health: New Farmer’s Market
Public Health: Parks, Playgrounds, Pools
Small Business Assistance: Small Business Technical Assistance
Social Services: Nonprofit Services Grant Program
Social Services: Read Ready Covington
MLK Pavers
The city approved a proposal to hire Prus Construction to replace 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 replace them with new concrete pavement. Additional work will include pavement striping, and the limits of the work are between the concrete sidewalk bands located within the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. (12th Street) and Madison Avenue.
Parking Amnesty
Commissioners have approved a parking amnesty period for June.
The Covington Motor Vehicle Parking Authority (MVPA) recommended the parking amnesty period, which means that people with outstanding tickets will have them resolved by paying the original fine and would be absolved of the doubling as a late penalty.
“Essentially, there’s 10,000 or more parking citations that are unpaid within the city that’s totaling over $300,000,” Kyle Snyder, executive director of the Parking Authority, said last week. “Almost all of those have been doubled because they’ve not been paid for over two weeks due to COVID.”
Two Rivers
Commissioners approved the issuance of $13 million in industrial revenue bonds to help with financing the redevelopment of the Two Rivers building located at 535 Scott Street.
Developers want to recreate the space into a 68,550 square-foot class-A office and commercial space.
Financial Update
Assistant Finance Director Jerome Heist gave a quick snapshot of the city’s third-quarter finances, explaining that Covington was at $40.6 million in expenditures and $42.8 million in revenue.
Next Meeting
The next regularly scheduled Covington Commission meeting will be a caucus meeting held at 6 p.m., June 7, 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.