As I learned during my tenure as Covington City Manager and City Solicitor in the 2000s, the City of Covington is a large organization with many moving parts, people, and processes. As a candidate for a seat on the newly expanded Covington City Council, I recognize that, if elected, my role as a legislator in this new form of government will be substantially less involved than my previous management role or the previous role City Commissioners played in the city’s operations. Regardless of the more limited role I would play as City Council member, I plan to focus on four areas of the City’s operations and relationships that are of particular interest to me, and I believe in the best interest of the city’s residents.
Public safety
For me, the top priority in the City of Covington – and in any city, for that matter – is public safety.
Public safety is an integral part of the services that Covington provides to its citizens, but this service does not come cheaply. In fiscal year 2025-26, the City of Covington’s total budget for operational expenses was $74 million. Nearly 60 percent of that budget – approximately $43 million — is earmarked for the operation of the City police and fire/EMS departments. This amount is allocated evenly between the two departments – around $21 million to operate each department.
These public safety departments are among the most vital services the City provides to our residents. These departments protect our families and our properties, create peace of mind, promote economic growth, and improve the quality of life in our City. Fortunately, our police and fire/EMS departments are both outstanding organizations, and we need to ensure that they stay that way and further improve the services they provide to our citizens.
Since 2017, the Covington Police Department has been accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies Inc., which is the gold standard for accreditation of law enforcement agencies in the United States and many other countries. The Covington Police Department is only one of three police agencies in Kentucky to earn this nationally recognized status.
In October 2025, Covington entered into an Interlocal Agreement with Kenton County to provide social workers to assist the Covington Police Department officers in dealing with individuals experiencing addiction and mental health crises.
A 2024 study published in the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology found that due to the dismantling of the mental-health care system in the United States, law enforcement officers are increasingly required to shoulder these responsibilities. This phenomenon not only increases the burden on law enforcement officials and police resources but also results in disproportionately higher arrest and incarceration rates for those involved. On the other hand, social workers assisting these individuals permit police officers to quickly return to the streets to carry out the jobs for which they were trained and allow mental health professionals to do their jobs in concert with our police officers.
This new program is funded through opioid abatement settlement funds the City received from pharmaceutical companies alleged to have been complicit in creating the opioid crisis. Out of the nearly $500 million in settlement funds allocated to the Commonwealth of Kentucky in these settlements, one-half of these funds went to the state, with the remaining half to local governments. Covington is using these funds to pay for its social workers. This important program provides a vital service to our citizens and our police department.
Based on crime statistics, the violent crime rate in Covington (287.9 incidents per 100,000 residents) is below the U.S. average (359 incidents per 100k), and our property crime rate (1,634.8 incidents per 100,000 residents) also is below the U.S. average (1,760 incidents per 100k).
In 2024, the violent crime rate in urban areas in the United States was 46% higher than the nationwide rate. We have recently seen this trend in downtown Cincinnati, where violent crime is up nearly 13% in 2025, including a 60% increase in downtown shootings. Fortunately, this has not been the case in Covington, and I am hopeful that it will remain that way in the future.
The Covington Fire/EMS Department has earned an ISO Class 2 Public Protection Classification, a scoring system for municipal fire protection services. Class 1 is the highest (best) classification, and Class 10 is the lowest. Covington’s rating is based on factors like water supply system, fire inspections, investigations, education, staffing, and emergency communications. Having the second-highest rating means that home insurance rates in Covington are lower than rates in cities with higher ISO ratings.
As residents, we can assist both of these departments by remaining vigilant in our neighborhoods and reporting questionable activities we see in our neighborhoods and assist these departments when they are investigating criminal or arson-related issues.
Neighborhoods and code enforcement
Covington is fortunate to have 19 distinct neighborhoods, several of which have active neighborhood associations. In addition, the Covington Neighborhood Collaborative and the Center for Great Neighborhoods help foster a collective federation of residents who provide a unified voice for these neighborhoods, which in turn helps to influence City policy and improve the quality of life in the neighborhoods.
During my lifetime, I have had the pleasure of living in four of these neighborhoods – Latonia, Wallace Woods, Old Seminary Square, and Licking Riverside – as well as owning three businesses located in downtown Covington.
The diversity of housing, businesses, and residents in Covington’s neighborhoods and the more than two dozen parks and playgrounds located in these neighborhoods are what make our city such a great place to live, work, and play.
When I was Covington City Manager from 2005 to 2009, the City beefed up its Code Enforcement activities, which I believe remains an extremely important department in the City. Code enforcement promotes public safety by enforcing building and housing standards, protects the quality of life in our neighborhoods by preventing blight, holds property owners and absentee landlords accountable for maintaining their properties in good condition, and promotes community health and economic stability.
By ensuring properties in Covington are well-maintained, Code Enforcement officers help protect and enhance the aesthetic and economic value of our neighborhoods. As a result, these neighborhoods are viewed as more desirable and stable, which boosts economic development and community pride. However, some of the City’s neighborhoods still require enhanced code enforcement activities and more robust community policing strategies.
Neglected properties can – and do — attract criminal activity and reduce property values. Visible signs of urban disorder – such as broken windows, graffiti, or litter – often encourage further, more serious crime. Community-focused policing strategies focusing on our neighborhoods, such as the Covington Police Department’s Community Liaison Unit (“CLU”), can help address these issues.
Rather than responding to neighborhood issues only after they escalate into problems, CLU officers work with citizens in our neighborhoods to address the root causes of these issues before they happen, connect struggling families to needed resources, address neighborhood nuisance properties, and mentor youngsters who may need positive role models.
The City needs to continue — better yet, expand — our existing Code Enforcement and Community Policing programs to continue to improve the quality of life in our neighborhoods.
Finances and Economic Development
The lifeblood of our City is economic development and the jobs created by this development. Fortunately, Covington, unlike many smaller cities in our region, has a fairly large workforce that generates payroll taxes to pay for many of the services the City provides to its residents and businesses.
Of the City’s $74 million FY 25-26 budget, nearly 40 percent of the city’s revenue ($29 million) comes from payroll taxes, by far the City’s largest revenue source. The next closest revenue generators – property taxes and insurance license fees – each generate around $10 million and $13 million annually, which is 14 percent and 18 percent of the city’s revenue, respectively.
From an economic standpoint, three areas in the City — downtown Covington, South Covington and Latonia, and the Westside and Mainstrasse neighborhoods — are important revenue generators because of the businesses and jobs located in these areas.
Downtown Covington is home to many of the city’s highest-paid office jobs and professions. South Covington and Latonia also have thousands of jobs due to the operation of Fidelity Investments, Thermo Fischer Scientific, and several other industrial, commercial, and retail businesses there. In the Westside, the Kenton County Government complex houses many state and county governmental agencies, and a number of medical-related jobs are housed at the St. Elizabeth Medical Center-Covington and nearby medical offices. The Mainstrasse neighborhood has many restaurants, taverns, retail outlets, offices, and other businesses.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the federal government’s efforts to reduce the size of its workforce, Covington has endured significant financial hits to its payroll revenue in recent years – especially at its two largest employers, Fidelity Investments and the Internal Revenue Service.
Before the pandemic, Fidelity Investments employed about 4,000 people at its Covington campus. During the pandemic and afterward, the Fidelity workforce in Covington — and the payroll taxes this company paid to the City — dropped significantly as many of these employees began working from home, where they continue to work. While some Fidelity employees have returned to the Covington campus in recent months, the number of employees now working at the Covington campus is about one-half the number of those who worked there before the pandemic hit.
At one time, approximately 4,000 IRS employees worked in downtown Covington. In 2016, the IRS announced that its business-tax return processing facility — the 23-acre complex built in the 1960s near the Ohio River, often referred to as the “flat top” — was no longer needed and would be shut down. In the years that followed, employees at this facility were either laid off, took buyouts, or transferred to other IRS locations.
In June 2025, the IRS eliminated another 750 jobs in its other facilities in Covington, which cost the City about $1.5 million in lost revenue and created what was expected to be a $4 million revenue shortfall during this fiscal year (FY 2025-26). Over the past four years, the City has been using federal funds it received under the American Rescue Plan Act, which was designed to assist cities with pandemic-related revenue loss, but these funds are quickly dwindling and must be expended by December 2026.
Not only did Covington lose significant revenue over the past couple of years, but it is also incurring around $56 million in debt related to the purchase of property and the development of the Central Covington Riverfront (“CCR”) project and the new City Hall in downtown Covington. The City also has older debt from previous bond issues it passed in 2018.
While a new City Hall is long overdue and the CCR can be a transformational project for the City, the debt service related to these projects and past bond issues, if not properly managed, could hamper the City’s future finances and success.
Based on budget documents, it appears that the City’s annual debt this Fiscal Year will be just over $4 million, which will only increase in the future as the City continues to tap into this borrowed money to pay for construction and development costs associated with these projects. The City needs to closely monitor this debt situation in the coming years to make sure it does not become problematic.
Covington Public Schools
I was educated in Covington public schools: Eighth District Grade School in Latonia and Holmes High School. The education I received at these schools provided me with a strong foundation for my post-secondary education and my future careers as a journalist, lawyer, business owner, and city manager.
Although the most recent school ratings released by the Kentucky Department of Education in November 2025 showed some improvement in Covington public schools, our school district still lags behind many other school districts in Kentucky, including most other school districts in Northern Kentucky.
Due to these poor marks, some couples considering having families or those with preschoolers are reluctant to move into Covington because of the schools. In addition, families may move out of the city when their children are approaching school age or send their kids to Covington’s private or parochial schools rather than its public schools. In my mind, a high-achieving, thriving public school district is what the City needs to attract more families to the City and keep existing ones in our community.
While I recognize that the mission of Covington Independent Public Schools (“CIPS”) is more difficult than many other school districts – with obstacles such as poverty, homelessness, lack of parental involvement, and students learning English as a second language — other urban school districts around the country and in Kentucky have found ways to excel despite these challenges.
Some urban school districts in Chicago, Charleston, and Washington, D.C., are among the highest performing school districts in the nation. Locally, I’ve seen smaller urban school districts – Ludlow and Dayton Independent School Districts come to mind – successfully improve their schools in recent years.
While CIPS is a separate taxing district from the City of Covington and an autonomously operating entity, the school district and the City must work closely together as partners to achieve improvements in our public schools. Unfortunately, the past relationship between the City and the school district officials often has been strained; however, I believe that dynamic has improved during more recent city administrations and needs to continue to improve.
In the coming months, the Covington Board of Education is in a unique position to change CIPS’ culture and the trajectory of the school district (and the City of Covington) by selecting a new superintendent to lead the district.
The school board started this process in September 2025 with stakeholder outreach meetings, followed by a community engagement process in October and November. In December, January, and February, the board will interview and vet superintendent candidates as part of its national search. The board is expected to name a new superintendent in the spring of 2026.
The school board has promised that it will guide the superintendent-search process by the following principles and values:
The new school superintendent should have strong leadership skills, including the ability to create and articulate an inspiring vision and mission that guides the school district toward meeting ambitious goals. The school board and superintendent should adopt a long-term strategic plan with input from faculty, staff, and students to address the district’s current challenges and strengthen its teaching and learning systems.
Finally, the new superintendent must execute this strategic plan, including having the fortitude needed to make the tough decisions that previous superintendents and administrations have avoided and to hold people accountable for their actions — or inaction — in achieving the goals outlined in this plan. A key to achieving these expectations is having high expectations of the faculty, staff, and students and making all of them accountable for their actions.
The City of Covington, its City Council members, and City staff must do all they can to partner with Covington’s public schools to make this dream a reality and make the City a welcoming place for families from all socio-economic backgrounds.
Paid for by the Jay Fossett for Covington City Council Campaign