BLINK foot traffic more than doubled '24 high

 Posted on October 25, 2024  |  1 minutes  |  166 words

If downtown Covington seemed crowded last weekend during the four-day BLINK outdoor light and art event, it was. Very crowded. Especially compared to every other evening of 2024. This chart shows peak foot traffic night by night during the event, as compared to every other evening in 2024, in the area where the BLINK installations were featured. The peak night – Saturday – is more than double the two previous highs during the year, which we think came during St. [Read More]
Development 

Grants for urgent home repairs keep vulnerable Covington families in their homes

 Posted on September 27, 2024  |  1 minutes  |  146 words

More than 130 times in the last 10 years, the City of Covington has helped vulnerable low-income homeowners – including the elderly, veterans, and those with disabilities – fix dangerous and unsafe conditions that could drive them from their homes. In its current setup, the federally funded Homeowner Repair Program offers grants of up to $10,000 to fix owner-occupied, single-family homes in any area of Covington. Eligible repairs include certain electrical problems, plumbing issues (including broken water heaters and leaking pipes), HVAC problems (including carbon monoxide leaks and malfunctioning AC units/furnaces), roofs (plus gutters and downspouts), and accessibility modifications (like wheelchair ramps and handrails). [Read More]
Development 

Grants Helped 14 Neighborhoods

$170K spread throughout The Cov

 Posted on September 16, 2024  |  1 minutes  |  92 words

When neighborhoods have a plan and the desire to improve their communities, they turn to the City for financial help. Covington leaders created the Neighborhood Grant Program in 2019 to enhance the physical appearance of small areas while enhancing the sense of social cohesion through shared projects. Since then, the City has distributed about $170,000 for 37 projects in at least 14 neighborhoods (plus a cemetery/arboretum), including things like tree planting, flower pots, banners, dog-waste stations, festivals, water fountains, signs and benches. [Read More]
Development 

Revenue 'Furnace'

Downtown glows red in a tax revenue heat map

 Posted on August 16, 2024  |  1 minutes  |  75 words

Just under 60 percent of the tax revenue generated in Covington for the City’s General Fund comes from occupational license revenue (which includes both the payroll tax and net profit tax). The General Fund is the operations fund used to pay the salaries of employees who deliver most City services – such as Police, EMS, Fire, Public Works, and Parks & Rec. This heat map shows where that revenue was generated in calendar year 2023. [Read More]
Finance  Development 

Who Recycles?

Percentage of households that participate has increased in every neighborhood

 Posted on August 6, 2024  |  1 minutes  |  105 words

The number of households that participate in the Covington curbside recycling program has grown tremendously in the last eight years. Here are the numbers by neighborhood. Numbers represent the percentage of households who contract for trash pickup that also use a recycling cart. Notice that every single neighborhood has increased over this period. The recycling program carries no additional cost beyond the annual trash collection fee. In all, some 2,410 tons of recyclable material was diverted from landfills in Fiscal Year 2024. [Read More]
Recycling 

Homebuyer Assistance

Helping families achieve the American Dream

 Posted on July 31, 2024  |  1 minutes  |  171 words

In the last 10 years, the City of Covington has helped 426 families buy a home in The Cov by offering help with down payments and closing costs. The best part? The loans are forgiven a little each year the families stay in their house. The attached chart and map show how the loans have been spread across Covington’s residential neighborhoods. For example, there were 187 in Latonia’s four areas, 42 in South Covington, 68 in Peaselburg, and 21 in Eastside. [Read More]
Development 

Home Sales in the Cov

Costs run gamut across neighborhoods

 Posted on July 30, 2024  |  1 minutes  |  139 words

What does a house cost in The Cov? Depends (greatly) on where you look. With the affordability of housing a frequent topic of conversation these days, the City of Covington’s analytics manager took a dive into 2023 sales by neighborhood and found a wide range of prices, with a few outliers. The median sales price in 13 of the 23 neighborhoods was less than $200,000. In seven neighborhoods, it was $161,000 or less. [Read More]
Development 

Covington Median Household Income

2009-2022

 Posted on April 3, 2024  |  1 minutes  |  126 words

The median household income in Covington in 2009 was $38,700. By 2022, that number had grown to $53,800 – an increase of $15,100. Other Kentucky cities of similar size – such as Bowling Green, Elizabethtown, Hopkinsville, Owensboro, and Richmond – showed similar growth in that 13-year period, according to data from the American Community Survey (ACS) from the U.S. Census Bureau. Why is this important? Household income not only improves an individual family’s buying power but is also considered a valuable measure of the relative economic well-being of a city. [Read More]
Development 

Moon Phase or Temperature

Influence on Daily Calls for Police Service

 Posted on November 3, 2023  |  2 minutes  |  275 words

There is a widely held belief that police are busier during a full moon. Why do people believe this? Perhaps the gravitational forces of the full moon cause cyclic fluid shifts between body compartments and thereby trigger emotional disturbances leading to more aggressive and erratic behaviors.1 Or perhaps there is a scintilla of truth to the mythology of the ancient Greeks and Romans and humans actually turn into wolves during the full moon…. [Read More]
Police 

Motorist Assists

January 2021 - July 2023

 Posted on August 21, 2023  |  2 minutes  |  324 words

Since 2017 the Covington Police Department has responded to an average of 54,241 service calls each year (as of July, 2023). A small part of the service that the Covington Police provide is to respond when a person is in need of assistance in a motor vehicle–for example, if they are out of gas, stranded on the interstate, have a flat tire, or need a wrecker, etc. From January 2021 to July 2023, the Covington Police responded to 2,887 calls for assistance by a motorist within the City of Covington. [Read More]
Police