Erlanger considers integrating S.M.A.R.T. goals into community task forces

STORY AND PHOTOS BY NATHAN GRANGER | LINK NKY REPORTER

Erlanger City Council will discuss revising the application requirements for its city task forces at council meetings in June following discussions at meetings in late April and May.

“What I would propose is that if the rest of council agreed with this, that we would revisit every task force that’s existing and fill this application out, and kind of reboot each task force,” council member Tyson Hermes said at a May 16 meeting.

Erlanger currently has task forces for parks, city beautification, diversity and inclusion, budgeting and fire and emergency services, among others, focused on specific neighborhoods or projects.

“I think it’s important that we make sure that the tasks that we’re trying to achieve are for the benefit of, as the municipal order says, the staff, residents or tax-paying businesses of the city,” Hermes said.

Unless clear goals are laid out for each task force, the groups could easily become aimless and expensive, he said. When implemented poorly or inefficiently, he argued, the groups place unnecessary strain on city resources and taxpayer dollars, since meetings are required to be advertised, staffed and recorded. Minutes from the meetings also have to be produced and stored, which further strains city resources.

To that end, Hermes recommended instituting a uniform application process in which a clear goal would need to be established before the formation of a task force. He recommended the use of S.M.A.R.T.

Julie Bishop

Clearlight® Dealer

goals to ensure this occurred.

S.M.A.R.T. goals are a common practice in business management. Proponents contend they are an effective way of setting and reaching goals in a variety of situations. The acronym represents qualities of goal-setting the model touts: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timeframe-bound.

This was not the first time Hermes has raised the idea in public discussion.

At the first meeting of the Erlanger diversity and inclusion task force in late April, Hermes expressed worry that the new group didn’t have a clear goal beyond diversity itself.

“I think it’s a noble cause, potentially a great group,” Hermes said at that meeting. “I just don’t know if it is an appropriate city task force.”“What we’re trying to gear the task forces to is actually accomplishing a task, and, I mean, what you’ve got is huge.”

He recommended that the group focus on specific pieces of legislation. The diversity and inclusion task force took up the issue of setting S.M.A.R.T. goals at its meeting in May, according to its published agenda.

At the May 16 council meeting discussing task forces more broadly, Hermes said that even some of the task forces he started had gone adrift.

“Toward the beginning of the year, I created a task force called Keeping an Eye on Kenton County,” Hermes said. “Now, you know, those meetings are really not public meetings. It’s just us attending (the county’s) meeting. … We don’t really ever have a public notice. We don’t have meeting minutes. … It made me realize the distinction between accomplishing a task for the city and just raising awareness.”

Council members broadly agreed that refining the task force application process, even if they didn’t end up using S.M.A.R.T. goals specifically, was a good idea.

Mayor Jessica Fette, who initially proposed the change from committees to task forces, gave her thoughts on the matter.

“My original intent with making that change was to not just have committees that reported what departments were doing, but to have an actual, almost like a project team that was set out to accomplish a very particular goal,” Fette said.

“So there’s a task that we’re trying to accomplish, and then once the task is accomplished, the task force sunsets just like any kind of project team,” Fette said.

To illustrate her point, she gave the example of the parks task force.

“One of the main things that we do in that task force is prepare for the next fiscal year’s budget and what we’re going to propose and what parks we’re focusing on,” Fette said.

After some discussion, Hermes agreed to integrate the council members’ comments into the next draft of the task force application and ask the city clerk to include it in files for the next council meeting.

Freedom Day Parade will kick off Northern Kentucky Juneteenth celebration

The Northern Kentucky Juneteenth celebration will kick off on June 17 with the Freedom Day Parade.

The parade will line up at Robbin and Prospect streets near Randolph Park at 9 a.m. and will head down Greenup Street, concluding at the Covington Plaza.

The Black Excellence Awards will follow the parade at 11 a.m., with guest speaker Tracey Farley-Artis, organizer of the Midwest Regional Black Family Reunion in Cincinnati.

There will be live music from Rhythm of Soul, The Rollins Davis Band and Soul Pocket, along with activities for kids, a senior circle for seniors, food trucks and more.

For more information, contact Phyllis Tyler at 859-652-4978 or Dee Roetting at 859760-1081.

Covington: Dwindling payroll taxes to blame for general fund budget shortfall

“Covington leaders are faced with filling significant holes in the City’s General Fund budget caused by decreases in payroll tax revenue as major employers in Covington are permitting employees to work from home and thus – if they live outside Covington – to pay their local taxes elsewhere,” the press release reads.

The release states that the city has “an anticipated hole of $5 million to be filled by June 30. As City leaders put together the budget for the 2024 fiscal year, which starts July 1, they anticipate a $7.2 million hole.” employees are physically working.”

In other words, if someone is employed at a company located in Covington but works out of the region, the taxes collected on that person’s pay will go to the area where they are actually completing the work.

Payroll tax is an outsized portion of the city’s revenue.

The city of Covington’s general fund expenditures have exceeded its revenue, according to a recent quarterly financial report presented to the City Commission on May 23. The deficit applies only to the city’s general fund.

According to statements from the city’s finance director, Steve Webb, and a press release, the city is attributing its budget shortfall to dwindling payroll tax collections from local employers.