LINK Kenton Reader SUPER ISSUE - Volume 4, Edition 13 - February 20, 2026

KENTON

VOLUME 4, ISSUE 13 — FEBRUARY 20, 2026

SUPER ISSUE

REACHING ALL 173,000 HOMES IN NORTHERN KENTUCKY

linknky.com

What does it cost for NKY to be … NKY? A look at what we spend to be separate

By Meghan Goth

INSIDE: Does NKY’s fragmentation hurt federal, state funding? p5 The cost to educate Northern Kentucky’s kids p6 How NKY’s makeup affects your tax bill p10 Keeping Northern Kentucky safe comes with a cost p12

“N

orthern Kentucky is bigger than Lexington and Bowling Green combined.”

If you’ve ever talked to Brent Cooper, you’ve probably heard him say this. Cooper is the president and CEO of the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, which works to support local businesses and promote a vibrant economy.

And he is proud to champion the region to anyone who will listen.

While Cooper said working together is Northern Kentucky’s super power, he also thinks the region would benefit significantly from expanding its ability to advocate for its cities and counties.

Counties slightly separated

Continues on page 4

ALSO INSIDE: Preparing for college (or your kids’ college)

p15

How to prepare financially to pay for a wedding

p16

Getting ready for retirement starts now

p18

Budgeting amid uncertain circumstances

p19

The hardest part about budgeting can be getting started. Photo provided | Towfiqu Barbhuiya via Unsplash

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2 FEBRUARY 20, 2026

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What does the CityBeat purchase mean for LINK nky?

PRESIDENT & CEO Lacy Starling EXECUTIVE EDITOR Meghan Goth SPORTS EDITOR Evan Dennison LINK nky Kenton Reader is published weekly by LINK Media LLC, 31 Innovation Alley, Covington, KY 41011.

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O

n December 5, LINK Media, the parent company of LINK nky, bought CityBeat, the 31-year-old alternative weekly newspaper in Cincinnati.

It was not a decision we came to lightly, and I wanted to take this opportunity to explain to (literally) everyone in Northern Kentucky why we did it.

When we founded LINK in 2021, our mission was to bring news back to Northern Kentucky. The group of nonprofits, business leaders and community organizations who incubated and launched LINK recognized that Northern Kentucky was not being served by the news ecosystem that existed: a combination of large newsrooms across the river that only dipped into NKY when there was a car crash, a bridge fire or a shooting. The small digital publications already here in NKY didn’t have the scale to cover everything that was happening in our community of 405,000 people.

But in addition to our first priority of serving the NKY community, we also wanted to create a model for how local news could thrive in other places. We wanted to create something replicable and scalable, whether that meant someone taking our model and replicating it elsewhere, or us scaling into other markets as LINK. We spent four years building LINK nky into the community good that it is now a newsroom serving all three counties of Northern Kentucky, covering absolutely as much as we possibly can, from high school sports to our complex elections.

And in late October, when we were approached by the folks at CityBeat to see if we would be interested in buying their paper, we saw it as an opportunity to do several things:

Save an important local voice. CityBeat has been around more than three decades, and has served an important role, covering news, arts, culture, music and food in a way that no one else did, and no one else is anymore.

Use our back office to support expanded local news. LINK has strong back office, sales and production staff who had capacity to support another publication. Rather than let CityBeat disappear, we are able to use our systems and processes to make it stronger than ever.

Provide financial resilience to LINK. A second publication means twice as much advertising to sell, without twice as much cost. That is important in ensuring LINK nky continues to be a sustainable source of news in our community into the future.

But what does all that mean for you, a LINK reader? What will change for you?

Not much.

If you are a reader, LINK nky isn’t changing any of our coverage. We’ll still be attending city and county government meetings, covering the election in 2026, showing up at high school sporting events and telling the stories of our community. We will be able to pull in coverage from CityBeat now, which means we will have more arts and culture stories about Northern Kentucky.

We still won’t be covering Cincinnati here at LINK nky.

If you are a donor, first, THANK YOU for your support. LINK nky cannot survive without our donors. Second, any money donated to LINK nky through the NKY Community Journalism Fund STAYS in Northern Kentucky. Those dollars will not be used to support reporting in Cincinnati.

We have a separate fund for that - the CityBeat Press Club Fund.

to buy advertising for both LINK nky and CityBeat in one place. We have increased our sales team in order to handle selling in both publications, and we have great rates and packages to reach whichever audience you want - NKY, Cincinnati or the combined region.

In short, what you see on the page or screen will stay the same, and what you don’t see (the behind the scenes revenue generation and production) will be able to take advantage of the economies of scale a second publication brings.

As always, I’m happy to answer any and all questions you might have. Just email me at lacy@linknky.com.

IF YOU’D LIKE TO DONATE If you'd like to support the work LINK is doing in Northern Kentucky, donate here

SCAN ME! All funds donated to the NKY Community Journalism fund stay in NKY to support public-interest journalism

If you are an advertiser, now you’ll be able FEBRUARY 20, 2026 3

A piano is easier to pick up with 100 people than two, said the Chamber’s Brent Cooper, who used the analogy to encourage collaboration. Photo provided | Nick Russill via Unsplash

Merging Northern Kentucky would be much more complicated than merging onto the highway. Photo provided | Chris Linnett via Unsplash

Continued from page 1

ing a city small and independent maintains a sense of home as how a bigger official region could create more opportunity.

What exactly that would look like could take many forms. There already exist organizations such as the OneNKY Alliance and meetNKY, which advocate for the region in various ways. There’s also the idea of consolidation, ranging from some version of a city-county merger similar to Louisville to an interlocal agreement allowing NKY’s counties to formally govern together.

“A lot of people think two people in a room can get a lot more done than 100 and sometimes I agree with that,” said Cooper, who thinks he may have stolen the line from a Marvel movie. “That is true, unless you have to move a piano.”

To continue with the analogy, Cooper said, Northern Kentucky has a lot of pianos that need to be moved – and no single city or county can do that on their own.

Louisville and Jefferson County voters approved a merger in 2000. It became official in 2003, and Louisville’s Mayor, Jerry Abramson, was elected the first mayor of the consolidated Louisville Metro.

Proponents of a merger often cite this shared voice as a way to better advocate for lower taxes and more federal and state funding. A merger is also seen as a way to consolidate police and fire services, and even schools.

Opponents point to community identity and a sense of place that could be lost if they are blended into a larger city or county. A community made up of smaller governments, some say, makes those governments more accessible.

“Often we talk about ‘we have too many cities,’” said Shane Noem, the founder and president of Roebling Solutions. “But at the same time, we can influence our schools and cities easily because they are accessible and we can run for those offices because they are easily accessible.”

Noem did not share an opinion about whether a merger is or isn’t a good idea, but this sentiment of creating a more accessible community came up often in our reporting for this Super Issue.

Greg Fischer succeeded him, serving from 2011 to 2023. In an interview for a 2019 Connecticut Mirror story about consolidation, Fischer said the merger streamlined government and strengthened economic development.

We have broached the topic before, talking to those who believe the region would have more say at the statehouse or others who say they don’t like the idea because of how it could affect taxes. We’ve looked at the pros and the cons, and how other places, like Louisville, have made things work.

“We speak with one voice, the benefit of which cannot be overstated,” Fischer said in that interview.

It’s an amorphous idea, something that can be hard to really get your brain around. One could just as easily understand how keep-

For this Super Issue, we decided to do something different: We looked at the numbers. We wanted to know: How much does it cost for Northern Kentucky to be three separate counties, with 36 different cities? How much does it cost to have 13 public school districts; a patchwork of public safety services stretching across the region; and taxing categories one business owner called a ‘logistical nightmare’?

From certain angles, what we found looks like Northern Kentucky is benefitting from its unique makeup and should keep on chugging. From other angles, it looks like consolidation is a necessary endeavor to move the region forward.

Isn’t it obvious that one big school district would have fewer costs than 13 smaller ones?

Turns out, that’s a lot more complicated to answer than it seems, Northern Kentucky University Professor Ginni Fair told us.

“I think that the approach to the whole discussion really depends on regional priorities and the issues, and it’s such a multifaceted concept,” Fair said.

An ability to share things like mental health resources or occupational therapists would be a huge plus, but that doesn’t necessarily come from consolidating schools, Fair said.

Closing one district may lower costs for that community directly, but those costs have to be picked up somewhere.

“You have to have more staff,” Fair said. “It’s not an absorption that happens without the increase in needing staff too.”

Go to Page X to find out what it costs to educate Northern Kentucky’s students – and whether it might be cheaper if there were fewer districts.

Adding numbers that exist is one thing, but it’s harder to determine how much money a region isn’t getting.

“It’s impossible to know what we’re missing out on,” Cooper said. “These grants don’t come out and say, ‘See, you didn’t apply, and so you lost X amount of money.’”

But Northern Kentucky is definitely bringing in federal and state dollars, thanks to a collection of people and organizations dedicated to collaboration within the region and outside of it.

Learn more about how NKY compares to other Kentucky cities when it comes to how funding is allocated, and whether that’s costing us, on Page X. Speaking of complicated: We could fill up our website explaining the nuances of tax codes in Northern Kentucky and you’d still be confused.

We set out to learn whether we’d save money if there were fewer regulations, codes or taxing districts. Some of us would, we found out, and some of us wouldn’t. The answer is nuanced, but might help you decide your opinion on the situation.

On Page X, we look at local taxing systems, how consolidation could work, and whether it would save money for Northern Kentuckians.

While some areas, like Cincinnati, have a more consolidated public safety system, Northern Kentucky has a collection of public safety agencies spread across its three counties.

We learned of successful consolidations that have already happened between public safety departments in NKY, and we compared what our costs look like in NKY compared to other cities in Kentucky. Go to Page X to learn how much it costs to fund public safety in NKY. This is a dense issue, so take your time with it. Go to LINKnky.com to read this edition’s digital stories or share them with your friends or family.

Please also check out the back half of the issue for ways you can prepare for the big financial stuff in life … or how to start from scratch if you’ve never budgeted before.

As always, thanks for reading.

Northern Kentucky leaders laud the region’s ability to work together, but some say the area’s unique makeup is hindering us. Photo provided | Shane Rounce via Unsplash

4 FEBRUARY 20, 2026

Federal and state funding systems often take population into account when considering how to allocate money, and advocates for consolidation say this is hurting the region’s ability to bring in funding for some of our most vulnerable.

Brent Cooper sits on the Managing Board of LINK nky, which oversees the business operations of LINK but has no say in editorial matters.

Would NKY receive more funding if it were one big place?

By Case Fenner

velopment are distributed to entitlement communities, which include Fayette and Jefferson counties in Kentucky. An entitlement community is defined as a city with a population of 50,000 or greater, a principal city, or an urban county with a population of 200,000 or greater. The remaining 30% is allocated to areas not defined as an entitlement community – and that includes Northern Kentucky.

W

hat is Northern Kentucky?

If you ask LINK nky, it’s Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties (at least, that’s our coverage area).

If you ask The Northern Kentucky Health Department, the region is made up of Boone, Campbell, Kenton and Grant counties.

The Census also includes Gallatin, Pendleton and Bracken counties in that list.

Do these varied definitions of what counties make up Northern Kentucky make it difficult to obtain federal, state or nonprofit funding to the area?

What local leaders have described as a roadblock to vital funding for cities, counties, nonprofits and everything in between is one of the reasons some have been advocating for years for some sort of consolidation.

“To anyone that has recently moved here or a visiting tourist, Northern Kentucky looks like one big place,” NKY Chamber President Brent Cooper told LINK nky in 2019. “In my opinion, we are.”

Cooper is still championing consolidation.

“We’re bigger than Bowling Green and Lexington combined,” Cooper said in a recent interview. “I want people to know it.”

Cooper said the region shouldn’t allow legislators or anyone else to be confused about how big Northern Kentucky is.

One huge reason?

The idea that that confusion may, in turn, affect federal, state and nonprofit funding.

“It’s impossible to know what we’re missing out on,” Cooper said. “These grants don’t come out and say, ‘See, you didn’t apply, and so you lost X amount of money.’”

How does it work?

The way decisions are made about who gets what federal and state funding is … complicated.

Kentucky’s Continuum of Care Regions. Graphic provided | Kentucky Housing Corporation

Tara Johnson-Noem would know.

She’s the executive director of the Northern Kentucky Area Development District, a coalition of local officials and personnel who collaborate across eight NKY counties.

“We access large, complex state and federal grants,” she said, “and administer complex state and federal programs.”

The group, which works to find grants for Boone, Kenton, Campbell, Carroll, Gallatin, Grant, Owen and Pendleton counties, saw a 7% drop in federal revenue in 2025.

But the funds the organization distributed in 2024 represented an 11% increase from the year before. The group is still almost 4% above where they were in 2023.

Looking at state and local funding, numbers have increased dramatically. In 2024, local funds to the NKADD were $1,829,743; in 2025, they were $2,388,888 – an almost 32% increase. State funding over the same time grew nearly 23%.

Looking at allocations from the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, the state’s largest county, Jefferson, with a population hovering just under 800,000, received almost $150 million. Fayette, with a population of about 330,000, received $62,768,488.

Combining Boone, Kenton and Campbell’s funds – with a total population of about 413,000 – the region received just over $76 million.

So while the process to bring that money in may be a little more complicated than

if it were one single region, Northern Kentucky – however many counties and cities you consider it to be – is currently getting funding.

It’s a testament, some local leaders say, to how natural it is for people in the region to work together.

“Our ability to work around the fragmentation in NKY is a tribute to the cooperation we see every day through our elected officials as well as our business and community leaders,” said Karen Finan, president and CEO of the OneNKY Alliance. “Understanding the impact of a project or funding on the three-county area demands deliberate strategy, vision and long term cooperation.”

People and organizations across Northern Kentucky are constantly working to keep that cooperation alive.

Even so, many of the systems designed to bring in state funding weren’t designed for Northern Kentucky’s unique makeup, which can make getting grants (you guessed it) even more complicated.

There are many federal and state housing programs, and each operate in different and nuanced ways, but Continuum of Care allocations demonstrate how funding in Northern Kentucky – with a combined population of 413,005 – might look differently in the eyes of HUD or other federal or state programs than it does now: Three separate counties (Boone County’s population is just over 144,000, Kenton’s is almost 175,000, and Campbell’s is 94,000).

Because Northern Kentucky nonprofits historically receive less governmental funding than other parts of the state, said Horizon Community Foundation President and CEO Nancy Grayson, local philanthropy is not just important, but essential.

“Horizon exists to bring donors, businesses, and organizations together around a shared commitment to this region,” Grayson said. “By uniting resources and aligning giving with our community’s most pressing needs, we are creating a more coordinated, strategic approach to supporting Northern Kentucky nonprofits and strengthening the quality of life for the people who live and work here.”

As the Northern Kentucky Chamber’s Cooper put it: “When Northern Kentucky works together, we can grow our common wealth.”

The Kentucky Housing Corporation leads the state’s efforts to develop the continuum of care program, which applies for funding on behalf of agencies and nonprofits that serve those experiencing homelessness.

That program is called the Kentucky Balance of State Continuum of Care.

Kentucky has 120 counties, and the state’s continuum of care advocates on behalf of 118 of those counties.

Jefferson and Fayette counties, however, advocate on behalf of themselves.

So there are three CoCs, so to speak, in Kentucky: Jefferson, Fayette and the Balance of State.

While the state housing corporation does not mention population directly when it comes to why some of those two counties are not included in the Balance of State CoC in Kentucky, according to Congress.gov, population plays at least a part.

The Kentucky Housing Corporation’s Balance of State Continuum of Care is in charge of applying for grants for all of the state – except Jefferson and Fayette counties. Chart provided | Kentucky Housing Corporation

About 70% of Community Development Block Grants allocated through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban De-

Horizon Community Foundation provides support to local nonprofits, filling a vital funding gap.

Photo provided | Horizon Community Foundation Instagram

FEBRUARY 20, 2026 5

How much does it cost to educate Northern Kentucky’s kids?

NKY students participate in the Start of School Assistance Program. Photo provided | Leigh Taylor via EducateNKY

By Haley Parnell

A

pril Draine moved to Northern Kentucky with her husband and kids in 2022.

It was a seller’s market, and they only had a few days to find a home in a community they liked with schools they thought would be a good fit for their children.

Draine’s family relied on their realtor’s advice on the area and the schools, since they didn’t have another point of reference.

With so many options, the Draines ended up in Boone County Schools because it was the best mix of home availability and affordability, school rating and property taxes for their family.

But Draine’s kids didn’t have the same experiences that their realtor and the people she knew experienced, and they considered moving – something that would not have been an option in, say, Cincinnati, with only one school district to choose from.

They ended up staying put, mostly thanks to relationships Draine developed with her kids’ principals.

“There are some great schools and teachers in NKY and after 3 1/2 years of being here, I’ve definitely learned there are more ‘systems’ in place that will require deep time and investment to get the most for your specific child and their overall experience,” Draine said.

Northern Kentucky has 13 public school districts that serve a population of about 413,000. Compare that to Cincinnati, with one public school district serving 315,000 people.

Why does Northern Kentucky have so many school districts, and is that fragmentation costing us – financially or otherwise?

6 FEBRUARY 20, 2026

How public schools work in NKY Kentucky’s 1838 education law established the state’s first system of free education, according to the Kentucky Historical Society. The legislation established a system that included a state superintendent, state board of education, and county board of education.

But the law didn’t require local taxation for schools.

That meant wealthy communities could choose to support schools through taxation, but those that couldn’t, well ….

Couldn’t.

“Through locally elected boards, those communities that did elect to support schools through taxation were granted almost total control over the administration of schools,” according to a report from the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission.

The result was a collection of small, locally funded districts that operated mostly independent of each other and the state board.

Fast forward about 100 years to 1934, when Kentucky decided to create two types of school districts: county school districts and independent school districts. Independent districts had to have at least 200 students enrolled – a requirement that is still in place today (though one district – Southgate – doesn’t meet that requirement, with just 169 students).

The decision effectively landlocked independent districts by not providing for boundary expansion, according to the report.

Today, an independent district is defined as “those school districts whose geographic boundaries are defined not by the county lines that define most districts, but by his-

toric boundaries within counties,” according to the Legislative Research Commission report. In short, independent districts are the ones that didn’t merge with the county in 1934.

Northern Kentucky, according to the Kentucky School Board Association, has 10 independent school districts, which is the largest cluster of independent districts in the state. The state has 51 total independent schools.

These districts, according to the Legislative Research Commission report, represent the extremes of demographics and typically make up the highest and lowest in terms of poverty and achievements.

When considering NKY, this polarization can be seen in places like Newport and Fort Thomas. While the districts are within a few miles of each other, 89.8% of Newport students are considered “economically disadvantaged” per the Kentucky Department of Education, with 90.4% of Fort Thomas considered “non-economically disadvantaged.”

The closure was emotional for much of the community, which felt a sense of loss and uncertainty they expressed at school board meetings at the time.

Debbie Burton, whose three children went to Silver Grove, said she was against consolidation at first.

“I moved to Silver Grove, oddly enough, for the small district,” Debbie Burton said.

But her son, Christopher, told LINK nky predecessor River City News that many students actually transitioned pretty well.

“Switching over wasn’t too difficult,” he said. “I caught onto it pretty well. It’s always kind of like the same thing for me really, just another school year.”

And while looking at it from a cost-benefit perspective, it can seem like a no-brainer to close a low-performing school with few resources and funding, pragmatic solutions can feel dismissive of the emotional elements that go into a decision such as school consolidation.

When looking at academic performance, this is also mirrored. In the 2021-22 school year, Newport received the lowest and second lowest score the state offers on its state report card for its elementary, middle and high schools, while all the Fort Thomas schools received the top performance rating.

“One of the things that really is a hallmark of a smaller school district is community and strong local identity,” said Ginni Fair, a dean and professor of education at Northern Kentucky University.

A local district dissolves

“I think that the approach to the whole discussion really depends on regional priorities and the issues, and it’s such a multifaceted concept,” Fair said. “I really like the thought around sharing services and co-oping models that allow for maybe even some mobility for different services across district lines, while still maintaining that local function and buy-in from those communities.”

In 2019, Silver Grove Independent shut down, consolidating with the Campbell County School District. At the time of its closure, the district had just 211 students, and graduating classes leading up to the closure often had fewer than 10 students, City Council member Joe Pelle said at the time.

When looking at school consolidation, Fair said, research is mixed and limited.

What are the options?

While it might seem like an obvious solution to, say, combine all River City districts into one, independent districts cannot consolidate in the state of Kentucky.

So what are the options?

The first choice is to leave things as they are.

Because there are so many small districts in NKY and people can simply move if a district doesn’t work for their family, NKU history professor Eric Jackson said there’s little political will to do much about it.

“There’s no reason to change it,” Jackson said. “People can move. So you don’t have to change the structures – if they don’t like the structures, they just move, right?”

In short, he said, these long-standing structures work well for some groups, which makes major reforms like consolidation a hard sell.

But that leaves other groups, especially those who are economically disadvantaged, with few options.

NKU’s Fair said another downside of having so many small school districts is that some specialized services or programs aren’t provided.

“Advanced placement opportunities, sometimes mental health capacity, or nurses, occupational therapists, specialists that maybe a smaller district can’t provide, but some shared resources across districts could,” Fair said. “It’s harder sometimes to find staffing in smaller urban or rural settings, and it’s less difficult to find those same staffing connections in larger dis-

tricts. So, sharing some of those resources would help meet some of the needs of the smaller districts, for sure.”

A second option is to close the smaller districts.

Those students would then go to their county school.

In Silver Grove, Council Member Pelle said the district ranked second to last in ACT scores in the state in 2018. They also had some of the lowest test scores in the state.

Pelle said he was encouraged that those students had access to one of the top 20 school districts in the state after the merger.

Another benefit was that residents’ taxes immediately went down.

Longtime Silver Grove Mayor Neal Bedel is a Silver Grove High School graduate.

“It’s been a big savings as far as the taxes paid for the school district go,” Silver Grove Mayor Neal Bedel told LINK nky in 2022.

“You know, it was almost basically cut in half between Silver Grove taxes and Campbell County school taxes. It was significant.”

But there are costs the county then needs to pick up, like busing. Students who went to Silver Grove and are now going to Campbell County Schools have to be bused in, which is an additional cost to the district and a long commute for some students.

Steve McCafferty has another idea.

The longtime educator taught at local public and private schools, spending 20 years at the University of Cincinnati and developing an educational leadership program at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati.

“Most people think, get it all under one roof, and that’ll make it easier and better,” McCafferty said. “Well, you get a lot of people under one roof, and then you lose some of them. It’s not that simple. There are both successful large schools and successful small schools. So, it just depends, but the main thing is leadership.”

McCafferty’s idea is to organize Northern Kentucky schools by county while keeping some independent districts intact. Exceptions for districts that are excelling could be made, such as Fort Thomas Independent Schools.

“You would have the resources with a more centralized operation, the county operation, to get people what they need, where they need it,” McCafferty said.

The bottom line, McCafferty said, is the region needs to reconceive schools for the future, not the past, which he said is where they operate now. He said schools need to look at “Where are we going to be and how are we going to get everybody there on one train?”

With Beechwood and Fort Thomas schools ranking among the top in the state, McCafferty envisions those districts having more say. He said the county could oversee those

operations, but that they would get more latitude because they are a model school.

“You can organize it in a lot of different ways,” he said. “You could have Fort Thomas take over steerage of Newport, Bellevue, Dayton, and make sure they had everything that they need, including access to the Fort Thomas schools.”

What does all of this cost?

Similarly to most questions about how things work in Northern Kentucky, the answer to what it costs to educate NKY’s kids among 13 public districts is (you guessed it) complicated.

LINK nky reviewed the Kentucky Department of Education’s expenditures for each of Northern Kentucky’s districts. The expenditures are broken into the categories: district administration expenditures, district facility expenditures, certified teacher expenditures, spending per student, and certified superintendent expenditures.

Spending per student is a good way of measuring the overall spending efficiency of a district.

School district spending per student includes operational costs like employee salaries, benefits (health insurance, pensions), and supplies. It also covers transportation, food services, utilities, facility maintenance, and capital outlays like school construction. Costs are typically calculated by dividing total expenses by the number of students.

Northern Kentucky’s largest school district, Boone County, spends the least amount of money per student at $12,351.40, for the 2023-24 academic year which was the most recent year data was available.

Compared to Northern Kentucky’s smallest district, Southgate Independent which spends more than double that number at $26,777.00 per student.

Administrative expenditures are broken into three buckets: District administration (think: central office, school board, superintendent’s office, all of which serve the district), school administration (think: leadership, admin and support staff for individual schools) and business (accounting, payroll, human resources).

The total administrative expenditures for Northern Kentucky’s 13 districts for the 2023-24 school year was $95,207,423.

LINK also reviewed district facility expenditures for 2024, which includes things like custodial services, utilities and maintenance, construction and capital improvements.

Boone County Schools, which has 28 buildings, had the highest facility operations cost at $22,367,666. Southgate Independent, with one building, had the lowest cost at $321,464.

Total district facility expenditures for all 13 districts in the 2023-24 school year was $71,368,206.

Continues on page 8

FEBRUARY 20, 2026 7

Continued from page 7

Teacher salaries are also included in KDE’s district expenditures.

In the 2024-2025 school year, Fort Thomas Independent School District had the highest average pay at $75,544.28, while Southgate Independent School District had the lowest at $55,892.78.

Superintendent salaries range similarly to those of teachers, according to district expenditure reports.

The highest paid superintendent across the 13 districts is Kenton County’s, with a

salary of $290,174.85, followed by Boone County’s at $265,000 and Beechwood Independent’s at $250,000. The lowest is Bellevue Independent’s at $157,590.02, which is just below Southgate Independent’s $158,000 superintendent salary.

The combined salaries for all 13 superintendents are $2,546,849.

If a county absorbed some of the smaller independent districts, Fair said, the administrative staff would need to increase. Because of that, and a lack of comprehensive data on the topic, Fair said she wouldn’t assume that consolidating schools would not

necessarily mean a decrease in cost.

Looking at Cincinnati Public Schools, the district spent $132,579,196 during the 2023-24 school year on administrative expenses. Ohio doesn’t distinguish between district and school administration costs the way Kentucky does, so when combining administrative costs in the 13 counties that make up NKY, the total comes to $166,575,629.

While comparisons between Cincinnati and NKY aren’t quite fair because of the very different makeup of the communities and differences in the ways states compile

information, the numbers do give some perspective to the idea that consolidation automatically means a cost savings.

NKU’s Fair said she knows that cost efficiency is one of the arguments for consolidation, but there isn’t current data, and the research she has read is mixed.

“No, it may not really be, because you have to have more staff,” Fair said. “It’s not an absorption that happens without the increase in needing staff too.”

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FEBRUARY 20, 2026 9

Would centralizing tax collection save NKY’s residents?

By Nathan Granger

its calculation to a net profits calculation. As a result, “our tax in that jurisdiction went up 250% in that one year.”

T

axes are complicated.

In fact, it would be very difficult to concisely summarize all of the different taxation categories in the commonwealth in a single article like this (you can go to the Kentucky Department of Revenue’s website and check out all of the different subcategories under the drop-down menus on their main page if you’re interested).

And that’s just considering the amount a business might be taxed. In Harper’s case, he also had to keep track of where and how much time his drivers were spending in each jurisdiction (in multiple states, no less). Accounting for all of the complexity, he said, “was a task that couldn’t be done, in my mind.” Instead, he would instruct his drivers to focus on particular areas and then make estimates based on that.

Still, you need taxes if you want to have a functioning society, or rather, you need some way of reliably funding and maintaining the public services that enable the niceties of life to continue. As it stands, that means paying your taxes. And that’s true whether you’re an individual or a business.

“Taxes don’t do anything for the public,” said Newport City Commissioner, former business owner and social service professional Ken Rechtin said. “Taxes don’t put out fires, and taxes don’t catch criminals or fix a pothole. They’re a necessary thing that we have to do in order to get the capital in to pay the people that put out fires and catch criminals and fill potholes.”

But, like we said, they’re complicated, especially in a place like Northern Kentucky, where there are three counties, 36 cities and municipalities and a whole lot of school districts, public safety departments and public works departments, all of which are tied to unique taxation structures. This inconsistency has led to calls from business advocacy groups and professional organizations to simplify local occupational taxes. Rechtin is among the people who thinks such a change is necessary.

“I think it’s a big deterrent for people to locate here,” Rechtin said.

Not everyone agrees, though. In fact, cities have repeatedly come out against standardizing either the occupational tax rates or the means by which they’re collected (well, at least, if the state’s involved).

So, why don’t businesses like the current state of affairs? And would reforming the occupational tax code be a good idea?

Business taxes Taxes fall into a handful of general catego-

ries: property taxes, sales taxes and income taxes are usually what individual people think of when they think of taxation. The tension at issue here, however, focuses instead on a category of taxes called occupational license taxes. In conversation, these taxes are sometimes referred to as payroll taxes or profits taxes.

Officially, occupational license taxes are taxes on business activity, i.e. payroll, net profits and (in some cases) gross receipts.

That means, yes, these taxes get taken out of your paycheck if you earn wages. The business itself then also pays taxes on its profits (sometimes, depending on where they are). In spite of this, occupational taxes do not legally count as income taxes.

Occupational taxes are a huge chunk of city budgets. This is one reason why cities are often so eager to attract businesses to set up shop in their borders. More business activity means more occupational taxes to fund public services. Many cities have made deliberate efforts to make occupational taxes their primary means of revenue, rather than property taxes.

For perspective, the two most populous cities in the region, Florence and Covington, are both hoping to draw nearly half of their general fund revenues from occupational taxes in fiscal year 2026.

Kentucky cities are constrained in how they can tax their residents. The state levies a flat sales tax at 6%, but counties and cities do not have the legal authority to impose additional sales taxes.

The state also imposes a flat income tax on residents of 4%. That means that cities have to rely on property taxes, occupational taxes, franchise fees and taxes on insurance premiums for much of their operating revenue. Cities can apply for grants from organizations and the federal government, sure, but those funds often come with strings attached. Oftentimes, grant funding can’t be used for general operating expenses.

Occupational taxes are charged depending on where work is completed. If you’re a business that has a single location, and your workers don’t move around that much, this issue won’t affect you because you’ll have predictable rates. But what if your business is region-wide, or your workers move around to complete their work?

“It is a logistical nightmare,” said Steve Harper, former proprietor of Harper Oil, which specialized in wholesaling gas, diesel, other fuels and lubricants throughout the tri-state. Harper Oil was acquired by Valor Oil in 2018. Harper was active in the Chamber of Commerce for 30 years, where this issue was a frequent topic of conversation.

“Each of these jurisdictions had their own formulas,” said Harper, discussing the example of gasoline delivery drivers. “Some were based on net profits, some were based on gross profits.”

One year, he said, Florence changed the percentage of their occupational tax rate and switched from a gross prof-

Sources who spoke with LINK nky pitched a variety of ways to address this phenomenon, including instituting flat rates regionor county-wide or standardizing formulas across jurisdictions to calculate based net figures or gross figures only. Another solution floated was the idea of creating some kind of centralized collection mechanism where businesses could pay a single place, which would then crunch the numbers for them and divey up the taxes accordingly.

Rechtin, especially, thought this had promise.

“I still think that with the proper study and accommodating folks that would be in some way held harmless for a loss of revenue in moving to a new system that we could get to that someday,” Rechtin said.

This could be done either through some interlocal agreement that would either create a new institution, outsource the work to a third-party professional contractor or augment an existing regional institution like the Northern Kentucky Area Development District, which already plays a role in recommending local tax rates. This could conceivably continue to grant local jurisdictions the ability to set their own rates, which they would lose with a flat rate, while making it easier for payers.

“With simplicity comes compliance,” Rechtin said. “So the more easy you make it for somebody to pay, the easier it becomes, and the more compliance you get.”

What about having the state do it?

Centralization, simplicity, autonomy “Anytime somebody talks about simplifying taxes, I’m not sure what that exactly means,” said Larry Klein, who currently works as a part time tax compliance of-

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ficer for the City of Crestview Hills. Klein has served in several roles throughout the region, most notably as the city manager for Covington, a role from which resigned in 2017 amid ongoing conflicts with former Mayor Joe Meyer.

Klein is a former president of the Kentucky Occupational License Association, which aims to educate local governments and officials about occupational taxes. They also engage in advocacy.

Klein said that every year there’s a push at the state level to centralize occupational tax collection through the state. It’s worth noting that all of the sources who spoke with LINK nky, including the ones who

were in favor of simplifying occupational taxes, opposed doing it through the state, either directly or through a state contractor. Why? “As a tax-paying resident of the state of Kentucky, it’s hard for me to believe that our dealings with the state would make it easier for us to get our money,” said Dave Hatter, mayor of Fort Wright and IT professional.

Hatter admitted, as a former small business owner himself, that trying to keep track of all of the varying occupational taxes in the commonwealth was a “pain in the butt,” but making things too centralized carried its own risks.

“As a guy who spent 25 years as a software engineer building complex business systems, trying to build a centralized system that could do this will probably be very difficult, very costly, very time consuming, and many of these systems go way over budget if they’re ever delivered,” Hatter said.

The most recent attempt for the state to take control of occupational tax collection took the form of House Bill 253, which would have created a web-based system for occupational tax collection under the Office of the Kentucky Treasurer and allowed that office to determine fees for using the system. Several NKY cities, including Fort Wright, passed resolutions against the bill.

The Kentucky League of Cities’ Board of Directors also voted to oppose the bill.

HB 253 never made it out of committee, but bills like this are introduced on the regular, according to Klein.

Hatter meanwhile viewed flat or uniform rates across jurisdictions as likely having the effect of undercutting individual cities’ ability to competitively attract businesses and keep property tax rates low.

“We have purposely tried to lower our taxes as a way to incentivize people to move here and live here and businesses to locate here because more business means less taxes for the residents and more ability to do more things, more good things for the community,” Hatter said.

Fuel truck trailers. Photo provided | Jason Mitrione on Unsplash

Another issue that comes up, Klein said, is that anytime legislation at the state level has come up, “the taxpayer would pay the state. If there was missing documents, questions, all of a sudden the local government would still be responsible for the fall-

out, and so the work would still be there on behalf of the local government.”

There has already been some simplification of occupational tax collection at the county level. Boone, Kenton and Campbell Counties collect occupational taxes for at least a handful of their jurisdictions, plus the counties themselves on a single tax form – 3 in Boone, 8 in Campbell and 15 in Kenton – although many of the larger cities in the region opt to keep things in house, and some cities ask for extra forms depending on their policies. Still, this makes things easier for businesses that operate in those jurisdictions as they only have to make a single payment to one body, the county, which takes care of splitting everything up.

When asked if there may be some middle ground, such as the creation of a region-wide (rather than statewide) collection authority or doing it through an institution like the area development district, Klein said there could be a middle ground.

“But at the end of the day, Klein said, “Local governments have to maintain control of the system because it’s our revenue, and the money we collect today we pay our police and firemen next month with.”

Rechtin was aware that the counties had made strides in simplifying collection but said, “I think we could do even more.”

With the issue likely to come up again in Frankfort, Rechtin concluded: “Boone, Kenton and Campbell [Counties] really need to work together to find solutions before our legislature takes it over.”

FEBRUARY 20, 2026 11

What does it cost to keep Northern Kentucky safe?

By Kenton Hornbeck

As the region becomes more populous and economically significant, there is increasing demand to consolidate its fragmented public safety systems, driven by the perception of duplicated services. Each agency operates independently with its own chief or sheriff, command personnel, HR and payroll systems, fleet management, procurement processes, and training schedules.

P

oint Pleasant is not an incorporated city in Boone County, nor is it census-designated like the county seat of Burlington.

On a map, Point Pleasant consists of several industrial buildings, including the fire station, located just to the east of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. Point Pleasant lacks its own police department, trash collection services, and the authority to collect taxes. It did, however, have its own fire service for over 60 years.

Despite being a nonexistent town, it was home to one of Boone County’s nine fire protection districts.

The station’s origins date back to 1958, when the homeowners of a now-defunct subdivision between Mineola Pike and Point Pleasant Road chartered a fire service for the small community. The station became a bona fide fire protection district under Kentucky state law in 1979, and was among the first ambulance services in Boone County.

The district covered an area of approximately five and a half square miles of northeastern Boone County, providing a range of community services, including fire prevention, protection, suppression, rescue, emergency medical services and public education.

In 1989, Point Pleasant was the second department in Boone County to hire full-time staff. Its team included career, part-time, and volunteer members, several of whom were nationally certified in fire and EMS services. Its fleet included two engine companies, one ladder company, an ALS ambulance and a ventilation unit, according to the department’s website.

Although the department has a longstanding history and capable personnel, Point Pleasant is no longer part of the larger

The 2025 recruit class for the Boone County Fire District kicked off in February 2025. Photo provided | Boone County Fire District

Boone County fire protection network. In March 2025, Boone County Judge/Executive Gary Moore signed an executive order authorizing the merger of the Point Pleasant Fire Protection District into the Hebron Fire Protection District.

The Point Pleasant station was not closed during the merger. Instead, it was incorporated into the Hebron fire district, which now covers nearly 50 square miles in northern Boone County and was previously served by two separate departments.

During a merger celebration last July, Moore touted the decision as a way to expand coverage, consolidate leadership, and simplify administrative overhead. In essence, Boone County officials, along with Point Pleasant District Chief Michael Giordano and Hebron District Chief Adam Peddicord believed the merger would improve the fire department’s operational efficiency in northern Boone County by eliminating redundancies of service.

“The merger reflects years of discussions, hard work and commitment by both fire districts to deliver the best possible emergency services to our residents,” Boone County Judge/Executive Gary Moore said after the merger was finalized. “It is a winwin-win for residents, first responders and fire districts as they continue to provide high-quality and specialized services.”

The move is not without precedent in the

region, as the river cities of Dayton and Bellevue in Campbell County operate a joint fire agency. Before merging in 2002, both cities operated their own fire departments.

According to the Fire Department of Dayton-Bellevue website, the growing populations of each city created greater demand for fire and emergency services.

The merger illustrates two Northern Kentucky-based public service agencies choosing to consolidate their resources to better serve their broader constituency.

Historically, Northern Kentucky’s public safety system has been a complex network of independent departments, agencies and service districts that operate without any inherent connection to one another.

Northern Kentucky is made up of 37 incorporated cities across Boone, Kenton, and Campbell counties, many of which have their own police and fire departments.

At the county level, Boone, Kenton, and Campbell each have sheriffs’ offices, while Kenton and Campbell also operate their own police forces. These forces generally operate independently of one another, even when their service areas overlap. Although mutual-aid agreements and regional dispatch services help close some gaps, the administrative framework remains fragmented.

That fragmentation periodically fuels conversations about consolidation. When departments struggle to recruit, replace aging equipment, or maintain specialized units, the idea of merging forces or districts has gained traction among some public officials.

Brent Cooper, president of the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, has long supported the idea of consolidation amongst departments that potentially duplicate services. From his perspective, it would help streamline service delivery while saving costs.

A Boone County Fire Department employee talks to kids during an event for Fire Prevention Week in October. Photo provided | Boone County Fire District

12 FEBRUARY 20, 2026

“I think from the Chamber of Commerce perspective, we want our elected leaders to always be looking for ways to be more efficient and productive with the tax dollars they receive,” Cooper told LINK nky. “We are always encouraging people to take a look at those kinds of costs, whether it’s police, fire, 911, you name it. Where are there opportunities for us to work collaboratively and work together? That’s Northern Kentucky’s superpower.”

“There have been examples of those consolidations and collaborations in the past that I think have paid off, and we would encourage people to continue to do that,” Cooper said.

NKY’s police departments Law enforcement in Northern Kentucky is delivered through a combination of county and municipal police departments, which differ in size and coverage. Overall, there are 27 law enforcement agencies serving Boone, Kenton, and Campbell counties, along with the police departments serving Northern Kentucky University and the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.

Boone County has one countywide law enforcement agency, the Boone County Sheriff’s Office. On the city side, only Florence has its own municipal police department.

Walton and Union do not fund their own police departments and instead rely on the sheriff’s office. Boone County previously had a countywide police department serving the county’s unincorporated areas, but it merged with the sheriff’s office in 2001.

Kenton County has the most decentralized law enforcement structure among the three counties. It operates both a Kenton County Police Department, which provides patrol services primarily in unincorporated areas, and a Kenton County Sheriff’s Office, which carries out constitutionally mandated duties and supports law enforcement throughout the county.

In addition, 11 cities operate their own municipal police departments, including Covington, Erlanger, Independence, Edgewood, Elsmere, Ludlow, Taylor Mill, Fort Mitchell, Fort Wright, Lakeside Park-Crestview Hills and Villa Hills. These departments form a dense network of local agencies in close proximity to one another.

In Campbell County, law enforcement is managed by both the Campbell County Police Department and the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office. Meanwhile, nine cities – Alexandria, Bellevue, Dayton, Cold Spring, Fort Thomas, Highland Heights, Newport, Southgate, and Wilder – operate their own police departments. Like other counties, cities without dedicated police departments rely on county agencies for policing.

Digging into the numbers, each police department’s budget varies in value due to the differences in paid staff, vehicles, equipment and other items.

Law enforcement agencies are often some of the largest expenditures for local governments. For instance, the Kenton County

The Northern Kentucky SWAT team has members from departments across the region. Photo provided | Campbell County Police Department

Fiscal Court allocated approximately $8.3 million to the police department for operating expenses in the 2025-2026 Fiscal Year. According to Kenton County’s website, the Kenton County Police Department employs 37 sworn officers.

Smaller cities like Alexandria, with about 10,000 residents, have a correspondingly smaller police force, employing 15 full-time officers. The city budgeted approximately $2.7 million for its police department in the 2024-2025 Fiscal Year.

The Boone County Sheriff’s Department budget was $20.7 million during the 20242025 Fiscal Year, employing nearly 190 sworn deputies. It is the largest full-service sheriff’s office in Kentucky, according to Boone County’s website. Both departments are the primary policing agencies for the unincorporated areas of Boone and Kenton County, two of Kentucky’s five most populous counties.

Similar to the Kenton County Police Department and the Boone County Sheriff’s Office, the Campbell County Police serve unincorporated areas of the county. They have 41 officers and a budget of nearly $5.3 million for this fiscal year. Kenton and Campbell County are two of four total counties in Kentucky with countywide police departments

At the municipal level, the City of Covington has the largest police department in Northern Kentucky, with 114 officers, according to its website. For the 2025-2026 Fiscal Year, Covington’s police budget totals $21.4 million, with $19.95 million allocated to personnel. Covington is the most populous city in Northern Kentucky with approximately 41,000 residents.

In spite of their different coverage areas, the Alexandria Police Department headquarters is less than one mile from the Campbell County Police Department headquarters in Alexandria, underscoring the close proximity of some departments in Northern Kentucky.

In terms of population, Northern Kentucky, as a whole, is the second-largest population center in the state of Kentucky,

with over 400,000 people, behind Louisville-Jefferson County and ahead of Lexington-Fayette County – both consolidated city-county governments.

As such, both governments are responsible for policing their respective jurisdictions, consolidating all of their funding, resources and human capital into one department for each. The Louisville Metropolitan Police Department has over a thousand sworn officers, while the Lexington Police Department has 641 sworn officers. Both departments have public-safety budgets worth hundreds of millions of dollars. It should be noted that Jefferson County has several independent law enforcement agencies that serve small incorporated areas within the county, but each of these cities still falls within LMPD’s countywide coverage area.

Hypothetically, if the Boone County Sheriff’s Department, Kenton County Police Department, and Campbell County Police Department merged into a single department, the combined budget would be approximately $34 million per year, employing 268 officers.

These figures are derived by adding together the department’s overall budget and officer counts. Even with the combined department, the numbers are still dwarfed by those of the Louisville Metro and Lexington Police Departments.

NKY’s fire departments Fire protection in Boone, Kenton, and Campbell counties is similarly decentralized, with services delivered through a mix of independent fire districts and municipal fire departments rather than a single countywide system in each area.

In Boone County, fire and emergency medical services are primarily provided by fire protection districts rather than city-run departments. These districts are independent taxing entities governed by boards and created under state law to serve specific geographic areas, which can include both incorporated and unincorporated land. There are currently seven fire protection districts: Belleview-McVille, Burlington, Hebron, Petersburg, Union, Verona Continues on page 14

FEBRUARY 20, 2026 13

Continued from page 13

and Walton. Boone County does not have its own county fire department. Florence finances its own citywide fire department and EMS service.

Kenton County has a complex fire service system, with cities including Covington, Ludlow, Independence, Bromley, Edgewood, Elsmere, Erlanger, Fort Mitchell, Fort Wright, Park Hills, Ryland Heights, and Taylor Mill operating their own fire departments, either career, volunteer, or combination, with local governance or fire boards. Crescent Springs and Villa Hills Fire Department operate a joint department. In addition, the county also features the Piner-Fiskburg Fire Protection District in southwestern Kenton County.

A Covington Police motorcycle is parked at a community event. Photo provided | Covington Police Department

14 FEBRUARY 20, 2026

In Campbell County, fire protection is primarily provided by fire protection districts, with only a few standalone municipal fire departments, including Newport, the joint Department of Bellevue-Dayton, Fort Thomas, Wilder, Southgate and Melbourne.

Campbell County also features other fire districts, including Campbell County Fire District #1, Central Campbell County Fire District and Campbell Fire Rescue.

Looking into some of the financials, the Florence Fire Department’s fire budget for the 2024-2025 Fiscal Year was approximately $13.2 million, and it employed 72 staff members. The City of Covington’s fire budget for the current fiscal year is around $21.7 million, with $20.1 million allocated to personnel. The department employs around 122 firefighters. The City of Newport has the oldest fire department in Northern Kentucky, established with the purchase of its first steam fire engine in 1868. Currently, Newport has budgeted $8.6 million for the fire department in this fiscal year, which employs about 40 personnel.

Downstate, Louisville and Lexington operate Kentucky’s two largest fully professional fire departments, both structured to serve large urban populations through consolidated local governments. Louisville’s Division of Fire serves the Louisville Metro area through roughly 21 stations and a workforce of about 500 sworn and civilian personnel. Lexington’s Fire Department is larger in staffing and footprint, with more than 600 firefighters operating out of 24 or more stations countywide.

A Covington Police cruiser. Photo provided | Covington Police Department

Comparatively, Northern Kentucky’s fire protection system looks markedly different. Instead of one or two large, consolidated departments, Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties rely on a patchwork of municipal fire departments and independent fire protection districts.

“What jumps out at you when you hear the stories about how tough it is to find officers,” The Chamber’s Cooper said, “how tough it is to find firefighters, when you hear people complain about lack of police officers, lack of fire folks, it seems to me that this makes a lot of sense for us to reevaluate how we’re doing things and encourage people to come together.”

The contrast highlights two different approaches to organizing public safety. Lou-

isville and Lexington represent centralized systems with uniform coverage and administration across large jurisdictions.

Northern Kentucky reflects a decentralized model shaped by historic municipal boundaries, suburban development, and fire districts, resulting in numerous smaller departments.

Ultimately, challenges to consolidation remain, including technological integration, questions surrounding pensions and employee salaries, and the relinquishing of local control by various municipalities and communities. For now, Northern Kentucky remains a patchwork of independent police and fire agencies. As the region grows, changing service will place new pressures on systems designed in a different era.

Preparing financially for college

By Case Fenner

may choose to enroll in the program.

O

ne of the biggest expenses most people will encounter in their lives is the cost of post-secondary education.

Whether enrolled in a technical program, a 2-year institution, or a 4-year university, the price for a degree is getting higher and higher. In fact, prices have risen so much that more students than ever are taking out loans to pay for schooling, and that often leaves them in financial distress when their debt comes due.

So, how do you pay for college if you want to avoid the long-term hassle of student loan debt?

Financial aid and scholarships The most common piece of advice on this subject is the simplest: apply for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).

Businesses and institutions that employ the student in a part-time position may use federal funds to supplement their income; which means that part of the student’s paycheck is coming from the employer, and part from the government. Not every post-secondary school has available workstudy funds, and it’s often first-come-firstserve; so it’s highly suggested to apply for FAFSA as early as possible if the program is of interest.

The cost of a degree keeps rising, and more students keep taking on loads of debt. Photo by Case Fenner | LINK nky contributor

thousands of unique opportunities available to students throughout the country and, unlike loans, they don’t need to be repaid. The Department of Education suggests reaching out directly to the financial aid office at the college of interest, who should have a database of available and fitting scholarships to apply for.

Note that scholarship values vary.

Completing the application will make students viable for a few different types of federal funding. Some of these funds, called federal direct loans, require repayment; others, like a Pell Grant, don’t. Most colleges will also look at a FAFSA application to see what financial needs students have when applying for institutional aid. According to the Department of Education, almost every student who completes FAFSA will receive some type of aid.

Another big tip in this regard is seeking out private scholarships and grants. There are

“A scholarship might cover the entire cost of your tuition, or it might be a one-time award of a few hundred dollars,” according to the Department of Education’s website.

“Either way, it’s worth applying for, because it’ll help reduce the cost of your education.”

The 2+2 Path A sure fire way to reduce the amount of money spent on tuition is to reduce the amount of time at the school.

Often called the “2+2 degree,” this strategy sees students proceeding from an associate degree to a full bachelor’s — often at half the semester-time, and half the price.

The major way this is done is through programs like 2NKU, which allows students at community and technical schools around the state and region to dual enroll at Northern Kentucky University.

That means they’ll be able to transfer to the school after completing their degree, and also be able to take some NKU classes early as well.

Work-Study A strange form of financial aid which is often underdiscussed is the Federal WorkStudy Program (FWS). As a part of the FAFSA process, students with financial need

“These programs allow students to begin working on their NKU degree while at their community college, providing a course benefit option that helps drive down the overall time and cost toward the student’s

degree,” said Sara Cornwell, associate director of advising and programming at NKU’s Adult Transfer Center.

Future planning and 529 accounts While the cost of college looks rough right now, chances are it will be even rougher in the future. That’s why building a plan for the future is so important right now.

Anyone with a child or grandchild in the state of Kentucky can utilize the state’s 529 Plan to help them pay for education when the time comes.

Under the purview of the Kentucky Higher Education Assistance Authority, a 529 Savings Plan works like a 401K; an initial investment of pre-tax dollars is made on a set of stocks and bonds, and the money from those investments goes into a savings account set aside for educational uses.

When the money is withdrawn for those specific uses, it’s tax-free.

In Kentucky, those include things like school books, computers, room and board, and even tools for those enrolled in trade schools. The money set aside can also be used to cover students in kindergarten through 12th grade enrolled in public, private, or religious schools around the state; though those expenses are capped at $20,000 annually.

Family and friends residing in other states can also put money towards an account as well through KHEAA’s Ugift program.

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FEBRUARY 20, 2026 15

Preparing financially for the Big Day

When planning a wedding, it can be hard to see anything but dollar signs. Photo provided | Kateryna Hliznitsova via Unsplash

By Kathleen Bryant

A

wedding is the most expensive party most of us will ever throw.

Many couples want family and friends to eat, drink, dance and celebrate their love to mark the start of a new stage in life with them.

The costs, however, can stack up pretty quickly.

LINK spoke to Katie Meckstroth, a wedding planner and owner of Simply Designed Events, about planning a wedding on a budget. Meckstroth has worked with all types of budgets, so she gave some advice applicable to all weddings and specific to Northern Kentucky.

“My two biggest tips are to identify your priorities as a couple and to work with a wedding planner,” Meckstroth said.

LINK asked Meckstroth what couples usually spend the most money on.

“The biggest wedding budget priorities are typically the elements that most impact the guest experience—venue, food and beverages, and photography/videography,” Meckstroth said.

With that in mind, LINK put together some cost-cutting tips.

Get prepared Meckstroth stressed how important it is to have a plan and start making it early. Creating a list of priorities and non-negotiables for your wedding helps a wedding planner stay within a budget.

“Knowing what matters most to you,

16 FEBRUARY 20, 2026

whether it’s food, photography, music, or something else, helps you allocate your budget intentionally,” Meckstroth said.

Additionally, those initial needs and wants can help a wedding planner better accommodate a budget level.

“Most planners offer a range of packages that accommodate different budget levels,” Meckstroth said. “Every client is unique, and part of our role is matching couples with quality vendors who fit their budget while still delivering a great experience.”

Pare down the guest list “Your guest count has the biggest impact on venue and catering costs, so being intentional with your guest list is the first place to start,” Meckstroth said.

Most weddings will provide food, drinks and venue space to accommodate all guests. The more guests on the list, the pricier all of those budget items get. To put it in perspective, Meckstroth explained that the average cost of a wedding in Northern Kentucky is $25,000-$30,000 for around 100 guests.

Choose the right venue “There is a lot that goes into venues and their expense,” Meckstroth said. “A lot depends on location, size and the services they provide.”

For example, hosting a wedding in one of the rural parts of Northern Kentucky can be less expensive than an urban area. However, Meckstroth advises couples to consider big picture costs, like transportation.

Some venues are all-inclusive, meaning that the couple will pay them to handle food, beverages, music, table setting, and more. However, the more that a venue offers, the more expensive it’s going to get.

“The venues that have a liquor license and staff their own bartenders and food are typically going to be more expensive than venues where you are doing all of the work and bringing in all of the vendors,” Meckstroth said.

Find the cheap options When bringing in outside vendors like florists, caterers, and more, there are a range of budget options. This is another part of the process where hiring a wedding planner can help cut costs.

“Hiring a planner can [ . . . ] often save money by guiding you toward vendors who fit your budget,” Meckstroth said.

and where the food comes from can impact cost as well.

“Choosing a meal that has in season fruits and vegetables or something that is easier to cook in bulk will help keep the cost down,” Meckstroth said.

Additionally, limiting meal options will lower food costs and make the budget less variable. The same goes for beverages.

“You can reduce bar costs by offering beer and wine only, providing a limited selection of signature cocktails, or avoiding a full open bar,” Meckstroth said.

Asking questions can help a couple find vendor options that allow for budget flexibility. For example, Jan Caldwell at Fort Thomas Florists & Greenhouses listed ways to save money on flowers.

“The more complicated a bouquet is, the more time it takes to make it, the more expensive it will be,” Caldwell said.

The types of flowers make a difference too.

Carnations, Gerber daisies, and flowers from the chrysanthemum family are generally cheaper than orchids or lilies.

This idea of a range of options, some cheaper than others, also applies to food.

For a less expensive meal option, Meckstroth suggested a pasta or taco bar. When

Flowers can be a huge cost, but there are ways to get around a huge price tag. Photo by Gladys Aguayo via Unsplash

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How some Northern Kentuckians are preparing for retirement

By Robin Gee

A

t some point, most people plan to retire. In Kentucky, more than 260,000 people (age 65 to 69) will be near or at retirement age in 2026. It can be a scary proposition today with the high cost of living and economic uncertainty looming.

Still, many do retire, whether by choice or circumstance. It’s one of life’s big transitions, and both experts and retirees agree planning and preparation are vital to meeting the financial and social challenges that come in this phase of life.

ver said. “And simultaneously, a move from a county that maybe had 27,000 people to the Northern Kentucky area was a big change.”

The only house they could afford, he said, was about half the size of what they were used to.

Roll with the punches “There’s some challenges when it comes to living on a fixed income,” Silver said. “We’re not as bad off as some who are solely dependent on Social Security. But you still have to be very much be prepared to deal with some unforeseen healthcare issues that can come up in your senior season.”

We spoke with some Northern Kentuckians who have retired about what surprised them most about this new phase of life and what they would say to others considering when and how to start this journey.

Put health first

Here a few points that came up several times:

She moved from California to Covington this year.

Plan ahead

“Take care of yourself,” Banzon said. “Your health is important. Because when you get to be this age and your health isn’t that good it starts creeping up on you.

Roy Silver retired after 32 years as an educator at Southeastern Kentucky Community and Technical College. He now lives in Melbourne.

“I waited ‘til I was in my 70s so I could get the maximum Social Security benefit,” Sil-

Belén Banzon retired after a varied career in business, most recently working with a biofuels company.

“Get your ducks in a row as far as your health. Find out what it is you need to do to lengthen your life…I think the saying is ‘If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything.’”

Your role may change Col Owens retired from a 40-year career as a legal aid lawyer, law professor and advocate for those less fortunate. He lives in Fort Mitchell and serves on the Board of Elections and several other boards. He has taken on a new role lately, that of a caregiver.

“In our case, it happens to be my wife who has Alzheimer’s, and we’re dealing with that and have been for a couple of years,” he said. “It certainly helped move a lot of my life energy from being an activist to being a caretaker.

Roy Silver. Photo provided | Roy Silver

18 FEBRUARY 20, 2026

have one illness or another, or one circumstance or another that causes them to be in a somewhat similar situation where one is taking care of the other or taking care of a family member. I think often it is, unfortunately, a part of retirement. It’s not one you plan for or hope for, but it does happen.”

“It’s not something anybody wants, but something comes to all of us. I’ve just seen so many of our friends and people who

Jen Warner teaches horseback riding and runs the First Farm Inn B&B in Petersburg with help from her husband, Dana Kisor.

Although she plans to keep her business going, both are reconsidering their retirement plans.

“Neither of us made a choice to retire,” Warner said. “I had two foot surgeries in September and October, and I had to close for those. It’s a slow season for B and Bs, so business hasn’t really come back. And then Dana didn’t really make a choice either.”

Kisor was recently laid off from his job as developer for a Cincinnati company that restructured and downsized.

“Technically, I am not retired yet, because I am collecting unemployment,” Warner said. “But getting another full-time job in this field at my age is next to impossible.

So for practical purposes, we’re assuming it’s retirement, but I’m still looking for fulltime work.”

In the meantime, the couple are taking care of the farm and horses, pursuing a variety of hobbies, and Warner is helping Kisnor rekindle his love of skiing at nearby Perfect North Slopes.

Find and follow your passions JoAnn Schwartz of Fort Thomas is a retired RN who spent her career in oncology and later in hospice care. She is also a longtime social justice advocate and volunteer.

“Take what you’ve always enjoyed, or what you’ve always been passionate about, and maybe never had the opportunity,” she said.

She added that Northern Kentucky and the Cincinnati area offer so many opportunities to learn, try new things – and a lot of it is free.

Paul and Joann Schwartz decorate their Christmas tree. Photo provided | Schwartz family

Invest in friendships Paul Schwartz left a job he did not like when he was 59. He said he intended to find another job but then decided he could make it work in early retirement.

“After I retired, I kept in touch with some of my closest coworkers. But as the years went on, you just kind of slip away because you’re working in a different social circle.

Friendship takes time and you can’t take it for granted. You’ve got to make sure you’re contacting people and getting out with them. Otherwise those things, just like any plant that you don’t take care of, dies,” he said.

New opportunities ahead All the retirees said they appreciated having more time to spend with their friends, families and pursuing the things they love.

Owens said he sees his experience not so much as retirement but as redeployment, a new point on the arc of life.

The Aging and Disability Resource Center through the Northern Kentucky Area Development District (NKADD) is a great place to learn more about resources for retirement. Click on the Older Adult Resources Guide link on their page for a compendium of Northern Kentucky retirement and senior living resources.

Preparing financially for …. The other big stuff in life

By Case Fenner

by 12 to find approximate monthly earnings.

I

t is no secret that almost everyone is working a bit harder to make ends meet these days.

As inflation continues to grow and the job market continues its usual winter slump, those quarters and dimes we so often overlook in our paychecks have become increasingly important to our livelihoods.

With the holidays quickly rolling past, and a new year right around the corner, now is the best time to take a look at your financial situation and prepare for the next twelve months. Here are some tips and tricks to help you build and maintain a budget in 2026.

Keeping track The Federal Trade Commission suggests that Americans start building their budgets by monitoring their expenses for a month — using purchase receipts and bill statements to tally up the total amount spent during the four week period. This gives a fairly accurate estimate of how much money is being used per month, and when framed against the total pay for the period, how much is being saved versus how much is being spent.

For those who don’t get paid monthly or bi-monthly, the FTC recommends tallying up your total annual income and dividing it

stands for Specific, measurable, achieveable, relevant, and time-based. A Smart goal can look like anything, but most often takes the form of a savings account objective; perhaps something like saving $1,000 by the end of the year.

Budgeting strategies Now that you have an estimate on spending versus income, you can choose how to budget. The two most common strategies are called Zero-Based Budgeting and the Fifty-Thirty-Twenty Method.

The Zero-Based Budgeting approach aims to allocate the entirety of each paycheck to certain specified tasks, with the goal of getting the total paycheck down to $0.00, according to Fidelity Bank.

For instance, under this plan, a dollar amount would be allotted to go into savings, a dollar amount to the electricity bill, a dollar amount to the mortgage, and so on.

Zero-Based Budgeting works best if you’re looking for an austere plan with tight controls on spending; but the process can be time consuming, and the results leave little money to be switched around in the case of emergencies.

The Fifty-Thirty-Twenty Method, on the other hand, involves breaking down each paycheck into percentages — 50 percent, 30 percent, and 20 percent, respectively.

The usual strategy is to spend the 50 percent on needed expenses like housing, bills and food, the 30 on wanted expenses, and the 20 goes to savings or debt payments.

This strategy is especially beneficial if you

The increasing cost of everyday life has many worrying about their budgets. Photo by Case Fenner | LINK nky contributor

have multiple jobs; instead of bringing individual, smaller paychecks down to zero, you can find the total sum of them and take the percentages from that. If you reside in a high cost of living area, though, the Fifty-Thirty-Twenty method may not leave enough to pay for needed expenses; and that means you have less to put into the 30 and 20 percent.

Top tips After deciding on which strategy you’ll use to budget, financial advisors have a few tips to help the process along. The biggest suggestion? Be flexible. The first few months on a new budget may seem tough, but adjusting and sticking to the plan will be better than abandoning it.

Another tip is to set goals for the budget. According to the University of Pennsylvania, the best budgeting goals are Smart which

With a goal in mind, budgeting often seems less tedious. After all, if you can clearly see yourself working toward a target, the benefit of the budget becomes significantly clearer.

If you’re having trouble paying those pesky bills, Britannica suggests automating the process. This can be set up through the service provider, and will set aside a small amount from your checking account to cover monthly invoices. Through your bank, you can do the same thing with savings; every paycheck, a bit will automatically go into your savings account as well as checking. This removes the temptation to spend every cent of a paycheck, and ensures that the necessary payments get made.

One final tip, as the roads become icy and the snow starts to fly: invest at least a little into an emergency fund. This money can be part of your savings account, but should only be spent in the case of a crisis — medical, mechanical, or other. Having an emergency fund helps take some of the stress out of a fall or crash, and can make sure your financial well-being doesn’t take as much strain.

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Readers’ Choice Winner Spotlight: Fort Mitchell Garage

By Robin Gee

F

ort Mitchell Garage was the 2025 Reader’s Choice winner for Body Shop. The business has been in operation for over 100 years, but it has never actually been in Fort Mitchell, according to owner Ron Stamm. The original business started as a blacksmith shop at the corner of Kyles Lane and Dixie Highway in what eventually became Fort Wright. Today the garage is located in Park Hills at 1420 Dixie Highway.

Stamm’s great grandfather, Joseph Kuchle, came from Germany in the late 1800s as a blacksmith’s apprentice and worked through his journeyman level in Ohio before settling in Northern Kentucky in about 1897. From there he opened a blacksmith’s shop shoeing horses and repairing carriages. The shop didn’t work on cars until the 1920s, adding a building specifically for automobile repair around 1926. By then, he said, the younger people in the family were more interested in the “horseless carriages.”

“Back in the day, the only people who could afford automobiles were people who lived in Fort Mitchell. It was thought that the city would ultimately expand and annex the area they were in. So, the name made sense back when they started working on cars, because the people who had the cars were those in Fort Mitchell,” said Stamm.”

By the 1970s the family split up the business with Ron Kuchle continuing in the original location until the property was sold to become a Walgreens. Two other descendants, Tom and Leo Stamm, purchased the corporation name and set up the shop in the Park Hills location.

Full service shop Stamm said his father, Tom, was most interested in collision repair and body work, while his uncle gravitated toward mechanics. Today the business reflects the interests of both.

“We do both collision repair and mechanical repair. So if you’re looking at our building from the highway, Dixie Highway on the left side of the building, that’s all mechanical and service, tune ups and breaks and tires and heating and air, all the routine maintenance, oil changes and transmission service with just about anything related to mechanical repairs. We do a lot of electrical and electronic diagnosis and repair,” Stamm said.

“And then, on the right side of the building, we have a full service collision shop.

We have the most recent technology and painting and spray booths and all that sort of thing. So we pretty much cover anything you would need on your automobile.”

Stamm said they strive for what the industry calls “zero comebacks.” In other words, if they fix a car they want it to stay fixed.

While they don’t like to disappoint customers, he said, sometimes the news isn’t what

20 FEBRUARY 20, 2026

Ron Stamm, owner of Fort Mitchell Garage, is in the driver’s seat. The company was a Readers Choice winner for Best Body Shop in 2025. Photo provided | Ron Stamm

the customer wants to hear.

There are times when the fix is not a long term solution or may just not be worth what it would cost. Sometimes, Stamm said, he has to be the herald of bad news.

business, Stamm added, if you are not leaning something new about the trade every day, you could be in deep trouble. You must stay on top of things. The best technicians, he said, work at the garage during the day and go home, work on their own cars, and do more research at night.

Keeping up with technology Care maintenance tips Car technology has changed by leaps and bounds, said Stamm. Keeping up with the latest in automotive technology is a challenge, and having the right diagnostic equipment is key, he said. He said he wonders what his grandfather would have thought about how cars and the automotive repair industry has changed.

“A lot of what we do now is diagnosis. So many things that go wrong with a car are difficult to diagnose because they’ve complicated with things like electronics.

There’s a lot of test equipment you have to have. You just cannot, literally cannot, diagnose without good test equipment, and then you have to know how to operate those devices,” he said.

“We spend a lot of time in training and trying to keep up with industry trends …

To our doctor friends, we always tell them ‘Look, your model hasn’t changed in 20,000 years. Ours changes every year. Sometimes it’ll change in the middle of the year. So we have to keep up with more than you do!’”

The garage has 14 people on staff, and Stamm does have a couple of apprentices. Yet, he said, it’s getting difficult to find people interested in the automobile repair business. One of the big challenges is the requirements of the job.

“Today when you repair an automobile, you have to savvy with your mind and you have to be savvy with your hands. You have to have an innate interest in both. You can’t say, ‘well, I’m just a computer guy.’ You still have to dig into an automobile. You still have to do disassembly just to test a component,” said Stamm.

Technicians must do constant education on new machines, new techniques. In his

Stamm said he had a lot of advice for car owners but two points come first to mind.

First, with the high automobile prices today, he knows most people opt for used vehicles.

“One thing that we strongly recommend is to bring in a used car before you buy it, before you put any money down. Bring the car to us, or to a reputable company, to have the car inspected thoroughly to ensure that the car is not going to give them trouble that could be uncovered before they buy it,” Stamm said.

The other piece of advice Stamm gave was to have your oil checked and changed ideally after every 3,000 miles. Despite what a lot of manufacturer’s manuals say today, once a car gets past 4,500 or so miles without servicing, additives begin to fail to protect the engine.

Our area with it’s many hills, and stop-andstart driving conditions adds to the issue, he said. It’s what the industry calls a severe service condition area. Yet, he said there’s a trend for manufacturers to recommend oil checks and changes at much greater intervals than in the past, at 7,500 or even 10,000 miles.

“What we’re finding is that this is not a good idea. We are seeing cars that come in with major engine trouble and transmission trouble long before they’re due for those kinds of problems,” Stamm said. “We’re finding that at more than 3,000 miles all of the additives that are put in the oil are consumed up before the oil has 4,000 or 5,000 miles on it… Anything after that you’re basically running crude oil in your engine.”

Stamm tells his customers, to preserve

their automobile, they should cut in half the time the manufacturers’ service manual recommends for oil changes.

On collision repairs, beware Stamm recommends car owners be especially careful and wary when it comes to collision repairs. Insurance companies have pushed for saving money by using “after market” parts that don’t always fit properly. And, he said, a good shiny coat of paint can had a lot of issues.

“We always recommend, if someone is involved in an accident or car needs repair, they vet the body shop to make sure they’re going to follow factory recommended procedures and use quality parts,” he said.

Some insurance companies try to force the use of after market parts made mostly in China, he added. These are reverse engineered. Sometimes they fit, but sometimes they don’t. And in an effort to skirt around patent laws, a part may be changed slightly and won’t fit exactly as it should.

“The consumer would never know the difference in a lot of cases, but those of us who are trying to do an excellent job and strive for a repair that’s basically invisible…it can’t be done easily, or in some cases at all, using after market parts. So that’s a real thorn in the side of the collision repair industry,” Stamm said.

Honored by the win When asked about his “best of” designation, Stamm said he was honored.

“We hope our customers have identified us as number one because we are competent in what we do and treat them in such a way that they feel respected. They feel we’ve given them good value and that we’ve looked at the automobile they bring us in their best interest,” he said. The garage is located at 1420 Dixie Highway in Park Hills.

To learn more, check out the Fort Mitchell Garage website.

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Readers’ Choice Winner Spotlight: Foster Adoptive Parents Association

By Robin Gee

and it was much easier this time for us, but there were still things that your general population just doesn’t understand.”

L

INK nky 2025 readers’ choice for best nonprofit is a small, very personal shoestring operation that many people may not have heard of, but the work they do has an impact on many families throughout Northern Kentucky. Foster Adoptive Parents Association of Northern Kentucky is a support network for families caring for foster and adopted children.

Foster moms Amy Carder and Kate Morgan met through a local chapter of the Kentucky Foster & Adoptive Parent Training and Support Network. The network, operated through the state of Kentucky, is made up of parent-led teams that help provide training and support for foster and adoptive parents. They can provide training and resources for parents dealing with crisis or the unique issues that can come with caring for foster or adopted children.

The team was a great resource, and both women joined a team. Yet, Carder said she and Morgan felt more was needed. They wanted to reach more foster families and provide more opportunities for foster families to meet and get to know each other.

A journey to fostering Carder said she had been aware of fostering when as a young woman she had to make

A new opportunity for foster families Carder said she started looking around for support and found the state-run foster parent training network.

The Amy Carder and her family Photo provided | Foster Adoptive Parents Association

a difficult decision. When she discovered her friend’s baby had been abused by a boyfriend, she decided to file a report. Ultimately, the child was put into foster care.

Later, when she was working at a day care, Carder saw the child again and learned she had been adopted into a loving family.

She said this knowledge and understanding of foster care helped later when she was facing her own struggles to start a family.

“My husband and I were married about 10 years, and we were battling infertility and pregnancy loss…My husband had said he did not have any interest in being a foster parent. So then, a few years into this battle, it was just not going to work. We were at our end of attempts.”

Foster Adoptive Parents Association hosts a swapping shop where families can find clothing and other items they need. Photo provided | Foster Adoptive Parents Association

22 FEBRUARY 20, 2026

The only option left, she said was to try in vitro fertilization or IVF. “I just could not justify sinking thousands of dollars into having a miscarriage,” she said.

Her husband agreed, and said he would reconsider fostering. And so, the couple began their journey to becoming foster parents. It was not easy, and Carder said in the beginning they felt very alone.

“We had our first placement. It was very rough. We didn’t know what we were doing.

We had two little boys. They had significant needs. They were 10 months apart, and they were both two. There were days I sat on the floor crying. I’m like, we can’t do this. I don’t know what to do. They were lead poisoned, and they had all kinds of things that I just I didn’t know about, and I didn’t know who to reach out to to get help, and no one understood,” she said.

“I started going to those meetings, and that really helped. And then I met my friend Kate there, and we quickly bonded. We both decided to take a position on the support network team. So we worked together on that for a couple years,” she said.

They had discussed how so few foster parents seemed to know the network existed.

They wanted to know how to get the word out, how to reach more people. They also noted that some of the private established foster care organizations like DCCH and Benchmark Family Services offered events and activities to bring families together, something their network did not have the financial resources to do.

“So, we decided, okay, well, why don’t we just form our own organization? Then, we can do our own fundraising, and we can throw together some kind of party and let these families come together. So that’s how we formed in 2016,” Carder said.

The pair decided to start with a Christmas party. The first one drew 100 people.

“It was a big deal for us with just two moms putting this together,” she said.

It wasn’t a situation where she could just call up her mom or her aunt and ask what they did. They wouldn’t have experienced what she was going through.

She noted it wasn’t hard to get to 100 because many foster families are large. Six foster children is the state’s legal limit. She and Morgan both have six kids.

“You feel really isolated and alone. We struggled through that first placement, and then ultimately we had to move those boys to a home that was better equipped to care for them. And then we had to really take a few months to think about if we were ready to do this or not. We took three months off, and then we got a placement of a little girl,

“Our homes fill up very quickly…When you’re committed to these kids, your homes end up with six kids. You suddenly end up with a sibling group…So, a lot of families are big,” she explained.

For more information about Foster Adoptive Parents Association, go to fapaofnky.org.

SUDOKU

The Weekly Edited

by Margie E.Crossword Burke

Difficulty: Easy

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Copyright 2025 by The Puzzle Syndicate

Edited by Margie E. Burke Edited by Margie E. Burke

HOW TO SOLVE: TO SOLVE: EachHOW row must contain the

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88 44 33 22 11 66 7 9 5

by Margie E. Burke

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FEBRUARY 20, 2026 23

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