Session 1: Meeting the Mayor and the City Manager

Why I’m here

This is the first entry in a series I’ll keep for all eight sessions of the City of Covington’s 2026–2027 Mayor’s Academy — one write-up after each one, close to what I actually heard and learned rather than a polished summary written later. Session 1 was introductions: who runs the city right now, how that’s about to change, and what the Academy itself is for.

Meeting the mayor and the city manager

Mayor Ron Washington was elected mayor in 2024 after serving as a Commissioner and Mayor Pro Tem. He was raised in Covington and graduated from Holmes High School. Before politics, he was a law-enforcement officer — with the Florence Police Department and later as Chief Deputy at the Kenton County Sheriff’s Office — and he founded one of Kentucky’s largest addiction treatment centers. (ron.washington@covingtonky.gov)

City Manager Sharmili Reddy was appointed Covington’s 35th City Manager in August 2025. Before that, she was Executive Director of Planning and Development Services (PDS) of Kenton County, and before that, City Administrator for Fort Mitchell, Kentucky. She’s received several awards, including Outstanding Woman of NKY and the ASPA Career Achievement Award. (sreddy@covingtonky.gov)

How Covington’s government works right now — and what’s changing

The session covered the basics of city structure and function, but the part that stuck with me most was the transition already underway:

• Today, Covington operates under a City Manager form of government — the City Manager handles day-to-day administrative operations, and the Board of Commissioners handles budgets and policy.
• Covington is transitioning to a Mayor-Council form, where the Mayor oversees departments directly. The Board of Commissioners becomes a City Council of six members.

Hearing that directly from the two people at the center of it — the outgoing structure’s chief administrator and the mayor stepping into more direct authority — made it land differently than reading about it would have. It’s one thing to know a city is changing how it’s governed; it’s another to sit in the room with the people actually managing that handoff.

What’s next

Session 2 is September 14, with Commissioner Timothy Downing and Neighborhood Services Director Brandon Holmes, at Sparkhaus and the Pleasant Street Development. I’ll post notes after each session as I go.

A note on the photo

The photo above isn’t from this session — it’s from an earlier visit to City Hall in May, ahead of the first Board of Commissioners meeting I attended. I’m using it here because it’s the clearest photo I have with Mayor Washington, and this felt like the right place for it: the Academy is where I actually started learning how this city runs, directly from the person leading it.