The city of Covington recently paid for a consulting group to come in and study ways that Main Street Covington could become an even greater asset to the economic growth of downtown.

The consultants, NewTown Partners, represented by Christopher Jones made their presentation this week to the city council; you can read the highlights by finding the story "New plan for downtown Covington?" on CovNews.com.

In our opinion, as both a newspaper and member of the Main Street board, the report contained some good, practical recommendations, while others would need more careful study before a decision was made on whether to implement them.

The Main Street program has come a long way from its roots as a group mainly concerned with historic preservation, and now is concerned with marketing, economic development and event planning.

Main Street Covington is mainly supported by tourist tax dollars - in the form of the hotel/motel tax - which allows its director to carry out those goals. However, Main Street Covington is officially governed by an independent board of directors, which includes a representative from the city and the county to go along with a mixture of downtown business and civic leaders.

Our Main Street has been recognized as one of the best in the state, and we recommend the city council, county board of commissioners and Main Street board work together as a team to study the findings of the NewTown proposal and quickly implement the recommendations that will help the economic growth of downtown.

The bottom line is that this needs to be a joint working partnership with only one concern: ensuring that the economic heart of Covington gets stronger and provides even more services to all the citizens of Newton County and the tourists who fund those efforts.