The concept of a working committee to study the 2050 Plan proposal and make recommendations to streamline it seemed until this week to be a workable solution.

What generally makes a committee work is that it allows a relatively small group of people to work together to come up with a consensus to solve an issue.

Now the city of Covington is insisting instead of having one representative to serve on this proposed committee, they want seven. All other municipalities will just have one.

In our opinion, Covington’s request defeats the whole concept of having a committee. If the city is allowed to appoint these members we see this committee bogging down and spinning its wheels, and we see no good coming out of its efforts.

It’s not that the city has no argument for more representation. It does. Having paid as much for the 2050 Plan as the county, it seems fair, on the surface, to provide equal representation. But it’s not about that. It’s about finding solutions to the more vexing problems in the massive plan for the county’s future.

City officials were unanimous Monday in demanding seven seats on the committee, one for each council member and the mayor. That one-for-one ratio has been allocated to the county commissioners, so the city requested the same.
But that just can’t work. A committee that big won’t accomplish anything.

A better solution might be to downsize the county’s portion of the committee to just one, equal in terms of the cities. That certainly won’t seem fair to the county, but again, it’s all about a committee that works.

With our largest city and the county bumping heads, it might be best to just kill the committee altogether rather than waste everyone’s time.