With its sights set on further economic development, the City of Covington will in January welcome a new mayor who's poised to lead the city's transition to a new government structure.Mayor-Elect Ron Washington, a current city commissioner, will make history as the first Black mayor of the largest city in Northern Kentucky come January 2025."What's most important for me is to keep the momentum going forward," Washington said. "My priority is for the whole city to welcome the new people and do my best try to take care of the existing people."This November, Covington residents voted to switch their city manager-style of government to a mayor-council one. The changes are set to take effect in 2026 when residents vote for anywhere from six to 12 members of a newly formed city council. "The citizens are going to be able to know that the person they elected is actually running the city," Washington said when asked how he sees the mayoral role under a new government structure. "They assume that's what it was. But actually, we had a city management type of system. So we had a middleman. The middleman is now taken out of it."Washington said as mayor, he'll work alongside city commissioners to transition the government, drafting ordinances outlining details of the new system."What this [system] is going to do is be able to provide more efficiency," Washington said. The first step, he said, is for the commissioners to establish a "committee of concerned citizens" to advise the board on how to proceed."That committee will be comprised of experts and also citizens of interest," Washington said. "That committee can make a recommendation that the commission could either accept or reject of how many council people [there should be] and what their rate of pay is."The mayor-elect, who was born in the city's Mutter Gottes neighborhood, began his career with the Florence Police Department, becoming its first Black police officer. He went on to work for the Kenton County Sheriff's Office as the chief deputy. "I became the chief deputy sheriff, which involved a little bit of politics of running the sheriff's campaign," he said. "So that was very exciting to do that at the time."In 2020, Washington was elected as a city commissioner and re-elected in 2022, garnering enough votes to make him Covington's mayor pro tem."I was raised by a single mother, and community service was always just pounded into us," he said.Before Washington becomes Covington's first leader under a mayor-council structure, he'll have two years to tackle his initial priorities."The southern part of the city, in our Latonia areas and south of 12th Street, everybody's not feeling the love," he said. "And it's important for me as the next mayor to always be looking out for those people."Washington said he'll look to tackle a "workforce housing shortage" taking shape in the city."People that are working jobs that maybe don't require four-year degrees, they're possibly living on [a] couch," he said. "They're living in a basement, and they should have the opportunity to experience Covington by getting their own place."Workforce housing is a type of affordable housing for those who earn between 60% and 120% of an area's median income, according to the National Association of Realtors. A 2023 Northern Kentucky Area Development District (NKADD) report found the Northern Kentucky region needs to build 6,650 housing units over the next five years to support economic development, including 3,260 units for workforce households."We're going to fight like heck to make sure that we're taking care of people, you know, all within the bounds of our tax structure," Washington said.Another goal of his, he said, is maintaining the pace of economic development in the city. As mayor-elect, Washington will soon be at the helm of a city that's home to the OneNKY Center development and the nearby Central Riverfront development. "We have a lot of new people here in our community, a lot of businesses that are opening in our community, a lot of people wanting to live here and have fun and play here," Washington said. "With our Covington Central Riverfront everybody knows about that. We're going to have a new law school, a new medical school."Washington will be sworn in as mayor in January 2025.