Thumbs up to the Covington City Council and the officials at City Hall for their attentiveness and diligence on a subject that most people only think of in retrospect: How the downtown should grow and eventually look.

Land-use and economic issues such as this tend to make eyes glaze over. Most often, it’s only after unattractive or nonsensical commercial growth, combined with unwieldly traffic flow, have made their unwelcome presence felt that the general populace takes an interest. And by then, corrective measures are difficult at best, as some cities have learned the hard way.

Covington officials are trying to make sure the horse is before the cart. They’re cautiously but progressively eyeing what’s downtown now and working on long-range plans for what the public, developers, business operators and City Hall want in the future.

As Councilman Wayne Snoey has noted, it would be good for Covington to become more self-sustaining as a place to live and work, given economic challenges such as the high cost of transportation.

“We must create more opportunity for living-wage jobs and affordable housing that currently don’t exist,” he saidrecently. “We have a one-time chance to get it right, or piecemeal development will rob us of the greatest potential.”

• Thumbs up to Margaret Young-Weitzel, whose year as conductor of the Maple Valley Youth Symphony Orchestra has ended so she can take a job at St. Xavier University in Chicago. Her efforts since the group formed last September, along with those of other adult leaders of the orchestra and the musicians themselves, have solidified the MVYSO as an integral part of the local cultural and arts scene. April Whyte, the new conductor, can take the baton confident that there’s more good music to come.

Editor Pat Jenkins