The Cleveland Heights City Council held a special meeting on Monday, June 22, 2026, at 5:00 PM. All council members were present. The meeting featured a public confirmation hearing for the nominee for Human Resources Director and several legislative first and second readings, with votes on some items and postponements on others.
Okay, welcome to the special Cleveland Heights City Council meeting. It is Monday, June 22nd at 5 PM. And I guess I'll call the roll. Sarah Stone. Here. Jessica Cohen. Here. Craig Cobb. Here. Tony Kuda is here. Vice President Larson. Here. Councilman Joe DeWitt Foy. Here. And Councilman Jim Posh is on Zoom. Here. Actually, you're on team. Um, so uh the meeting is called to order. Uh our first order of business is communications from the mayor. Thank you, Mr. President. I have no comments right now. All righty. Thank you. Uh the next thing we're gonna do is uh we're gonna flip around five and six, and we'll do uh public confirmation hearing for the HR director nominee Christina Halstead. Uh Ms. Halstead, are you there? I am, yes. All right. Um Mayor, would you like to do the introduction? Thank you, Mr. President. It's my pleasure to introduce Christina Halstead for consideration as Cleveland Heights Human Resources Director. Christina currently serves as HR manager for the City of Columbus's Department of Public Safety, one of the largest and most complex municipal workforces in the state. In that role and throughout her career, she has built hands-on experience across virtually all facets of human resources, labor relations and contract compliance, employee discipline and grievance proceedings, FMLA and performance evaluation, and the list goes on. Christina holds a master in the study of law from the Ohio State University with a concentration and employment law and a master of public administration from Franklin University with the concentration and human resource management. She's also a credentialed professional in human resources, PHR, and a member of the National Public Employee Labor Relations Association, reflecting both her formal expertise and her ongoing commitment to best practices in public sector labor relations. Christina's combination of municipal experience, legal and administrative education, professional certification, and a labor relations expertise make her exceptionally well qualified to lead Cleveland Heights Human Resources Department. I'm pleased to present her for your consideration. All right, thank you, Mayor. Um before we go into questions, um I I want to say that this situation comes about because uh we did amend our charter in November. Uh council believed that uh it was very important to establish an actual HR department with a direct, you know, a director at that level. And um, you know, with 400 plus uh full-time employees and I know over a hundred seasonal employees, we thought that this was very appropriate. Um, and previously this job was divided up between the finance director, uh well, actually was given to the finance director. And we know the finance director has plenty on his plate. Um, so uh Christina, would you like to speak first? Um would be welcome to hear you from you, or we'll we can go to questions. Sure. I think that Mayor Petras did a wonderful job in uh his introduction. Um he took a lot of the words out of my mouth when it comes to what I was going to say as an introduction for myself.