Home Care In Cleveland Heights, OH

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio -- What a difference a changing of the guard can make.

One of the more puzzling aspects of the prior mayoral administration involved the ban on residents being able to return to Heights High pool after the pandemic.

Now the city’s transitional government plans to correct that -- at least on a limited basis for now.

City Council agenda passed the resolution Monday (Oct. 20) authorizing interim Mayor Tony Cuda to execute an agreement with the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Board of Education for long-awaited access to the pool.

There’s still $25,000 sitting around for lifeguards from February 2024, when council narrowly authorized a similar agreement.

But former Mayor Kahlil Seren, who remained opposed to the idea, apparently never signed the resolution after it passed.

In Friday’s City News email blast to residents, Cuda concluded his introductory message by telling residents to “stay tuned for some big news about the CHHS pool @ Monday’s City council meeting.”

Cuda added Saturday (Oct. 18) that he expected the new pool hours to start out on weekday mornings from 6 to 7:30, due to the high school swim and diving teams’ season schedules.

“After the mayor’s primary and recall elections (Sept. 9) but before I took office (as interim mayor for three months on Oct. 1), I wanted to get things moving with the CH-UH administration," Cuda said.

It took at least three meetings with Superintendent Liz Kirby, who said back in January 2024 that the district was “ready to make it happen as we did before the pandemic.

“We had an agreement then that we are ready to return to now to offer pool access,” Kirby said nearly two years ago in an email to resident Garry Kanter.

Kirby added that she had repeatedly tried to move it forward with the Seren administration.

Years in the making, it actually happened briefly this summer when Cumberland pool’s opening was delayed, allowing city pool pass holders to return to the Heights High pool in June.

City Recreation Director Andres Gonzales assisted in getting that agreement in place, as he did this time around.

Cuda credited Gonzales with alerting lifeguards at the close of the Cumberland Pool summer season “that we might be needing them back” sooner rather than later.

Cuda also met with CH-UH Athletic Director Joe D’Amato and brought University Heights Mayor Michael Dylan Brennan into the talks.

In an Oct. 17 memo to council, Cuda explained that Cleveland Heights pays 75 percent of the cost for lifeguards, with University Heights kicking in 25 percent.

The school district provides the pool, security and maintenance at no cost to the cities, while Cleveland Heights hires those lifeguards and provides supervision from the aquatics coordinator.

“Anyone who has a pass to the Rec Center swims for free,” Cuda stated. “Others will pay a small fee.”

The weekday morning swim hours could get started in November -- if not sooner -- with Cuda hoping the community swim program will expand to Saturdays in March.

“When we talk about it in upcoming 2026 budget hearings, I’m going to support expanding to weekends in March,” Cuda said. “But that will be up to council.”

Along with Cuda and the legislation’s original sponsor, City Council Vice President Davida Russell -- who presented it in late 2023 -- the entire council has now signed on to sponsor the proposed resolution.

Russell noted Monday the return to the Heights High pool has been a “long time coming.”

She thanked Gonzales, City Law Director Bill Hanna and the CH-UH school district -- as well as the city’s Recreation Advisory Board, which kept the return plan afloat in recent years.

The legislation passed 6-0 on first reading as emergency legislation, allowing it to take effect immediately after Cuda signs it.

It also gives a reason for the emergency clause, “that being the need to provide increased recreational and exercise opportunities for school district residents prior to the onset of winter.”

The city ran swimming programs at Heights High prior to the construction of the new natatorium.

But the legislation also mentions the fact that it was one of the selling points for the $157 million bond issue passed by voters in 2013 that built the addition to Heights High.

“The renovations funded through the voter-approved bond issue included construction of a new competition-sized swimming pool which the district indicated at the time would be available for community use,” the resolution states.

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio -- After less than a year on the job, City Finance Director Rodney Hairston will be leaving at the end of this week to take a new post closer to home in Akron.

Hairston came on board in January, becoming the third finance director -- with as many interim appointees -- to serve under recalled mayor Kahlil Seren.

Much of Hairston’s work became damage control, such as gathering financials from 2023 that still needed to be forwarded to the Ohio Auditor’s Office, a lapse that has affected the city’s credit rating.

Interim Mayor Tony Cuda announced Hairston’s departure at Monday’s meeting, thanking him for leaving the department in much better shape than it was when he took it over.

“He definitely made a great impact, along with some great hires,” Cuda said, with one of those being Assistant Finance Director Rachun Caldwell.

She will be getting a promotion next week, at least on an interim basis. Cuda also contracted with former director Andy Unetic -- who retired in December 2023 -- to come back for the 2026 budget hearings as a consultant.

It doesn’t hurt that interim City Administrator Sharon Dumas served as finance director for the City of Cleveland.

“Rachun will be stepping in for double-duty,” Dumas told council Monday, noting that Caldwell has 20 years experience in governmental accounting.

This includes annual budgets for Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, where she worked with Hairston, and prior to that as chief accountant for the City of East Cleveland.

Unetic and an outside firm will be “assisting us in getting our financials together, including fiscal years 2023 and 2024, which are almost completed,” Dumas said. “And we are up to third quarter in fiscal ’25.”

Caldwell will return to her assistant position the last week of December as the city transitions over to its new mayor, Dumas noted.

“We have a lot of work to do in a short amount of time,” Cuda told council.

He spoke of “making great strides in very vigorous discussions” already underway.

“And you will have a 2026 budget draft on Nov. 1.”

Metro Healthy

Council also heard from MetroHealth System President and CEO Christine Alexander-Rager about plans to close its 10-bed Psychiatric Emergency Department at its Cleveland Heights location on Severance Circle after only about a year in operation.

While they are closing that location in a move from a “centralized to a dispersed model using all ambulatory centers,” Alexander-Rager said that behavioral and mental health services remain a vital part of the MetroHealth mission.

Especially in Cleveland Heights, where the $42 million, 112-bed Behavioral Health Hospital opened in 2022 will remain intact.

The same goes for the standard medical emergency room, physical rehabilitation, primary care, sports medicine and a “bustling senior care practice.”

Responding to Council President Gail Larson about patients in immediate need of emergency psychiatric care, Alexander-Rager said they will be able to go to any MetroHealth System emergency room in the system.

As for the 10 emergency psychiatric beds left over at the end of the year in Cleveland Heights, they can serve as flex space for regular MetroHealth hospital operations, Alexander-Rager said.

Lowered Shaker Lake

In his mayor’s remarks, Cuda said he’s met with Shaker Heights Mayor David Weiss and Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (NEORSD) officials about the latter’s "revised recommendation" on the fate of Lower Shaker Lake.

“There are three alternatives that the sewer district is now looking at,” Cuda said, referring to a Class I (high hazard, over 60 feet in height) dam and a Class II (over 40 feet) as the first two options.

“But I think the one that’s had the most discussion is the idea of having some kind of water feature," Cuda said.

Cuda noted that sewer district CEO Kyle Dreyfuss-Wells would be “willing to do a feasibility study on a water structure that could have a stormwater management capability."

That would allow the sewer district to pay for it.

“I said I hope you can design something that would indeed fulfill that, because that’s the way it could happen without us being financially involved.”

As a result, Cuda plans to schedule three meetings with council and other agencies. They include the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), which regulates dams; Cleveland Metroparks, which signed onto a somewhat similar Garfield Park Pond Restoration project several years ago; and eventually NEORSD, for obvious reasons.

“Here’s the bad news -- they really want to do these during the day,” Cuda warned. “And I know your days are very booked up and actually very difficult for those working.”

Larson pointed out that any scheduling should include Shaker Heights as well, “since we’re coordinating all of this with them.”