At the Intersection: A Department Design Case Study

This piece was written in advance of publication for the Fall 2025 issue of FOCUS and reflects the Communications & Community Relations framework as designed and launched during my tenure with the City of Cleveland Heights. I no longer have visibility into the department’s operations following my departure.

In early September 2025, new colleagues began settling into Cleveland Heights City Hall as the Community Relations and Communications Department entered its launch phase. Onboarding was underway, with early efforts focused on aligning calendars, files, and core routines intended to support more consistent public updates and clearer routing of questions.

This department did not emerge by accident. Its structure was envisioned and designed months earlier, as Communications Specialist, when it became clear that Cleveland Heights lacked a coherent system for how information moved in and out of City Hall. The work included drafting role definitions, rewriting job descriptions, mapping workflows, and establishing a clear distinction between outward communication and inward community intake. What was launched in September reflected work that began long before the first onboarding checklist was completed.

The timing mattered less as a milestone than as a design principle. The goal was not a headline, but the restoration of an ordinary habit: transparency built through structure, cadence, and documentation.

The department’s name often prompted a practical question: what is the difference between communications and community relations?

Communications was designed to manage the outward flow of information—releases, advisories, project updates, social media, video, design, and media contact. Community relations was structured as the intake: front-line questions, service requests, routing, and follow-through. One explains; the other listens. Together, they form a loop.

That loop shaped the department’s operating model. Roles were intentionally defined to support routine, accountable communication. The Social Media Manager position was designed to anchor an editorial calendar so updates could become routine rather than reactive. Public relations functions were structured to draft releases and Q&As that placed dates, costs, and names on the record, with mechanisms for correcting inaccuracies. Government TV leadership was positioned to focus on live meetings, captions, and preservation of the public archive, ensuring residents unable to attend could still access the full record. Digital media production was scoped to build a usable photo and video library rather than a scatter of files. Graphic design roles were defined around accessibility and consistency across City News, project pages, and signage. At the Mayor’s Action Center, community relations work was structured to meet residents where they were—turning questions into trackable requests and closing the loop when work was completed.

This framework was developed in a noisy civic environment: recall politics, empty rooms at meetings, and rumors that often traveled faster than corrections. In that context, even straightforward updates could be misread as persuasion. The department’s premise was simpler. Attribution is not partisanship. Naming who did the work and when it happened is accountability—the chain of custody that residents need to follow, from ordinance to contract to the crew on the ground.

The approach emphasized maintenance over spectacle. If a date slipped, the expectation was to say so, publish the new date, and continue. If a record was released, it would be paired with the ordinance or contract that explained it. If a backlog existed, it would be shown alongside progress.

The longer-term aim of the department design was to rebuild habits of trust through routine transparency: explaining delays without drama, publishing backlog metrics as maintenance rather than failure, and pairing documents with the budgets, ordinances, and contracts that give them meaning. The framework also recognized that civic participation is not a luxury for people with spare time. It is a right that requires access.

In September 2025, approximately a quarter of Cleveland Heights voters participated in the recall and primary elections—a reminder of how easily rumors can outpace correction in thin rooms. The department model was built to narrow that gap by making complex decisions legible, timelines visible, and the “why” behind City actions as accessible as the “what.”

The intent was never to sell City work, but to make it understandable. Communications without community relations risk becoming broadcast. Community relations without communications risks becoming rumor control. The intersection of the two is where trust can be built: one specific, dated, sourced update at a time.