Who applied to be Cincinnati city manager? We have all 21 names and resumes

More than 20 people from 12 states have applied to be Cincinnati's next city manager.

Among the applicants: Interim City Manager John Curp, Assistant City Manager Sheryl Long and former Covington City Manager David Johnston. 

One applicant is a building inspector for Cincinnati who has been with the city for one year. 

Three applicants hail from Michigan and three from Kentucky, the most from any state other than Ohio, where four applicants are from.

The city manager is basically the CEO of the city, overseeing 6,000 employees and 17 departments. The current interim city manager earns $273,000 a year. 

Selecting a new manager is Mayor Aftab Pureval's biggest decision since he was elected in November. Whoever gets the job comes to it with a big decision of his or her own: who will be the city's next police chief. Chief Eliot Isaac retired from the city in February 2022. Curp selected Assistant Police Chief Teresa Theetge as interim police chief.The city manager will also deal with a city budget expected to have deficits, since it will be the first during the COVID-19 pandemic without federal government aid.

Under the city's charter, the mayor selects the city manager, but the choice must be approved by the nine-member city council.

Pureval pledged during the campaign to do a national search for the city manager. The city hired the firm PoliHire, which started the search on May 1. Pureval pledged it will be a public process that involves the opinion of city council members and the public.

The Enquirer requested the list under Ohio's Open Records Act with the assistance of its attorney when the city expressed hesitance about releasing the entire list. 

Pureval has said he hopes to hire the city manager by the end of August.  

Here are the 21 candidates and the work experience they listed on their resumes. The Enquirer also did basic background checks on each of the candidates. 

Bobby Boyd

Portage, Michigan

Since April 2021, Boyd has worked as the community outreach and diversity project manager for the city of Portage, Michigan, a city of 49,000 near Kalamazoo.Prior to that, he worked as an executive for Lowe's and Comcast. He also founded his own real estate and marketing firm, Boyd Entertainment, in 2008 and served as the chief executive officer until 2021. 

David Bryant

Cleveland

Bryant works as the contract compliance officer for the city of Cleveland. While his resume doesn't say how long he's been in the position, he says on his LinkedIn page he's been with the city since February. Prior to that, he worked in real estate property management and hotel management. 

Brandon Caminero

Wixom, Michigan

Since 2021, Caminero has worked as a project manager for the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences in Ann Arbor. He also founded a nonprofit called the School of Athens in 2017 in Oklahoma. It helps disadvantaged children and military veterans with basic necessities, according to the organization's profile on Guidestar.org.  An Army veteran, Caminero served in various management roles for the Army from 2005-2020.

John P. Curp

Cincinnati

Curp has served as interim city manager since January 2022. He previously served as Cincinnati's solicitor, the city's top lawyer, from 2008 to 2014. He's worked as a lawyer for law firms in Ohio since 1995.

As a private attorney, Curp represented former City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld in the Gang of Five texting scandal.

James Freed

Port Huron, Michigan

Freed has served as the city manager for Port Huron, a city of 28,000, since 2014. Prior to that, he was manager of the smaller Michigan municipalities of Stanton and Lakeview.

Social media posts directed at Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and an email to city employees that he "will never enforce a vaccine mandate upon my employees" led to Freed being censured by an organization of government professionals. 

The International City/County Management Association revoked his designation as an ICMA credentialed manager, the Port Huron Times Herald reported.  

Freed told the Times Herald the announcement of the censure was "concerning" and political in nature.

Nichalos Gardner

Fairfax, Virginia

A civil engineer, Gardner works as the managing director of engineering and architecture for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, a position he's held since 2017. Prior to that, he worked in public works or transportation departments including in St. Louis as well as Fairfax and Manasses in Virginia.

Mark A. Gillespie

Blue Ash, Ohio

Gillespie has worked as a building inspector for the city of Cincinnati since 2021, according to his resume. He's also the owner of Adoption Properties since 2020, where he said in his resume that he has managed "all phases of construction" and has owned and managed multi-family properties and bought single-family homes. 

In the past, he's worked as a project manager for Overberg Construction and a sales analyst at Tyson Foods.

David W. Johnston

Fort Wright, Kentucky

Johnston was the Covington City Manager from 2017 until he resigned on June 8, 2021. He did not give a reason, according to WCPO.

Prior to that, he was city manager of Maple Valley, Washington, a town of 26,000, from 2009 to 2016.

He resigned from Maple Valley "due to differences in philosophy between himself and a majority of members of council," according to minutes of the Maple Valley City Council.

Mark Kummer

His current address is not clear on his resume.

Last known places of employment listed on his resume include Cambridge, Massachusetts and St. Louis.

Kummer is listed as a Sloan fellow at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology from 2020 to 2021. That's the most recent place of employment listed on his resume.

From 2016 to 2020, Kummer was president of Mid America Logistics. 

Sheryl Long

Cincinnati

Long has worked as the assistant city manager for Cincinnati since 2019. Prior to that, she was city administrator for North College Hill, a Cincinnati suburb of 9,300, from 2016 to 2019. 

Patrick Marsh

Fernley, Nevada

Since January 2022, Marsh has been acting city manager of Fernley, Nevada, a town of 19,000 near Reno.

Prior to that, he worked as a consultant involved in grant-writing and from 2015 to 2021 as the city administrator in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, a town of 26,000.

He left Fitchburg a little more than two months after he was arrested in October 2020 on assault charges and public intoxication in a Myrtle Beach, South Carolina restaurant after becoming angry over wait times and being asked to wear a mask, according to the NBC affiliate in Madison, Wisconsin and the Fitchburg Star.  

Mark McCormack 

Fort Thomas, Kentucky

McCormack has served since 2006 as the director of planning and zoning for the Dearborn County Plan Commission in Indiana. 

Michael Meleca

Toronto, Ontario

Meleca is the senior manager in the project management office for Ryerson University where he's worked since 2018. Prior to that, he worked at various companies in land management and construction as well as serving on an advisory committee for a hospital all i.

Christopher R. Miller

Tyler, Texas

Miller has been the county administrator for King George County in Virginia since July 2021. The county, south of Washington, D.C., has a population of 27,000. Prior to that, he was executive director of Northeast Texas Regional Mobility Authority, a quasi-governmental agency he describes on his resume as serving 14 counties in northeast Texas with transportation services, including an "operation of a 33-mile Tolled Highway (Toll 49), non-tolled highways, rail, air and multimodal transportation services." 

Patrick J. O'Connor

Atlanta

The last place of employment O'Connor listed on his resume was as the finance director for College Park, Georgia from 2017 to 2018. He was finance director for Fulton County, Georgia from 1996 to 2014 and interim county manager from 2014 to 2015. 

O'Connor was fired from Fulton County, the most populous in Georgia, after recordings surfaced of him making disparaging remarks about county leaders. 

Willie J. Pass III

Abingdon, Maryland

Pass has served since November 2019 as the chief operating officer for the housing authority in Wilmington, Delaware. Prior to that, he worked for the housing authorities in Rochester, New York; Marin County, California; and Baltimore. 

Sadia Sattar

Philadelphia

Sattar has worked as deputy budget director of analysis for the city of Philadelphia since 2019. Before that, Sattar advised federal government agencies on financial management as a senior associate for the firm Guidehouse LLP. From 2013 to 2018, Sattar worked as a management and budget specialist for Arlington County, Virginia, first for the county fire department, then for the county police department. 

Jane K. Shang

Deltona, Florida

Shang served as city manager for Deltona, Florida, a city of 91,000 northeast of Orlando, from June 2015 to January 2020. That's the most recent work experience on her resume.

Shang resigned her position from Deltona after the city commission cast a 4-3 vote of no confidence. Multiple city staffers raised concerns about Shang’s managerial style and an agreement allowing a firefighter accused of sexual harassment to eventually retire, the Daytona Beach News Journal reported. 

Shang was deputy city manager of El Paso, Texas from 2008 to 2015. 

Robert Sivick

Dalton, Georgia

Sivick is the county administrator of Whitfield County, Georgia, a county with a population of 100,000 that's on the state's northern border with Tennessee. He's served there since September 2021. Before that, he was the administrator for Waushara County, Wisconsin from 2017 to 2021. The central Wisconsin county has a population of 24,000. He was city manager for the 2,000-population Oregon city of Willamina, northwest of Salem, for 10 months in 2016 and 2017. 

Jeffrey A. Weckbach Jr.

Cold Spring, Kentucky

Weckbach has worked as the assistant administrator for Colerain Township since June 2018. Before that, he was a senior policy manager and budget analyst for Hamilton County. 

Khalil A. Zaied

Palos Hills, Illinois

Zaied since 2019 has worked as vice president for special projects for engineering, construction and consulting firm KCI Technologies.

He was deputy city manager for public works for El Paso from 2016 to 2018. He worked for the city of Baltimore from 1997 to 2016, including as deputy city administrator from 2012 to 2016.