The Euclid Civil Service Commission on Sept. 29 removed a disputed question from the lieutenant written promotional examination and, for consistency, also removed the same question from the sergeant written promotional examination after the testing vendor Clancy and Associates recommended the change. The commission also denied five separate protests to questions on the sergeant exam.

At the special meeting, the commission considered protests submitted after Clancy and Associates administered the written promotional examinations for police sergeant and lieutenant on Sept. 10, 2025, and after candidates submitted written protests on Sept. 19, 2025. Mr. Cooney, the law director, told commissioners that Clancy had provided the materials supporting its recommendations and that the commission historically has applied decisions about a contested test question equally to any other examination on which that same question appears.

The commission voted to grant the protest to question 145 on the lieutenant examination and to remove that question from both the lieutenant and the sergeant examinations. Clancy had recommended granting the protest and removing the item, citing ambiguous wording in the department policy language the question referenced. "Clancy has recommended, to the commission what they feel, you should how you should handle these protests," the law director said while introducing the vendor's recommendation.

Separately, the commission reviewed five protests to the sergeant exam (questions 3, 65, 108, 128 and 143). For each of those items the testing vendor recommended denying the protest, and the commission voted to deny all five. Commissioners discussed the merits briefly: one commissioner said a candidate had likely misread question 3, another noted that reasonable suspicion is the correct standard for question 65, and commissioners agreed question 108’s correct culpable mental state was "recklessly." For question 128, commissioners discussed that using one's position to gain influence for nondepartment business was the prohibited conduct described by the ethics standard, and for question 143 the commissioners endorsed the answer consistent with department policy requiring supervisors to ask officers for explanations of differing overtime requests.

Captain Howland, who attended, said he had not seen the written test or been aware of the protest but, after the questions were read aloud, that "the answer seemed quite obvious." The commission also approved minutes from its Sept. 2 meeting before addressing the protests and then adjourned.

No statutory citations, ordinance numbers, or other legal authorities beyond the vendor's recommendations and the department policies under discussion were presented at the meeting. The record shows the commission followed the testing vendor's recommendations in granting the protest on question 145 and applied that change consistently to both promotional exams.