I finally received a response from the Grand Rapids City Attorney's Office to my Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the Mystery Development proposed for the southwest corner of downtown -- now revealed to be a residential-commercial project by California businessman Duane Faust. With the exception of a single press release from Faust's local agent, Grubb & Ellis, Assistant City Attorney Catherine Mish says that no such documents are "reasonably known" to exist by the City.
This is important. Ms. Mish is not claiming that documents related to the Faust project are confidential and therefore exempt from FOIA disclosure. She says they don't exist -- or least, no documents in the City's possession or control exist connected to it. Ms. Mish specifically denied such existence of the confidentiality agreements that Mayor George Heartwell, City Manager Kurt Kimball, and Assistant City Manager Eric Delong signed on behalf of Faust's project. However, we know from Heartwell's public statements that these agreements do in fact exist.
Ms. Mish's official certification that these confidentiality agreements do not exist as public records is valid only if Heartwell, Kimball, and Delong signed them strictly as private citizens. If that is true, then Heartwell, Kimball, and Delong have been secretly using their public offices to marshal support for Faust's project without disclosing the private interest they have taken in it. That is clearly a conflict of interest and an abuse of the public trust. However, if they did sign the confidentiality agreements as public officials, then Ms. Mish has made a false declaration that they are not public records.
On top of all this, there remains the fact that the City, per Ms. Mish, says it has no records of the Faust project. That means Heartwell and gang have been enlisting the City's support for a project without any written records of what it is -- not even a written statement from Faust or his agents. Perhaps this is just another example of how Heartwell likes to play make-believe as mayor.
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