ELi Board of Directors Responds to Harbor Bay’s “Ethics Complaint”

As reported by ELi’s Andrew Graham last Friday, in addition to sending a letter to the Mayor of East Lansing threatening a lawsuit against the City and emailing tenants of Newman Lofts in an apparent effort to worry them into moving out, on Aug. 27, the developers of the Center City District project filed an “ethics complaint” with ELi’s Board of Directors. They also sent a copy of their complaint to our two trade organizations.

With my assistance as staff, ELi’s Board of Directors has spent the last several days collaboratively drafting a response to this complaint. You can see ELi’s response here.

Our Board of Directors’ letter to Steve Willobee of Harbor Bay concludes:

“We understand that investigative and rigorous reporting may threaten your income. It is our goal to provide the East Lansing community with impactful and informative news. With that, we persist, and we do so with the support of our community. We will continue to operate under the conviction that extraordinary actors in our city require extraordinary scrutiny. Especially when they are seeking the taxpayers’ money.”

The letter was purposely composed in a way to help anyone reading it understand ELi and also understand what we think is really going on here. But if you have any questions or concerns after reading it, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

If you would like to support the work we do, here’s our donation page. Thank you.