Bailey Residents Question Mayor's Undisclosed Relationship

Image: Screen shot of a State News report from 2011, as explained below.

In January, after East Lansing’s City Council voted 3-2 to close the daycare at the Bailey Community Center, effectively also closing the Community Center, ELi reported on the fear and suspicion that resulted among Bailey neighborhood residents and Bailey daycare parents. In the almost two months that have passed, instead of abating, suspicion and frustration seem to be increasing, if one is to judge by a veritable flood of “tips” and emails sent to ELi.

The focus of the suspicion and frustration is Mayor Nathan Triplett’s relationship to a man named Stephen Purchase, a relationship that was not disclosed as the daycare’s closure went to a vote. (Triplett voted to close the daycare.)To explain the perceived issue of the undisclosed relationship between Triplett and Purchase, some background is required.

Last fall, City Manager George Lahanas informed the public that he and his staff wanted to close the Bailey daycare, saying that the costs of operating it at Bailey were too high and that the City wasn’t really equipped to run a daycare. In response, Bailey residents and daycare parents appealed to City Council. Advocates for keeping the daycare open were told by City Councilmembers that they would need to come up with a plan for taking management of the daycare and most or all of the costs off the hands of the City if they wanted to keep the program open.

The daycare parents, including several faculty members of MSU, pulled off what can probably only be achieved in a college town like East Lansing: they researched how nonprofit daycares operate and quickly came up with a highly detailed proposal for how to transition the daycare from a City-run operation to a nonprofit-run operation that, according to the parents’ group, would preserve daycare at the Community Center, keep the Community Center open, and stem the City’s financial losses. (See the parents’ proposal here and here.)

Development of their proposal was aided substantially by Elisabeh Weston, Executive Director of Lansing-based childcare organization EC3. (On its website, EC3 describes itself as a “private, nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide developmentally appropriate child care in a nurturing environment.”) Emails between Weston and members of the parents group, provided to me by parents, shows Weston actively helping the parents think about costs, management structure, and so forth. One possibility being bandied about was that EC3 would function as a kind of parent organization to the new version of the Bailey daycare, or that EC3 would operate a daycare at the Bailey center.

It therefore came as a great surprise to the parents’ group that, just hours before the Council vote was to occur, Weston wrote to Triplett:

“Greetings, Mayor Triplett: In response to your inquiry about EC3’s disposition and intention in the Bailey Childcare Center matter, I maintain that EC3 has provided only a sounding board to the parent group that is seeking to extend operations beyond June 2015. To date, the group has not submitted a proposal or request for EC3 to manage or somehow acquire the BCC [Bailey Community Center] operations; furthermore, even if they do, I have assured them I will not bring such a request to my Board of Directors unless or until the City of East Lansing agrees to their plans. Even in that remote circumstance, I would be disinclined to recommend my Board accept such a proposal because it would invite a substantial risk to EC3’s current service…” (Full letter here.)

Even more shocking to the parents’ group was the arrival, only half an hour before the start of Council’s meeting on the day of the vote, of a letter from Stephen Purchase, Chair of the Board of EC3. In his letter—received so late it was never even entered into the Council’s January 20 agenda for “communications received”—Purchase told Council that he thought the parents plan was unlikely to be financially feasible. Purchase also told Council he thought the building was in too bad disrepair to house a daycare.

Purchase closed his letter by telling Council that while he believed the “desire to establish and grow a high quality, parent-lead [sic] childcare center in East Lansing” was “genuine,” that “its attachment to the Bailey building is problematic if not fatal to that important endeavor.” (See the full letter here.)

At Council that night, Councilmember Kathy Boyle expressed frustration at obtaining important materials shortly before the meeting, and her comment seemed to be about this letter. As it turned out, Boyle was not persuaded by Purchase’s letter, and voted with Councilmember Ruth Beier to keep the daycare open long enough to allow the parents time to try to enact a transition from City-owned to outside-party daycare. One reason Boyle gave for keeping the daycare open was to build positive relations with the neighborhood while the City undertook dialogues about what the future of the community center should be.

But Boyle and Beier were outvoted by Mayor Nathan Triplett, Mayor Pro Tem Diane Gooddeeris, and Councilmember Susan Woods who voted to close the daycare and effectively also the community center. Whether Weston’s or Purchase’s letters had any impact on the three who voted to close the daycare is not clear. What is clear is that a number of people in the Bailey group became suspicious of how this had played out and started to look into Purchase’s background.

What they found is that, in addition to being board chair for EC3, Purchase is Vice President of H, Inc., a company that according to its website specializes in “adaptive reuse of historic buildings.” To be sure, in his letter to Council, Purchase had mentioned that he “rehabilitate[s] and maintain[s] historic properties professionally,” but some of those looking into his background wondered if his company had designs on the building and therefore wanted to see it vacated.

For this story, I asked Purchase whether his company has interest in redevelopment of the property. He responded, “No. H Inc. has never considered the Bailey property for a development nor are we interested today. Our current focus rests outside the City of East Lansing. I have never been inside the Bailey building, but based on what I know from public documents, the building would likely be too small, and especially so given the rehabilitation costs likely to be involved, to interest us.”

What seems to concern advocates of the Bailey daycare much more than Purchase’s professional position is his relationship with Mayor Nathan Triplett. Looking into that, they discovered that Triplett and Purchase are very close friends. Purchase was in Triplett’s wedding party and has long been a close friend; as shown above, in 2011 the State News carried a photo of Purchase and his wife watching Triplett’s election returns with Triplett and his wife. Purchase has recently made himself a member of the host committee for Triplett’s reelection campaign, a position that requires being a donor at the $250 or above level.

The close and long friendship between Triplett and Purchase was not disclosed in Purchase’s letter nor by Triplett during the Bailey proceedings. Whether it would have made any difference in the outcome of the vote is unclear, but what does seem clear is that some residents of Bailey see this as evidence of a kind of backroom political dealing. Those who participated in and supported the parents’ working group, which worked hard to come up with a very detailed proposal for transition and sustainability, have told me they feel led on while the cards were stacked against them.

Bailey resident and daycare parent Miriam Schwartz, for example, wonders if this has all been set up in favor of developers. She likened the situation to an illicit affair: “[If] my husband left me that would be terrible. But if I found out that the reason he is leaving me is that there is a third party involved, and he did not tell me this, that would be even worse, and that this is what I think is going on here. There is a third party involved—developers—and we are not being told that this is the case.” She points to how City staff kept changing and increasing estimates of cost of repairs to the building as evidence of how the playing field kept being changed to disfavor the parents and neighborhood.

That the City planning staff has been listing and continues to list the Bailey building as “redevelopment ready” only adds to the neighborhoods’ sense that the City has long been planning to sell the property to a developer.

Longtime Bailey resident and advocate Sally Silver believes that Stephen Purchase had just as much of an obligation to disclose the relationship as Mayor Triplett did: "Since Mr. Purchase and EC3 were advising the parents group in its efforts to create a new childcare organization, and since one of their main efforts was to persuade the city council (and the mayor especially) to support their efforts, Mr. Purchase should certainly have disclosed his relationship to the mayor when the group sought his organization's advice. His friendship with the mayor may certainly have affected his views on the parents' efforts and created a conflict of interest—a division between his inclination to help his close friend, the mayor, versus his obligation to help the parents group."

Charles Hoogstraten, a Bailey resident and parent who worked on the parents’ proposal, notes that he has “no problems with the fact that Mr. Purchase and Mayor Triplett know each other. But given that, as Board Chair of EC3, Mr. Purchase was helping EC3's director advise us on the structure of proposals that we were ultimately submitting to City Council, I would have expected that to be disclosed to us at the time. Instead, we only learned of the preexisting relationship long after Council's vote on the issue. This situation is especially problematic since the two of them were in fact communicating directly on the matter.”

Purchase denies being asked by Triplett to produce his letter: “I wrote the letter of my own accord and representing my own personal views. My intention was to simply inform the discussion based on my conversations with the Parent Group and review of their materials, and in particular clarify the limits of the commitment EC3 had made to provide assistance given that some had suggested EC3 would play a much larger roll than had been agreed to at the time.” Purchase also tells me he did not discuss the letter with Triplett in advance of sending it.

I put to Triplett several questions, including why he opted not to disclose the relationship with EC3’s board chair during the proceedings and whether he regrets not disclosing it. I also put this to him: “There is a strong sense among the Bailey parents working group and their allies that they were strung along by you for political reasons—that you never intended to vote in their favor because you had decided already that the costs of keeping the building open were simply too high. Can you respond to that?”

He has not responded to any of these questions.

Hoogstraten tells me, “Had we known of Board President Purchase's close links with Mayor Triplett, that he would be advocating against direct participation by EC3 in a rescue of Bailey, or that he was prepared to play a double role in the process, we might very well have instead followed up on preliminary contacts with other potential partners in Bailey childcare administration, and potentially could have attained a stronger proposal to place before the City Council.”

Hoogstraten and others are particularly suspicious of the timing of Purchase’s letter, undermining the parents’ plan while coming too late for them to respond before the vote. Says Hoogstraten, “A number of the specific points raised in Mr. Purchase's email were simple misunderstandings, which we could have cleared up immediately, or relatively minor features that we might well have been prepared to alter or negotiate based on feedback from EC3. We were given no opportunity to do either. We had been led to believe that EC3 was lending their expertise to advise and assist us with the preparation and (if approved) implementation of our proposals, rather than sitting in judgment of them on the City's behalf.”

Hoogstraten makes no doubt about his view of the matter: “Switching between those two roles with no notice to us, as Mr. Purchase did, was in my opinion a serious breach of our trust and represented a major conflict of interest. Such an action was unethical and unworthy of a representative of a well-respected and high-quality childcare program such as EC3.”

I put Hoogstraten’s comment to Purchase to get his response, and he has not responded.

When in our earlier exchange I had asked Purchase if he wanted to add anything I had not asked about, he said, “I certainly wish the Bailey families well, and although it appears they have at this point decided to forego establishing their own program in alternate space, I am glad to see that the entire childcare community, including EC3, is stepping up to help families smoothly transition into new programs.”

The parents with children who are about to be displaced tell me that the only “help” they have received has been a simple referral to EC3, including by Mayor Triplett.

This article was updated on March 10 at 9:40 am to correct Miriam Schwartz's last name and at 8:15 pm to correct Elisabeth Weston's first name.