How we work
Eight steps, and the rules that govern all of them.
Community relations is an easy business to do badly, and doing it badly poisons the ground for everyone who comes after. So we publish how we work. A client should know it before the first meeting, and a community should be able to check us against it.
The process
From conflict screening to long-term reporting
- 01
Conflict and fit review
Before anything else, we check in writing whether we can take the work. We work one side per county — a developer or a community in a given county, never both. The check runs against a log of our active matters — client, county, and dates — so the rule is enforced by process rather than memory. We also ask a question that ends some conversations early: is this client willing to make specific, enforceable commitments to the community? If the answer is no, we are the wrong firm, and we say so in the first meeting rather than the last.
- 02
Confidential preliminary assessment
Desk research and analysis on the candidate county — decision process, issue history, institutional landscape, engagement risk. Nobody in the county is approached and no one learns a project is under consideration. This ends in a written go, no-go, or go-differently recommendation with the reasoning attached.
- 03
Technical fact gathering
Before we say anything in public we establish what is actually known, by whom, and to what standard. Water, load, noise, emissions, traffic, stormwater, revenue. Where a figure does not yet exist we identify the study required and who must perform it. We do not fill gaps with estimates and we do not repeat a number no qualified expert has signed.
- 04
Early stakeholder listening
Officials, staff, institutions, and community stakeholders — engaged early enough that what they raise can still change the project. Including, deliberately, the people most likely to object. Their objections are more useful in month one than in the hearing, and they are cheaper to address.
- 05
Project changes and commitments framework
The point where engagement either earns its cost or does not. What we heard goes back to the client as recommended changes to scope, siting, design, phasing, or commitments. Then a written benefits framework — numbers, dates, reporting obligations, and what secures them — negotiated with community representatives rather than announced at them.
- 06
Public engagement and documentation
Listening sessions, plain-language materials, and a public question-and-answer register that includes the questions without answers. Everything substantive is written down, attributed, and published — including what was raised and not resolved, and including dissent.
- 07
Support through the decision, without promising it
Hearing preparation, the hearings, and any appeal. We do not promise outcomes; nobody can promise a rezoning. We can promise that the community will know who the developer is and what they have committed to before a vote, and that the developer will know what they are walking into before they spend the money.
- 08
Long-term reporting and issue resolution
After a decision: a standing contact channel, an advisory committee that meets, quarterly public reporting against every commitment, complaint intake that escalates, and an annual honest assessment of where the relationship stands. For the life of the asset.
Steps two through five are where the value is. An engagement that begins at step six is a communications exercise, and it is usually too late for one to work.
What we require of clients
Real commitments, in writing. We do not take an engagement unless the developer is willing to make specific, enforceable commitments to the community. Not a statement of values — numbers, dates, and reporting obligations that someone can hold them to. If a client wants the appearance of engagement without the substance, we are the wrong firm, and we say so in the first meeting rather than the last.
Someone from the company, with a name. Not a consultant, not an attorney, not us. A person who works for the developer, who stands up in the room, says who they are, and answers the question. A community that has never met anyone from the company concludes the company does not care enough to come — and they are usually right. We will not be the only face a community ever sees.
One side per county. We work one side per county — a developer or a community in a given county, never both. Conflicts are checked in writing against a log of active matters before we sign anything, and if one emerges mid-engagement, we tell both parties.
Full disclosure of who we are. Anything we do that constitutes lobbying under Georgia law is registered and disclosed. We do not form front groups. We do not write letters for other people to sign. We do not place op-eds under names that aren't ours. If a community sees our work, they can see it's ours.
One story, told the same way everywhere. We do not say things in a community meeting that we would not say to the client, or say things to the client we would not say in a community meeting. This sounds obvious. It is the single most common failure in this line of work.
Technical honesty. Every factual claim about the project traces to a qualified expert who is accountable for it. When a study has not been done, the answer is that it has not been done. A client who wants a number invented for a meeting is asking for something we will not supply.
What we don't do
We don't run astroturf campaigns.
We don't manage a community. We introduce a developer to one.
We don't do secrecy past the decision point.Non-disclosure has a legitimate place. When a company is comparing sites across three states and two of those communities are going to lose, confidentiality protects everyone in the process, and a community that refuses to sign one often simply stops getting looked at. We understand why NDAs exist and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
They stop being legitimate at the moment the decision is made. Once a site is chosen and a rezoning is being prepared, continued secrecy is no longer protecting a competitive process — it is buying a few quiet months at the cost of the trust the project will need for the next twenty years.
Our rule: confidentiality limited in time and scope, and elected officials given enough information early enough to defend themselves in public even while specifics stay confidential. A commissioner who finds out from a constituent is a commissioner who cannot help you.
We don't promise outcomes. Nobody can promise a rezoning. We can promise that the community will know who you are and what you've committed to before they vote, and that you'll know what you're walking into before you spend the money.
We don't build files on people. No opposition research on residents, no tracking of individuals, no scoring or profiling of anyone because they object to a project.
Why publish this
Because the first question a county commissioner asks about a firm like ours is what we're hiding. Publishing the answer is cheaper than being asked.