The standards we can be held to.

01

Who the client is

In most engagements a developer retains us, pays us, and directs our scope, and we are an agent of the applicant. In others a county, development authority, or regional organization is the client, and the public's side of the table is the one we are on.

We work one side per county — a developer or a community in a given county, never both. The rule is checked in writing against a log of our active matters before any engagement is accepted, and it binds in both directions.

We disclose which relationship applies without being asked: in the first sentence of any public meeting we run, on every public document we produce, and in response to any direct question from anyone. Where the developer is our client we do not represent the local government or the community in that county, and we correct anyone who describes us that way.

02

No fabricated grassroots activity

We do not create the appearance of independent public support. Specifically:

• We do not form, fund, staff, or covertly direct community groups, coalitions, or campaigns.
• We do not pay for public testimony, comments, petition signatures, or meeting attendance, and we do not compensate anyone for expressing a view.
• We do not write letters, comments, or op-eds for other people to sign or submit as their own.
• We do not use pseudonymous or undisclosed accounts, and we do not place content without attribution.
• We do not present paid participants, vendors, or contractors as independent community voices.

Where genuinely supportive local voices choose to speak, any material relationship they have with the client or with us is disclosed at the time they speak.

03

No guaranteed approvals

We do not promise, imply, or market a particular outcome to a client, and we do not tell a community that an approval is inevitable. Nobody can promise a rezoning, and a firm that says otherwise is either mistaken about its own influence or describing conduct we do not engage in.

No, not here, and not in this form are legitimate outcomes of a fair process. Our assessments are written so that all three remain available conclusions.

04

Technical claims belong to qualified experts

We are not engineers, hydrologists, acousticians, air quality specialists, traffic engineers, or tax analysts, and we do not speak as though we are.

Every technical claim in material we produce is attributed to the qualified professional accountable for it and to the study or model it derives from. Where an answer requires analysis that has not been performed, we say that rather than estimate. Where a figure changes, the change is published with its date and its reason. We do not oppose independent technical review by a local government, and we advise clients that resisting it is the wrong instinct.

05

Conflicts of interest

We work one side per county — a developer or a community in a given county, never both. Where a developer is our client in a county, we decline community-side work in that county for as long as the matter is live, and the reverse holds: a county or regional organization that engages us closes that county to developer work for the duration of the relationship.

We also do not accept an engagement in a county where our partners hold or represent a conflicting interest. Conflicts are screened in writing against a log of active matters — client, county, and dates — before an engagement is signed, covering every partner and any subcontractor we bring in.

If a conflict emerges during an engagement, we disclose it to both affected parties promptly, and we withdraw where the conflict cannot be managed. Personal political activity by our partners that is relevant to a jurisdiction we work in is disclosed to the client and, where it bears on our public role, publicly.

06

Lobbying registration and disclosure

Activity that constitutes lobbying under Georgia law is registered and disclosed as that law requires. We answer directly when asked whether a particular contact or engagement was registered.

We distinguish our work from lobbying, from public relations, and from technical consulting, and we do not blur those lines to make a service sound like something it is not. Where an engagement includes registered lobbying, that is stated rather than folded into the description of community engagement.

07

Public records, open meetings, and ex parte constraints

We assume our correspondence with public officials and staff is subject to disclosure under the Georgia Open Records Act, and we write it on that assumption. We do not ask officials to route communications around records obligations or to treat a briefing as off the record.

Where a matter is quasi-judicial, the ex parte constraint belongs to the official and we respect it absolutely. We take direction from the jurisdiction's attorney on what contact is permissible, and we forgo contact rather than create a defect in a public record. If a jurisdiction tells us contact is closed, it is closed.

08

Documentation of questions, commitments, and disagreement

Substantive questions are logged with their date and answered in a public register that shows unanswered questions as open. Commitments are written in specific, enforceable language and published with the reporting obligations attached to them.

Dissent is preserved. Objections are recorded in the terms in which they were made, not summarized into something softer or aggregated into a phrase like some concerns were raised. Minority views remain in the record after a project is approved. Unresolved is a status we publish and leave visible.

09

Participant privacy and data minimisation

We collect the minimum necessary to answer a question or route a complaint, and we keep it no longer than the engagement and its reporting obligations require.

Public registers carry the substance of a question, not the identity of the person who asked it, unless that person asks to be named. We do not sell, rent, or transfer participant information. We do not use engagement contact information for marketing.

No surveillance or scoring of individuals. We do not build opposition-research files on residents. We do not monitor individuals' social media accounts. We do not maintain lists of opponents, and we do not rank, score, or profile people by their likelihood of objecting. Our analysis of engagement risk concerns public processes, organizations, and issues — not private individuals.

10

Correcting inaccurate information

If material public information we produced turns out to be materially inaccurate, we correct it in the same channel it appeared in, dated, with the correction identified as a correction rather than a silent edit. Superseded figures remain visible alongside the corrected ones so the record shows what changed and when.

If you believe something we have published is wrong, tell us atbernard@hostcommunitypartners.com and we will respond.

11

When we decline or leave an engagement

We decline work, or withdraw from it, where:

• the client is unwilling to make specific, enforceable commitments to the community;
• we are asked to fabricate grassroots activity, place unattributed content, or produce testimony under other people's names;
• we are asked to state a technical claim no qualified expert will stand behind, or to conceal one that has changed;
• we are asked to conduct surveillance, opposition research, or profiling of residents;
• we are asked to say one thing to a community and another to the client;
• a conflict of interest arises that cannot be managed;
• we are asked to circumvent public-record, open-meeting, or ex parte obligations.

Withdrawal is disclosed to the client in writing with the reason. We do not publicize a client's confidential information on the way out, and we will not misrepresent why we left if asked directly.