Yes for GR Kids Ballot Committee event include an awful list of sponsors

On Tuesday, the Grand Rapids Public Schools will host a kickoff event for their November school bond, which the public will be voting for on November 7th.

The event will take place from 5 – 7pm at Long Road Distillers, a bar which is co-owned by Grand Rapids City Commissioner Jon O’Connor. Last month, the Grand Rapids Area Tenant Union kicked off a boycott campaign against Long Road Distillers, because Commissioner O’Connor voted in favor of 2 City ordinances in late July, which will criminalized the unhoused. 

More importantly, the sponsors of the kick-off event, organized by the Yes for GR Kids Ballot Committee, are all entities with deeply problematic histories. The three sponsors are Dean Transportation, Tommy Brann’s Steakhouse and Grille, and Rockford Construction.

The optics of these three sponsors are deeply troubling, which leads me to believe that the Yes for GR Kids Ballot Committee members are either willfully ignorant or in denial about the harm that each of these sponsors have perpetrated on some of the most vulnerable in the Grand Rapids Community. 

Dean Transportation

Dean Transportation is a company that was founded in the early 1950s with an emphasis on providing transportation for students with special needs. However, the company expanded at the same time of the rise of Charter Schools, the far right attacks attacks on Public Education, and the imposed austerity measures on education funding at the state level, Dean Transportation has stepped in to take over busing needs of school districts that could no longer afford to provide their on busing services.

The Grand Rapids Public Schools once had their own bus fleet and bus drivers who were paid well, with benefits. More importantly, when the GRPS operated their own busing, they had drivers who were from this community and had a deep connection to the students and families that were part of the Grand Rapids Public School District. 

This changed in 2005, when Dean Transportation signed an initial five-year contract with the GRPS. About 100 of the drivers that were hired were former GRPS bus drivers, who were represented by the Grand Rapids Education Support Personnel Association, an affiliate of the Michigan Education Association (MEA), the union for public education employees in Michigan. Dean Transportation disagreed, so the MEA sued Dean Transportation, which was later settled out of court, where Dean Transportation paid $600,000 to the union. However, contract issues between Dean Transportation and the GRPS continued for years after the initial contract.

Another important point about Dean Transportation has been the reliability of their bus drivers with students that attend GRPS schools. In fact, a Facebook page called Parents for Safe and Reliable School Transportation, which was created a few years ago, is filled with examples of parents talking about their child(ren) getting to school late, being left off at the wrong place or getting brought home way too late. Their FB page says, “As Grand Rapids Public School parents whose children use the Dean Transportation bus system to get to and from school, we have significant concerns about the quality of care provided by Dean Transportation, and are here to share stories and document problems. Whether it’s buses consistently arriving 20 minutes late or more, or mistreatment of our children by bus drivers, we want to hold Dean Transportation accountable.”

Tommy Brann’s Steakhouse and Grille

The Brann family has a contentious history with Grand Rapids. First, Tommy Brann used to be a State Representative in the Grand Rapids area, who supported state policies that would undermine public education teachers and their union. As a State Representative, Brann also consistently voted for policies that would take away funding from public education, and policies that would negatively impact children, particularly BIPOC children, since many of these policies would increase the wealth gap in Michigan.

Then there is Tommy Brann’s father, Johnny Brann Sr. Johnny Brann Sr. founded a group several years ago called Voice for the Badge. Voice for the Badge is a police apologist group that believes that the police can do no wrong and that anybody who doesn’t supports the cops is the problem.

Voice for the Badge has been very opposed to any of the numerous community efforts to reduce the amount of money allocated for the GRPD in the annual city budget, along with the fact that this group has publicly defended the GRPD even after the murder of Patrick Lyoya in April of 2022. 

Lastly, the Brann family has made significant campaign contributions to City candidates that have run on pro-police and pro-Capitalist platforms, like in the case of Andrew Robbins, who was elected in 2022 as a First Ward City Commissioner. Robbins not only received several thousand dollars from the Brann family, but even more from the DeVos family, the Grand Rapids Police Officer’s Association and the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce.

Rockford Construction

In 2020, Rockford Construction ran a paid ad in the now defunct business publication, MiBiz, where the company talked about how they “curate and nature community.” GRIID wrote a response to that claim, which included some of the following questions and analysis:  

Does curating and nurturing community mean partnering with the DeVos family and spending millions to acquire property in the southeast part of Grand Rapids, a few years before even telling the mostly Black residents in that part of the city what they were up to? 

Does curating and nurturing community mean turning the near-westside of Grand Rapids on Bridge St. into an entertainment, shopping and residential neighborhood, which is what CEO Mike VanGessel said back in 2016.

By curating and nurturing community, does Rockford Construction mean displacing residents, as we saw in 2016?

Maybe what Rockford Construction means by curating and nurturing community is using public money (through subsidies) to construct primarily housing that benefits the professional class and ignores those who are struggling.

Or is it possible that when they say curate and nurture community, Rockford Construction means hosting public forums to pacify people, when the reality is that they are going to do whatever they want because they own the land and have friends with lots of political power?

Since then Rockford Construction has taken an active role in the various efforts to criminalize the unhoused, especially in downtown GR. When the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce proposed an ordinance to the City in December of 2022, Rockford Construction signed on to a letter in support of that awful ordinance proposal. 

In July of this year, the City of Grand Rapids took elements of the GR Chamber ordinance proposal and crafted their own two ordinances that would criminalize the unhoused. These ordinances was adopted in late July, by a 5-2 vote. A few weeks after the City voted in favor of the two ordinances that would criminalize the unhoused, the CEO of Rockford Construction, Mike VanGessel, wrote a letter to Grand Rapids City Officials praising them for protecting his interests and the interest of other powerful business leaders who have a stake in the ongoing development of the downtown and near downtown part of Grand Rapids.

Lastly, it is worth noting that the GRPS bond vote in November, will most likely include funding for new building projects, projects that Rockford Construction might be in line for, and Dean Transportation relies on contracts with the GRPS, which explains why at least 2 of the three sponsors have contributed to the Yes for GR Kids Ballot event on Tuesday.