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Security National Properties Holding Company, LLC, one branch of the sprawling corporate tree founded by occasional Eureka resident Robin P. Arkley, II, has dumped nearly a quarter of a million dollars into the parking-lot-preservation measure dubbed “The Eureka Housing for All and Downtown Vitality Initiative,” according to a campaign finance disclosure form submitted to the City of Eureka.

Arkley in 2014.

From late July through September of last year the company contributed $200,000 in chunks of $25,000 and $50,000, plus another $36,000 worth of non-monetary contributions.

Where has that money gone? Out of the area, mostly. 

Those non-monetary donations to the Housing for All committee included a $16,000 payment from Security National Properties Holding Company to Regional Strategies Group, a San Diego-based communications consultancy, and a $20,000 payment from SN Servicing Corporation (part of the same corporate family) to La Jolla Group Consulting, Inc., also based in San Diego, as a retainer for signature gathering.

Meanwhile, more than $54,000 was paid to Gail Rymer Strategic Communications, based in Knoxville, Tenn. Rymer works as a spokesperson for Security National. During this election campaigns season she is also serving as the spokesperson for the Housing for All initiative as well as Citizens for a Better Eureka, a nonprofit coalition of business and property owners that has filed five lawsuits against the City of Eureka. 

Four of those suits are CEQA-related efforts aimed at stopping the city’s plans to convert under-used municipal parking lots into housing developments. The fifth argues that the city should have put the “Housing for All” initiative on the March primary ballot, even though the city’s next regular election is the November Presidential Election.

The Housing for All committee also paid La Jolla Group more than $116,000 for petition circulation. It paid SoCal digital marketing firm The Primacy Group more than $21,000 for consulting work. And it paid about $1,700 to River City Business Services, a Sacramento-based accounting and political reporting firm, for professional services.

The campaign also spent more than $5,200 in postage, mailing glossy fliers to Eureka residents, and nearly $10,000 on radio advertisements. 

Oh, and it spent $29,653.32 on lodging for the people who came to town for the petition effort. Eureka Assistant City Manager Pam Powell tells the Outpost that she noticed none of the hotels were in Eureka, so the city earned no Transient Occupancy Tax revenue. Most of the guests were housed at the Hampton Inn & Suites in Arcata, with other rooms rented at the Arcata Ramada and Motel 6. 

Again, this disclosure form covers barely two months of the campaign thus far – from late July, when Security National first started spending money on the campaign, through the September 31, the end of the reporting period. The next reporting deadline arrives on Wednesday of next week, Jan. 31. That report will cover the period from Oct. 1 through the end of 2023.

While Arkley has sought to distance himself from the “Housing for All” initiative, Security National’s fingerprints are all over it. Not only is Gail Rymer the spokesperson for both, as noted above, but Security National provided the startup funding for Citizens for a Better Eureka, according to the group’s website.

Furthermore, as Thadeus Greenson recently reported in the North Coast Journal, the attorney who filed all those Citizens for a Better Eureka lawsuits against the city, Brad Johnson, also signed the property exchange agreement between Eureka City Schools and a mystery developer called AMG Communities – Jabobs, LLC, a newly formed company that has agreed to purchase the former Jacobs Middle School campus for reasons it has yet to disclose. Citizens for a Better Eureka and the Housing for All campaign have presented that property as a preferable location for housing development.

In fact, glossy mailers recently mailed to Eureka residents by the Housing for All campaign lay out the plan, albeit in grammatically awkward phraseology:

Once the Initiative is passed and the Jacobs site is rezoned, it is envisioned a process whereby the community and the new owner work together to build housing well-integrated with the surrounding neighborhood, making it a crown jewel in the Eureka community.

The full name of the recipient committee for the Housing for All campaign is, “A Committee in Support of the Housing for All and Downtown Vitality Initiative, Sponsored by Security National Properties Holding Company, LLC” [emphasis added].

Earlier today the Outpost sent an email to AMG Communities – Jacobs, LLC, asking who is behind the company and what they intend to do with the Jacobs campus. We received a response from an unidentified “Community Coordinator” who thanked us for the questions and said, “We are working on it.”

Rymer, meanwhile, has taken pains to keep Arkley separate from these convoluted dealings. In October she replied to an email we’d sent Arkley asking about the latest lawsuits filed by Citizens for a Better Eureka against the City of Eureka:

As Rob is not a majority owner of Security National Properties Servicing Company, LLC, it is inappropriate for him to respond. Rob is not a Citizens for a Better Eureka member and does not participate in meetings or discussions.

Today, however, in response to more questions about the Arkley family’s involvement, she sent a reply acknowledging a connection:

As I’m sure you are aware, the Arkley Family and Security National have a long history in supporting Eureka, both philanthropically and through their business — such as the 5th Street Plaza, Arkley Center for the Performing Arts, North Coast Co-op, the Sequoia Park Zoo,  Cal Poly Humboldt, Eureka waterfront revitalization, Eureka High School, and North Coast Dance, to name just a few.

The support of the initiative to provide needed housing in Eureka and concern for the continued vitality of downtown and the businesses that keep Eureka vibrant is another way they are giving back to their community. 

When viewed together, the actions of these interrelated groups and companies – Security National, Citizens for a Better Eureka and AMG Communities – seem to be executing a plan articulated by Arkley more than two and a half years ago. 

Appearing on KINS Radio’s “Talk Shop” program on Memorial Day 2021, Arkley fumed about the city of Eureka’s “crazy” initiative to convert city-owned parking lots into housing and vowed to take political and legal action, telling host Brian Papstein, “Now we’re organized, there’s going to be litigation and I think we can almost bet … I think we can probably put a ballot initiative on the ballot to prevent it.”