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Thanks to an open firehose of financing from the Rob Arkley-founded real estate servicing firm Security National, Measure F has become the most expensive ballot initiative ever put to voters in the City of Eureka.

According to the latest financial disclosure forms submitted to the city clerk, Security National has now spent $1,155,944.72 to promote the so-called “Housing for All” initiative. Residents’ mailboxes have been fed a steady diet of glossy 8 1/2-by-11 campaign mailers, and ads have been distributed across social media, billboards and yard signs.

The “No on F” campaign, meanwhile, had raised a relatively modest sum of $9,004.38, with the majority of that coming via donations of $100 or less.

Dubbed the “Housing for All” initiative by its backers, Measure F seeks to halt half a dozen planned or in-progress affordable housing developments on four city-owned parking lots downtown. Two development projects proposed by the Wiyot Tribe Dishgamu Humboldt Community Land Trust — slated to be built on the city-owned lots at 5th & D and 6th & L — are exempted from the measure.

If passed by voters on November 5, it would amend the city’s General Plan to create development restrictions on 21 public parking lots owned by the City of Eureka. These restrictions would require any future residential development on the lots to preserve all existing parking spots and add more for new residents.

Measure F would also change the zoning at the former Jacobs Middle School campus, 14.1 vacant acres at 674 Allard Avenue, on south end of city limits. The idea, frequently espoused in campaign literature, was to put high-density housing on that parcel, rather than downtown. If passed, Measure F would authorize a wide variety of new uses on the Jacobs property, including high-density residential for at least 40 percent of the ground area, plus various public, quasi-public and commercial uses.

Supporters say the measure would preserve the vitality of Eureka’s downtown by saving municipal parking spots while encouraging housing development in a more appropriate part of the city.

Critics and nonpartisan outsiders, such as the California Housing Defense Fund, say Measure F could have dire unintended consequences for the city, forcing developers to forfeit millions of dollars in grant funds and potentially rendering Eureka’s Housing Element non-compliant with state law, which would open the door to the “builder’s remedy,” whereby the city would be forced to approve any and all proposed housing projects that include at least 20 percent affordable units.

Measure F does not include any proposals to actually build any housing, though its backers predict that developers will “eagerly line up” to build at the Jacobs site once the measure passes.

However, the Jacobs property owner, Eureka City Schools, put a wrinkle in those plans last month when its Board of Trustees voted not to extend an already eight-month-old purchase agreement with AMG Communities - Jacobs, LLC, a shadowy corporation formed explicitly for this transaction. It offered nearly $6 million for the blighted property last December and requested a series of escrow extensions. The latest request — the one the Eureka City Schools board denied — would have postponed the close of the deal until after Election Day.

Now that this deal has fallen through, Eureka City Schools has resumed negotiations with the previous high bidder, the California Highway Patrol, which has offered $4 million in hopes of building a new regional headquarters on the site.

The identity of investors in AMG Communities - Jacobs, LLC, have never been revealed, though the company shares an attorney, spokesperson and other hired hands with Security National. 

As a state agency, the CHP would not be bound by municipal zoning restrictions, even those included in Measure F, should it pass. While the CHP has no intention of building housing on the Jacobs campus, Measure F’s backers insist that the collapse of the AMG deal will have no impact on the initiative or on future housing development plans.

Security National’s spending on this campaign dwarfs that of any previous ballot measure in city history. In 1999, Walmart and its local allies spent $271,528.38 on Measure J, which asked voters to approve a zoning change for the “balloon track” property, a 43-acre former rail yard located south of Old Town that was then owned by Union Pacific Railroad. 

That measure failed, but just over a decade later, in 2010, Arkley, who had purchased the “balloon track” property in the intervening years, brought forward another ballot measure, Measure N. The measure again asked voters to rezone the property, this time to make way for Marina Center, a proposed mixed-use development that was slated to include a Home Depot plus office, residential and retail space.

That measure passed, though Arkley has never gotten clearance from the California Coastal Commission to build anything on the “balloon track” property, which remains vacant and undeveloped. Eureka Assistant City Manager/City Clerk Pam Powell told the Outpost via email that total spending on Measure N was “significantly less” than even Measure J.

To read more on Measure F, including the official arguments for and against as well as the Eureka city attorney’s impartial analysis, click here.

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