An unidentified speaker who reviewed city calendars and email records said organizers of the NorCal Collectors Expo listed the City of Arcadia Parks and Recreation Department as the contact for events on Dec. 7, 2024, and April 5, 2025, raising questions about whether the city authorized use of its phone number and email address.

The speaker said event listings in the Lost Coast Outpost and other calendars showed the department’s official phone and, in some cases, the department email as points of contact. The speaker contrasted those listings with their review of communications: they said Duane (a person named in the records) had no record of a phone call, text or email from Parks and Recreation supervisor Colin Groom, and that multiple public-records requests returned responses that the city had no records responsive to requests for memoranda of agreement or council authorizations.

The issue matters, the speaker said, because California’s gift-of-public-funds doctrine generally bars the gratuitous use of public resources for private benefit unless a direct and substantial public purpose is documented. The speaker described a 2023 memorandum of agreement between the city and a nonprofit (written in the record as 'Central Del Pablo'/'Centro de Pablo') that formally documented a public purpose for a partnership managing Bayside Park Farms as an example of how such uses are typically authorized.

The speaker recounted filing several Public Records Act requests seeking any formal agreement, council findings, or other documentation authorizing the use of Arcadia Parks and Recreation contact information for the Rebound/NorCal Collectors Expo events. According to the speaker, the city’s initial responses repeatedly indicated it could not locate records responsive to those specific requests.

The recording includes a direct statement attributed to Arcadia city manager Merritt Perry in a newspaper account: "We just rent the building," which the speaker cited to show the city had described itself as having limited involvement. City clerk Ray Varley, as quoted in the materials the speaker presented, wrote that "maybe Rebound used the parks and recreation's phone number and email on their own," a response that the speaker said appeared in the city’s records production.

The speaker also said they reviewed internal email threads turned over by the city. One excerpt attributed to Logan Roselli told a staff member to refrain from speaking to media "while we work with our city team to decide on the best course of action." The speaker said email addresses and senders in the production included messages sent from Colin Groom’s city account rather than the recrec@cityofarcadia.org address the speaker had requested, which the speaker said complicates Public Records Act compliance if civic and nonprofit business are intermingled.

Rebound’s organizer Benjamin Funk told the Mad River Union that when organizers learned another vendor was planning a similar event they merged efforts into a single show at the D Street Neighborhood Center. The speaker cited that explanation while raising questions about why calendars and event listings sometimes showed the city as the contact and sometimes listed vendors’ own contact information or a vendor Instagram.

Legal context cited by the speaker included references to the Brown Act (open meetings law) and state statutes discussed in the record, with the speaker warning that knowingly permitting improper use of public resources could raise statutory or criminal concerns. The speaker emphasized they were "not accusing any person, city, or entity of anything unlawful," but said they were asking questions and seeking documentary evidence through public-records requests.

What happened next: the speaker said multiple records requests returned inconsistent or negative results, and that the city’s responses ranged from "difficult to identify what types of records you are requesting" to statements that no responsive records exist. The speaker directed listeners to Access Humboldt’s continuing coverage for additional materials.

No City of Arcadia official statement responding directly to the specific allegations is included in the recording itself; the transcript records a city clerk’s written response and a newspaper quote from the city manager. The matter remains subject to further public-records review and any formal inquiries by city officials or outside authorities.

The speaker’s review and public-records requests outline three immediate items for follow-up: a definitive response from Arcadia clarifying whether staff formally authorized use of department contact information for the listed events; production of any memoranda of agreement or council minutes documenting a public purpose; and clarification of which email accounts and phone lines were used for event correspondence and whether agency records are segregated from private-organizer communications.

The recording ends with a note that additional documentation and video are available on Access Humboldt’s YouTube channel and a reiteration of the central question about whether the city condones discriminatory conduct or improper use of resources.