COMMENTARY

“At the July 10, 2012 meeting of the County Commission, after hearing from citizens concerned about the likely impact of opening the door to transient rentals, Solari sided with the powerful developers and real estate interests that have long been his political patrons.”

MARK SCHUMANN

At their meeting this week, the members of the Indian River County Commission, by a 3-2 vote, did what politicians are famous for doing, they decided to form a committee.

Commissioner Bob Solari, who is running for re-election, is facing mounting heat from powerful barrier island civic associations over his past support for short term rentals. At Solari’s urging, Commissioners Wesley Davis and Peter O’Bryan joined him in approving the formation of a committee to study the issue. The move will likely accomplish little more than to give Solari a year’s worth of political cover for his earlier support for allowing commercial, vacation rentals to operate in local neighborhoods.

Civic organizations, including the Indian River Neighborhood Association and the South Beach Property Owners Association, are up in arms over the blight of crime, congestion, noise and general disruption of tranquillity caused by transient rentals. In response, Solari is backpedaling, while also engaging in some revision of history.

His recent pronouncements of concern notwithstanding, the record is clear that it was Solari who led the County Commission, in 2012, to surrender its right to regulate transient, so-called vacation rentals.

At the July 10, 2012 meeting of the County Commission, after hearing from citizens concerned about the likely impact of opening the door to transient rentals, Solari sided with the powerful developers and real estate interests that have long been his political patrons.

The minutes of the July 10, 2012  meeting of the County Commission read, “Commissioner Solari understood the perspectives of both the landlords and the residents in the neighboring properties. He believed existing mechanisms could deal with the issue, and if the Board prevented people from renting short-term rentals, and made them annual rentals, it might be just as bad….MOTION WAS MADE by Commissioner Solari, SECONDED by Commissioner Flescher, to direct staff to remove the proposed changes to the ‘Hotel/Motel’ section of the Land Development Regulations…MOTION WAS AMENDED by Commissioner Solari, SECONDED by Commissioner Flescher, to allow short-term rentals of less than one month.”

As displeased as they may be with his position on short term rental, not every member of the South Beach Property Owners Association is willing to break with Solari. In fact, at the most recent meeting of the SBPOA, a group of dissident board members unsuccessfully attempted to unseat association president, George Lamborn. Though a long list of grievances were leveled at Lamborn, the precipitating issues seems to have been a letter Lamborn wrote to Solari threatening not to support him in his bid for re-election.

Solari may or may not have been behind the attempted coup at the SBPOA. That’s a story for another day, and one that may become clear if and when public records requests are fulfilled.

By choosing to stick with Solari, who has championed, if not instigated, the SBPOA’s grievances against the City of Vero Beach, his supporters on the South Beach must have accepted that elections are sometimes a choice between the “evil of two lesser.” After his refusal this week to approve raising the funds needed to keep Vero Vero, certainly some supporters of Solari’s opponent, Jay Kramer, are seeing it that way.