COMMENTARY

MARK SCHUMANN

Just three days after voting in favor of a boarding house operator in a Code Enforcement Board case, Vero Beach City Council candidate, Harry Howle, reported having received and accepted a $350 campaign contribution from local attorney Barry Segal.  Segal represented the boarding house operator before the CEB.

In a CEB hearing held Oct. 14, Howle supported a truly novel approach to circumventing City Code.  Fortunately for Vero Beach residents interested in preserving the tranquility of their neighborhoods, Howle was outvoted.

Irene Snyder, who owns the so-called “Banyon Street Boarding House,” had been fined $500, and was appealing her case to the CEB.  As proof Snyder was operating a boarding house, Code Enforcement Officer, Melody Sanderson, told the CEB  Snyder had issued multiple written leases to tenants renting one room each.

Snyder’s attorney, Barry Segal, proposed that if leasing single rooms was not legal, his client could issue each tenant individual leases for the entire house. Every tenant in the so-called “Banyon Street Boarding House” would then have an individual lease claiming responsibility for the entire house, as if they lived there alone. One board member described the proposal as a “cleaver legal circumvention,” a circumvention Howle supported.

Recently Howle’s political patron, City Councilwoman Pilar Turner, lost a 4-1 Council vote in which she argued City Code prohibiting short-term rentals in residential neighborhoods.