Anderson and council: Short term rentals Q&A
Before council can decide the case of short-term rentals, it has to figure out which members can participate due to potential conflict of interest issues -- to that end, City Attorney Bob Anderson puts council under the microscope
-- John Patten, 09/01/07
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

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Story so far
The city's Planning Commission has previously ruled that short-term rentals (less than one month) of residential houses are legal in Venice. Public outrage caused the city to file an appeal with itself against its own decision (yes, you read that sentence correctly). The next level of the appeal process has to be decided at the city council level, thus setting up the bizarre legal scenario in which council will simultaneously be both the appellant in and decider of the case.

This latest set of events, as shown in the video below, is to see if any members of council have any conflicts of interest that would preclude them from participating any further in the process. City Manager Marty Black has expressed fears that a quorum of city council members to hear the case may not be a legal possibility.

Stranger yet but true
Assuming council can get a quorum, the quasi-judicial hearing to be heard before city council will likely be a moot but legally required step in the process. No matter which way city council decides, the issue will end up at the next level, circuit court. Both the city and Steve Milo, owner of Vacation Rental Pros (whose properties have been the main cause of contention in this issue) have vowed to appeal council's decision should a decision be rendered against either of them. Ultimately, this means that the process at the council level is merely to determine which party in the case will be filing an appeal in circuit court.

The video below are from the August 28, 2007, city council meeting.

NOTE: The reason for breaking the clip into two parts is YouTube's policy of allowing clips of ten minutes or less. The total time on this clip was just over ten minutes, so it had to be broken into two parts. There is no missing gap or video material in between part 1 and 2 -- part 2 picks up immediately at the slice that was made at the end of part 1.

John Patten is the head of Web Operations for Creative Pages, and has worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.