ANNA MARIA – The city has filed a lawsuit against the owners of a vacation rental home whose guests received five noise ordinance violation citations in a nine-month period.
The vacation rental at 313 Magnolia Ave. is managed by Vacasa and owned by the Orlando-based Mangoes on Magnolia LLC that lists Mukesh Patel and three others with the same last name as the LLC’s principals.
The noise violations documented from June 2021 to March 2022 are in violation of the city code, according to the lawsuit.
During a code enforcement hearing on May 18, Special Magistrate Jerry Buhr declared the vacation rental to be a public nuisance. On May 26, the city commission authorized City Attorney Becky Vose to file a lawsuit seeking a one-year suspension of the LLC’s city-issued vacation rental license.
“The lawsuit was filed yesterday,” Mayor Dan Murphy said at the June 9 city commission meeting. “They’ve already assigned a judge to our case and we are moving forward with it. We are going to go to court looking for injunctive relief – looking for a one-year suspension of his ability to rent as a vacation rental. So fasten your seatbelts.”
The case has been assigned to Judge Edward Nicholas. – Joe Hendricks | SunJudge Edward Nicholas has been assigned to the case. In 2019, Nicholas ruled in favor of the city of Bradenton Beach in a Sunshine Law lawsuit that city filed against six former city advisory board members. He later ordered three of the defendants to pay the city $369,498 as partial reimbursement for the attorney fees the city incurred when prevailing in that case.
Lawsuit complaint
The lawsuit complaint was filed with the Circuit Court of the 12th Judicial Circuit in Manatee County on June 8, naming Mangoes on Magnolia LLC as the defendant.
The city seeks a court ruling that the rental property is a public nuisance and therefore can be prohibited from operating as a vacation rental for one year.
According to the complaint, “This is an action for injunctive relief, seeking to judicially declare the vacation rental property located at 313 Magnolia Avenue to be a public nuisance because of five egregious noise violations in the short period of nine months, and to close such public nuisance as a short-term rental for a period of one year. Such action is necessary to protect the public health, safety and welfare of the citizens of and visitors to the city of Anna Maria.”
The complaint cites city code regarding multiple noise violations: “Three or more violations occurring at the same premises within any rolling 12-month period shall be deemed prima facie evidence that the premises is a public nuisance and subject to being temporarily and/or permanently enjoined.”
According to the complaint, “The mere imposition of fines through the normal code enforcement process is not a sufficient mechanism to compel compliance with the Anna Maria code of ordinances, and the city of Anna Maria has no reasonable expectation of being able to abate the violation on the subject property now and into the future to prevent further violations which significantly negatively impact the quality of life of the affected residences in proximity to the subject property.”
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