reeder - News - The Coastal Star2024-03-29T09:07:31Zhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/reederDelray Beach: Commissioner Boylston agrees to fine to settle ethics violation casehttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/delray-beach-commissioner-boylston-agrees-to-fine-to-settle-ethic2020-05-20T17:17:48.000Z2020-05-20T17:17:48.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p><strong>By Jane Smith</strong><br /> <br />Delray Beach Vice Mayor Ryan Boylston has agreed to pay $2,000 for violating state ethics laws over votes taken when he was a board member of a taxpayer-funded agency.</p>
<p><br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960950877,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960950877,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-left" width="103" height="161" alt="7960950877?profile=original" /></a>At the June 5 state Commission on Ethics meeting, commissioners plan to review a stipulation of facts concerning two ethics violations when Boylston was a board member of the city’s Downtown Development Authority. On April 10, he signed the stipulation, agreeing to the facts, to avoid a hearing.</p>
<p><br /> Boylston was appointed in July 2011 to the DDA, which promotes downtown Delray Beach and taxes property owners in its 340-acre district.</p>
<p><br /> The following year, 2012, he and others founded The Pineapple Newspaper, now known as the Delray Newspaper.</p>
<p><br /> Boylston, whose DDA term ended in June 2017, insists he did not violate state ethics laws.</p>
<p><br /> “I never voted to directly send advertising to my former newspaper,” Boylston said in mid-May. “It was up to the DDA staff to decide where to spend their advertising dollars.”</p>
<p><br /> From 2014 through 2017, the DDA spent $22,710 on ads in Boylston’s newspaper.</p>
<p><br /> When he announced he was running for city commissioner in October 2017, he stepped down as publisher of the Delray Newspaper. He sold his shares a few months later.</p>
<p><br /> “I didn’t fight it,” he added. “The hearing was in Tallahassee and I would have had to hire an attorney to represent me. Then the COVID-19 lockdowns started and I was losing business.”</p>
<p><br />Boylston runs a marketing company, now called 2Ton, to help businesses with branding, advertising, web design and development, and photography and video production needs.</p>
<p><br /> Martin Reeder, a media industry lawyer in West Palm Beach, had pointed out possible ethics violations by Boylston two years ago when he was running for a City Commission seat.</p>
<p><br /> “We all want our public officials to abide by Florida ethics laws,” Reeder said recently.</p>
<p><br /> Chris Davey, a residential real estate consultant, filed the complaint because “the citizens of Delray Beach deserve elected officials who act in their interests. … Ultimately, the $2,000 fines are a slap on the wrist, but the test will be next March when Boylston is up for re-election.”</p>
<p><br />Boylston became vice mayor at the commission’s March 31 reorganization meeting.</p>
<p><br /> Davey said he knows the Florida ethics laws from his stint on the city’s Planning and Zoning Board and his current seat as chairman of the Board of Adjustments.</p>
<p><br /> The state did not proceed on four other ethics complaints filed by Davey, who ran for a City Commission seat in March but lost.</p>
<p><br />The county Commission on Ethics said those alleged DDA violations occurred outside its time limit to investigate.</p>
<p><br /> However, that agency issued a “letter of instruction” to Boylston on Feb. 6 over a vote last year for his client Azure Development. That complaint also was filed by Davey.</p>
<p><br /> The letter agrees that Boylston relied on advice from the city attorney, “which ultimately was incorrect,” when the commissioner voted in May 2019 for an Azure project.</p>
<p><br /> But the letter also told Boylston to take “reasonable precautions” on questions of voting conflicts in future situations.</p>
<p><br /> They include asking the person “appearing before the City Commission if he or she has a financial interest in a project.”<br /> Boylston sees the letter as basically “a suggestion on what to do in the future.”</p>
<p><br /> Reeder, though, said, “It’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card. The next time, more of the burden will be on him.”</p></div>