School official defends out-of-district house
Palm Beach County’s newest School Board member recently bought a $515,000 house 14 miles south of the area where shewas elected, raising questions about whether she is still eligible to serve.
Alexandria Ayala, 27, is scheduled to be sworn in Tuesday to replace retiring board member Chuck Shaw in District2, a central county seat that includes Palm Springs and part of the West
Palm Beach and the Lake Worth areas.
Ayala qualified to run for election in June using her mother’s home address on Waterview Circle in Palm Springs. She defeated two other candidates Aug. 18.
On July2, Ayala, using the name Alex en dr ia Mont alvo, and her boyfriend, Robert Long, chairman of the Palm Beach Soil& Water Conservation District, bought a home on Calabria Way in Delray Beach, which is in
District 4.
The terms of theirfederally backed mortgage say the house must be their primary residence for a year. But to serve on the School Board, her primary residence must be in District 2.
Ayala said it is. She said she helped her boyfriend buy the house, but she doesn’t live there. He lives there alone, and she lives with her mother in Palm Springs. “I am a current resident in District 2. That’s where I’ve been registered to vote; it’s where I contribute to the mortgage with my mom, and I know that community backwards and forwards,” she said. “I did invest in the property to help my boyfriend buy his first home because he needed a co-signer.”
She said she is working with the lender to get the loan terms changed so that she is no longer required to live in the house. She said she expects that to be completed in about aweek.
“We understand the optics are not great. The timing wasn’t great,” she said. “We’ve done everything we could do to make it right.”
Her residency status has raised doubts from Richard Giorgio, a political consultant who represented one of her opponents, Virginia Savietto,. Ayala won 53% of the vote in a three-person race, with Savietto coming in second with 24%.
“I don’t think anyone’s going to buy the argument that she is going tos pend the next four years living in her mother’s house, while her partner spends four years by himself in Delray Beach in a half-million home,” Giorgio said .“That’ s an absurd argument .”
Ayala said her boyfriend plans to rent out part of the house, and she plans to use some of the investment income to buy a new house in District 2.
Giorgio said he discovered the home purchase on the property appraiser’s website by accident when looking up someone with the same last name as Ayala’s boyfriend. He saidhe didn’t notice the sale during the campaign because Ayala used a different last name on the purchase.
He said he’s never known Ayala, an aide to Broward
County Commissioner Robert Weinroth, to use Montalvo as her last name. He accused her of doing that to “keep people from figuring out” that she bought the house.
Not true, Ayala said. She said her full legal name is Alexandria Ayala Montalvo and it’s on all her legal documents. But she thought it was too long for the ballot. Her late father’s last name was Ayala and her mother’s maternal name is Mont alvo. Both names are on her voter registration file.
Wendy Link, supervisor of elections for Palm Beach County, said her office bases qualifications on the signed papers provided by candidates.
“If there is a dispute, that is beyond our jurisdiction and needs to be addressed with the Florida Elections Commission,” she said.
A spokesman for the commission couldn’t be reached Friday. Frank Barbieri, chairman of the School Board, said residency issues also fall outside of the board’s jurisdiction. Ayala said the district’s general counsel told her she should be able to be sworn in as expected Tuesday.
The issue could be investigated by the state Ethics Commission if someone files a formal complaint, said Bob Jarvis, a constitutional law professor with Nova Southeastern University in Davie.
“The fact that her mother has a house in the district and that she sometimes sleeps there is not enough,” he said. “We really need to know where she lives on a day-to-day basis.”
He said unless her lender provides a letter saying that she doesn’t have to live there, she’s violating the terms of her mortgage if she continues to live with her mother. “I think she’s in a really tough spot,” he said. “I don’t see her being able to give a satisfactory answer to all of these questions.”
Since Ayala has already won the election, it would likely require a suspension and new appointment by Gov. Ron De Santis toreplace her, experts say.
Ayala is one of the youngest members to serve on the School Board in recent years. She’s also the first Hispanic elected to the post. Former Gov. Rick Scott appointed Ed Garcia, who is Hispanic, in 2001 to briefly fill a vacancy, but he quit before he could be elected.