Beyond picking candidates in the General Election, Fort Lauderdale voters will also decide whether to rewrite large portions of the document that dictates how their government operates.
Ten questions are on the Nov. 3 ballot with the potential to rewrite 21 sections of the city charter. The proposals run from the cosmetic — deleting stray hyphens — to substantive shifts in who hires the city’s top public safety officials and how easily City Hall can transfer park land.
Each requires voter approval. Fort Lauderdale has posted ballot language and summaries for every item on a dedicated review page.
Here’s a breakdown of each proposed amendment.
Amendment 1: Who can run and when they’re sworn in
The bulkiest measure would rewrite five sections governing City Commission service, requiring anyone seeking a seat to be a registered Fort Lauderdale voter at the time of qualifying.
It would also tighten residency. Commission candidates now must have lived in Fort Lauderdale for six months and live within their district only as of qualifying day. The rewrite would require a full year as a permanent resident of the district itself, counted back from the date of qualifying rather than Election Day. Mayoral candidates would face the same 12-month clock citywide.
Candidates would have to prove it on paper, filing copies of at least five of 10 specified documents with the City Clerk — among them a Florida driver’s license, voter registration card, recorded declaration of domicile, homestead record, utility payments or a residential lease, each showing an address inside the city or district.
There would be one exception: In any year the city redraws its Commission districts, a candidate whose home winds up in a different district as a result could run there without satisfying the 12-month requirement.
Amendment 1 would also shift the Commission’s designation of Vice Mayor to the first meeting after newly elected Commissioners take their seats, with annual designations thereafter, and move the oath of office to the first regular Commission meeting following certification by the Broward County Canvassing Board.
Finally, it would delete a now-redundant section about special meetings to seat new members and strip the hyphen from every reference to “Vice-Mayor.”
Amendment 2: Paperwork goes to the Clerk
This question would add one sentence to the charter requiring every candidate for Mayor or City Commissioner to file with the City Clerk documentation needed to show compliance with the charter and applicable law.
The Clerk would confirm the required documents were submitted, but not weigh whether a candidate is genuinely qualified.
Amendment 3: Eligibility fights move to court
This question would strike the charter’s existing mechanism for challenging a candidate. Today, when the City Commission convenes to canvass election results, any registered city voter may file an affidavit laying out facts showing that a candidate broke the charter’s rules on how they got elected or is otherwise unqualified. The Commission then reviews the evidence and declares the result.
Amendment 3 would delete that paragraph, leaving such considerations to the courts — meaning a voter who believes a candidate is ineligible would have to sue rather than bring the complaint to elected officials.
The Commission would keep its general authority as judge of municipal elections, referendums and its own members’ qualifications, subject to court review.
Amendment 4: Three days’ warning
The Mayor or City Manager can now call a special meeting of the City Commission on six hours’ notice. Amendment 4 would stretch that to 72 hours.
Emergencies would be exempt, with notice given as far in advance as circumstances allow. The amendment would define “emergency” as any occasion carrying the potential for imminent harm to the public’s health, safety or property, or where the city can lessen or avert a catastrophe. The Mayor or City Manager would make that call in consultation with the City Attorney.
Amendment 4 would also delete a provision shielding special meetings from challenge. Charter language now bars questioning proceedings over any irregularity in how a meeting was called if most Commissioners and the City Clerk were present. That protection would disappear.
Amendment 5: Civil Service Board
This question would overhaul how Fort Lauderdale employees pick their representative on the Civil Service Board, which hears and renders final rulings on appeals from classified employees — rank-and-file city workers hired by personnel rules, not appointments — who are suspended, dismissed or demoted.
All three seats are appointed by Commission resolution, but on someone else’s recommendation. The Mayor recommends one and the City Manager picks a second. The third is recommended by the classified workforce, and that’s the process Amendment 5 would rewrite.
Employees now submit sealed nominations for a nominating committee, then vote a second time to seat it. Amendment 5 would cut that second round, so the five drawing the most nominations would form the committee outright, with ties broken in favor of the longest-serving employee. The committee would then advance up to three candidates — rather than exactly three — for a general employee vote.
It would also replace the two Commissioners who help certify that election with two committee members, and strip the Board’s role advising the City Manager on job class specifications.
Amendment 6: City Manager titles and meeting announcements
Fort Lauderdale’s charter now uses a single title — acting City Manager — for anyone filling in, regardless of whether the Manager quit or is on vacation, and the City Commission designates that person in every case.
Amendment 6 would split the two. A departure or firing would produce an interim City Manager, still named through Commission resolution. A temporary absence would produce an acting City Manager chosen by the sitting Manager, who could tap a deputy, an assistant City Manager or a department Director without a Commission vote. It would also drop the requirement that a fill-in come from the city’s classified or exempt service.
Separately, the amendment would repeal the charter’s default public notice section, which requires notice of a public hearing or an invitation for bids to run once a week for two consecutive weeks in the city’s official newspaper. What would replace it depends on Florida’s public notice statute, which lawmakers have amended in recent years to give local governments more latitude over where legal notices appear.
The question would also delete charter language saying a candidate who wins a majority in a city Primary is elected outright, without having to run in the General Election, though Fort Lauderdale scrapped its municipal Primaries years ago. And it would extend the charter’s tiebreaker — a random draw conducted by the City Attorney — to a tie among any number of candidates, not just two.
Amendment 7: Selling and leasing city property
This change would revise five charter sections governing how Fort Lauderdale disposes of public property.
Selling off vehicles, furniture and equipment would no longer require competitive bidding or public notice to bidders. Those rules would move into city ordinance, where the Commission could change them without asking voters.
Land sales would get simpler, too. Selling to a private buyer now requires the Commission to declare the property unneeded, publish notice of the offer and take offers no lower than 75% of appraised value — with taxpayers and registered voters free to protest or propose other public uses, and the Commission free to back out. Amendment 7 would replace all of it with a four-vote resolution containing a finding that the sale serves the city’s interest.
Land deals with other governments would be streamlined the same way. Those now take a resolution announcing the city’s intent, two newspaper notices, a public hearing at least 30 days later and a second vote to confirm.
The charter would also define “public purpose” for the first time as an activity essential to the city’s health, safety or general welfare, as the Commission determines, even if a private party benefits along the way.
Long-term leases would face new scrutiny. Deals longer than three years would require an outside appraisal and a review of the tenant’s qualifications; past 10 years, a report on whether the business is viable. The city would pick the appraiser, but the tenant would pay.
Other safeguards would go, including sealed competitive bidding, a public hearing and the charter’s 50-year ceiling on how long the city can lease property to a private party. Residents would also lose ground on petitions. Voters can now force a referendum on any city lease longer than a year by gathering signatures from 15% of registered electors. That right would apply only to leases exceeding 50 years.
Amendment 8: Locking park land
Fort Lauderdale already can’t sell, transfer or lease its park land for more than a year unless all five Commissioners agree. This question would patch two gaps in that restriction.
It would extend the unanimity requirement to license agreements, concession agreements, facility use agreements and similar deals lasting more than a year — arrangements that let a private operator use park land without technically leasing it.
It would also expand what counts as protected. The existing safeguard on removing a park designation applies only to land zoned park as of Nov. 10, 2004. Amendment 8 would drop that date, covering any land zoned Parks, Recreation and Open Space whenever it received the designation.
The measure would also delete charter language declaring that the city’s power to dispose of public property isn’t limited by how it was acquired, what paid for it or how it’s been used.
Amendment 9: A charter Police Chief
This question would create a new charter position of Police Chief, appointed by the City Commission and reporting to it directly rather than to the City Manager, according to the ballot summary. Commissioners would set the terms of employment and fix the salary by resolution.
Whoever holds the job when the change takes effect would automatically become the first appointed Police Chief — currently William Schultz — so approval wouldn’t trigger a search.
The amendment would also require the Chief to live in Fort Lauderdale while employed by the city, though candidates wouldn’t need to be city or even Florida residents when hired. Schultz would be exempt, as would any future Chief promoted from within the Police Department.
Amendment 10: A charter Fire Chief
A companion measure, this proposed change would establish the above arrangement for Fort Lauderdale’s Fire Chief, currently Stephen Gollan.