Fort Lauderdale voters have seen enough.<\/p>\n
A new poll commissioned by Florida Politics finds an electorate that is fed up with the direction of its city government and, more pointedly, fed up with the woman running it. By overwhelming and bipartisan margins, voters say the city is on the wrong track, that City Manager Rickelle Williams has mishandled their tax dollars, and that she ought to be put on a short leash while City Hall sorts out whether she can do the job.<\/p>\n
The survey of 1,573 registered voters in the City of Fort Lauderdale, conducted June 17-18 via a peer-to-peer text survey, paints a portrait of a city that has lost confidence<\/a> in its top administrator barely a year into her tenure.<\/p>\n Fifty-nine percent of voters say Fort Lauderdale is headed in the wrong direction \u2014 more than double the 24% who say it is on the right track.<\/p>\n What makes that number politically dangerous is that Republicans (64%), independents (60%) and Democrats (52%) all break the same direction.<\/p>\n When a city\u2019s Democrats and Republicans agree on something this lopsidedly, it usually means the problem has stopped being ideological and started being about competence.<\/p>\n The deeper voters get into the specifics of Williams\u2019 management, the worse the numbers look.<\/p>\n Mayor Dean Trantalis has accused Williams of withholding important information from Commissioners and creating a difficult work environment for senior staff, including the Police and Fire Chiefs<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve come in here with an imperious attitude,\u201d he told her at a heated public performance review that laid bare the divisions inside City Hall. \u201cFor that reason, we are now at a crossroads.\u201d<\/p>\n Told as much, 60% of voters say they are not confident in her leadership. Just 15% say they are.<\/p>\n Williams has given no ground. She told the Commission she spent her first six months \u201cfinding where the bodies are buried and addressing issues that have gone unaddressed\u201d \u2014 a posture her allies read as overdue housecleaning and her critics read as exactly the problem.<\/p>\n Williams\u2019 first year has been defined by a hiring spree that added more than $15 million to the city\u2019s payroll, much of it in six-figure executive jobs, without much public explanation of who was hired or why. That record is the backdrop for everything voters are telling pollsters, and it has already drawn sustained scrutiny over what critics have called a year of reckless hiring<\/a>.<\/p>\n If there is a single number in this poll that should worry Williams\u2019 defenders, it is this one: 80% of voters rate her handling of tax dollars unfavorably, and 61% rate it very unfavorably. Only a sliver land on the favorable side.<\/p>\n That verdict comes after voters are told what an internal City Auditor\u2019s Office review turned up \u2014 among the findings cited, $10,250 in Florida Panthers tickets charged to a city credit card, $180,000 in unauthorized vehicle modifications, and $55,000 in food purchases that blew past allowable limits.<\/p>\n Voters also know exactly what they want done about it. An 87% supermajority agrees the city should scale back executive spending before asking residents to absorb tighter budgets \u2014 73% strongly \u2014 a point Commissioner John Herbst<\/a> has pressed in warning that City Hall has grown \u201ctop heavy.\u201d<\/p>\n And when voters hear that Williams created six new high-paid executive positions \u2014 including a second top deputy at $247,000, a Utilities Director at $235,000 and a Communications Director at $210,000, alongside raises of up to $60,000 for internal allies \u2014 82% say it makes them less likely to support her administration.<\/p>\n There is no real constituency on the other side of that question.<\/p>\n For all the dissatisfaction, voters aren\u2019t quite reaching for the trap door. They are reaching for a leash.<\/p>\n By 71% to 9%, voters say Williams should face a probationary review. And this is where the bipartisan story is starkest: 77% of Republicans, 76% of independents and even 62% of Democrats want the probation. That lines up neatly with the six-month probationary period Trantalis has already floated, after three of five Commissioners declined to give Williams a routine 3% raise. The public is comfortably ahead of the Commission on this one.<\/p>\n The numbers that may matter most are the ones pointing forward.<\/p>\n Herbst has pointed to growing unrest in the police ranks, including talk of a possible no-confidence vote in Williams \u2014 and 80% of voters say that prospect makes them more concerned about the direction of city management. That is a remarkable level of attention to an internal personnel matter, and a sign of how far the story has traveled beyond City Hall.<\/p>\n Then there is Tallahassee.<\/p>\n Following the critical audit, Florida\u2019s government efficiency task force \u2014 the DOGE operation<\/a> run out of CFO Blaise Ingoglia\u2019s<\/a> Office \u2014 hit Fort Lauderdale with a sweeping demand for records<\/a>: three years of financial data, vendor contracts, purchase orders and purchase-card logs, backed by the threat of $1,000-a-day fines for noncompliance.<\/p>\n Asked whether the need for a state investigation into city spending makes them more or less likely to support new city leadership, voters split 58% to 42% in favor of new leadership \u2014 movable, but leaning toward change.<\/p>\n Put it all together and the message is hard to miss. A year in, Fort Lauderdale voters have concluded that their city is drifting, that the drift has a price tag, and that the person they are holding responsible is the City Manager. They are not yet demanding she be shown the door. But they are telling their elected officials, in numbers that cross every party line, that the burden is now on Williams to prove she belongs in the building.<\/p>\n The Commission has the next move.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Ed. note: This story was drafted with assistance from AI. Editorial judgment, sourcing, and final review were performed by\u00a0Peter Schorsch\u00a0and the Florida Politics editorial team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fort Lauderdale voters have seen enough. 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