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While cities are seeing growth of retail and restaurant business in their downtown areas, the City government officials of Fort Lauderdale seem to have nothing better to do but sit on their hands and collect their wages.
Ignoring sunny day flooding seawater coming up during high tide in Key West and South Beach, Fort Lauderdale elected officials sit in their air conditioned offices and ignore that cities all over America are planting trees and other forms of landscaping along their major streets and boulevards to not only beautify their urban areas and attract people to visit them, but to also help in the removal of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide since green plants and trees convert carbon dioxide into oxygen. With the high cost of gasoline and an increase in traffic caused by commuting, more and more people want to live, work and play in a downtown area but that seems to not be something city officials want to work to see happening here.
Since Fort Lauderdale is located in the super warm tropics and gets more rainfall than in other South Florida counties, trees and plants grow pretty well here not needing to be regularly watered and attended to yet Fort Lauderdale has neglected to provide anything much in the way of any greening of the urban environment here as is evidenced on Federal Highway from State Road 84 going north until you go past Commercial Boulevard, Broward Boulevard west of Federal Highway and Sunrise Boulevard west of Federal Highway.
The only major amount of landscaping that has appeared in the city in recent years is behind the newly erected fence in front of the Broward County Library and along a section of street near the railroad tracks between Andrews and Sunrise Boulevard. The landscaping at the Library was not planted to beautify the area and encourage people to stroll and sit and relax along the walkways but instead to get rid of the lawn area that street people used to lay around on in full view of passing traffic on Broward Boulevard and of course, Fort Lauderdale officials would rather that the problem of people living on the streets be taken out of public view rather than do anything productive to create jobs in the urban core here so that there wouldn't be such a large population of street people in Fort Lauderdale. Lots of new residential units have gone up downtown but there hasn't been any major employer building or opening new offices in downtown Fort Lauderdale in years.
It also seems to be totally lost on our government officials that a large number of cities require new construction of high rise buildings to be mixed use buildings, meaning clubs, restaurants, retail shops, bars, etc., are afforded first floor rental space to attract people to the area rather than just those who reside in the high rises who don't seem to spend much in the area those high rises were built since downtown Fort Lauderdale is pretty much devoid of much of those sort of businesses. A walk or bike ride along most of the riverfront downtown these days amounts to mostly looking at new high rise buildings devoid of any sort of public restaurants and shops at the street level.
City officials can probably put the lack of tree landscaped boulevards and streets on the county, just as they have problem with the traffic lights that haven't worked in sync that went out of whack during Hurricane Wilma, but leaving people stuck in stop and go traffic on streets and boulevards barren of shade except where there are some high rise buildings, doesn't really cut it since Fort Lauderdale residents should be asking where all that money paid out in property taxes from all the new buildings built downtown is going because there sure isn't any evidence that the county is putting that money back into the area of downtown where the increase in county revenue from property taxes is coming from with the exception of the new addition to the Broward County Jail to alleviate overcrowding. Gee, I wonder how it is that public officials here are always patting themselves on the back in regard to crime supposedly being low yet we needed more units in the county jail to house the increase in inmates who were arrested for committing crimes?
Lots of new apartment and condominium buildings have been built in and around downtown so why is the Riverwalk shopping complex sitting basically empty of tenants, even with a multi-screen movie complex which has been shown all over South Florida to attract businesses to open near the complex to serve people waiting for a movie to start or after the movie lets out? Other cities work hard to promote their downtowns as shopping and entertainment destinations and put on various events and festivals to attract people downtown where they pay for parking at parking meters and city owned parking lots, which creates revenue for those cities. That's an idea that seems to have gone over the heads of Fort Lauderdale's elected officials.
Maybe they should consider opening up street bowling downtown after 5 pm since, as they used to say, the streets are so dead you could roll a bowling ball down them.
If you live in Fort Lauderdale, it may be worth the effort to contact the city commissioner who represents your area so you can attempt to address these issues. The commissioner for our area makes an effort to meet with homeowners associations and community groups and I've always found him accessible and helpful (he even helped smooth over a problem my wife and I were having with a city board). You won't know unless you try.
My area of town has a lot of beautiful mature trees and foliage (I'm looking out the window at some of it as I type this), and the city has done a good job of planting trees in swales and medians -- for example, live oaks were planted some years ago in the swales along Northeast 62nd Street in Imperial Point, and they've grown into a quite attractive canopy. But it may not be the case elsewhere in Fort Lauderdale.
Yes please be active in your community and gather some friends with the same issues to make some noise as well as contact the local city commissioner instead of ranting about it on an internet forum.
If you live in Fort Lauderdale, it may be worth the effort to contact the city commissioner who represents your area so you can attempt to address these issues. The commissioner for our area makes an effort to meet with homeowners associations and community groups and I've always found him accessible and helpful (he even helped smooth over a problem my wife and I were having with a city board). You won't know unless you try.
My area of town has a lot of beautiful mature trees and foliage (I'm looking out the window at some of it as I type this), and the city has done a good job of planting trees in swales and medians -- for example, live oaks were planted some years ago in the swales along Northeast 62nd Street in Imperial Point, and they've grown into a quite attractive canopy. But it may not be the case elsewhere in Fort Lauderdale.
Imperial Point is one of the wealthier areas of the city so of course the City of Fort Lauderdale is going to put money into an area where people have influence and power because of their money so that people with power and influence won't put up money to put the current batch of do nothings out of office for neglecting their area of the city.
I have contacted the mayor and commissioners numerous times about the bad traffic light system, the lack of trees and the neglect of the riverfront Riverwalk shopping complex and I've been told the traffic light system is Broward County's problem, the city is supposedly waiting for a lease to expire at Riverwalk (this was over a year ago) before they do anything to promote Riverwalk and not one city official bothered to reply to the emails I sent out about planting some trees along the mostly landscape barren boulevards of the areas leading to and from downtown Fort Lauderdale.
Yes please be active in your community and gather some friends with the same issues to make some noise as well as contact the local city commissioner instead of ranting about it on an internet forum.
Before you tell someone to contact the city about something or the other, why don't you first ask that person if they already have? For your information the city has told me the traffic light problem that people in Fort Lauderdale have been dealing with since after Hurricane Wilma is a county problem and I guess the city officials in Fort Lauderdale don't feel they are paid to contact the county about problems in Fort Lauderdale that the county is not fixing, even though it's Fort Lauderdale property taxes that mainly support the county government.
Second, city officials told me that they are waiting for a lease to expire at Riverwalk before they do anything to promote the area. This was over a year ago and maybe you can tell my why city officials have allowed the Riverwalk to fall apart vacancy wise and have done nothing to promote the area based on a lease while the businesses that people worked hard to open there failed not because they had a bad business but because the city does nothing to attract people to the area like other cities do? When is the last time you EVER heard about an art festival, kids fair, health fair, outside antique market, or farmer's market being sponsored by the city at Riverwalk?
Third, I emailed city officials about greening the gateway boulevards and their response was to plant some trees at I-95 and put up a sign about "Greening the Gateways." No trees were planted on any of the boulevards that still remain mostly devoid of them.
As for "ranting" on the Internet, maybe you aren't aware of it but people go to the site you're on to do just that and to look at what others have written about the area they reside in so that it can help them determine what a place is really like behind all the hype and the other comments from pie in the sky types who have no real concept of what the community they live in is really like because they haven't traveled to other places to see what progress other cities are involved in making happen, or they don't watch reports on tv about other cities having vibrant downtown areas that attract tourists and their dollars that go into the local economy or they don't read about what other cities are doing in their downtowns in newspapers and magazines or they just live in a world of looking through rose colored glasses strung out spending their free time watching sitcom or reality tv.
Before you tell someone to contact the city about something or the other, why don't you first ask that person if they already have? For your information the city has told me the traffic light problem that people in Fort Lauderdale have been dealing with since after Hurricane Wilma is a county problem and I guess the city officials in Fort Lauderdale don't feel they are paid to contact the county about problems in Fort Lauderdale that the county is not fixing, even though it's Fort Lauderdale property taxes that mainly support the county government.
Second, city officials told me that they are waiting for a lease to expire at Riverwalk before they do anything to promote the area. This was over a year ago and maybe you can tell my why city officials have allowed the Riverwalk to fall apart vacancy wise and have done nothing to promote the area based on a lease while the businesses that people worked hard to open there failed not because they had a bad business but because the city does nothing to attract people to the area like other cities do? When is the last time you EVER heard about an art festival, kids fair, health fair, outside antique market, or farmer's market being sponsored by the city at Riverwalk?
Third, I emailed city officials about greening the gateway boulevards and their response was to plant some trees at I-95 and put up a sign about "Greening the Gateways." No trees were planted on any of the boulevards that still remain mostly devoid of them.
As for "ranting" on the Internet, maybe you aren't aware of it but people go to the site you're on to do just that and to look at what others have written about the area they reside in so that it can help them determine what a place is really like behind all the hype and the other comments from pie in the sky types who have no real concept of what the community they live in is really like because they haven't traveled to other places to see what progress other cities are involved in making happen, or they don't watch reports on tv about other cities having vibrant downtown areas that attract tourists and their dollars that go into the local economy or they don't read about what other cities are doing in their downtowns in newspapers and magazines or they just live in a world of looking through rose colored glasses strung out spending their free time watching sitcom or reality tv.
Ok I was just trying to make some suggestions since you were intent on being so negative about the area for no particularly reason. Their are other things you can do like organizing events or fundraisers to help fund some changes you want to make. Also maybe run commissioner for the city or something to solve all these issues you have.
Ok I was just trying to make some suggestions since you were intent on being so negative about the area for no particularly reason. Their are other things you can do like organizing events or fundraisers to help fund some changes you want to make. Also maybe run commissioner for the city or something to solve all these issues you have.
Let's see, if you drive a car on Fort Lauderdale streets, you will most likely be hitting stop light after stop light because of badly timed lights that haven't been fixed since Hurricane Wilma and burning gasoline which contributes carbon dioxide in the atmosphere adding to the global warming, "Green House Effect," while I can't open the car windows in the burning sunshine even on mild winter days when the temperature is cooler because city officials can't be bothered to read or don't care about global warming and won't "green" the streets and boulevards with shade trees and then if I want to go somewhere downtown and park and spend a day or evening shopping, eating, etc., where I don't have to drive from place to place, I can't because the City of Fort Lauderdale officials ignore doing anything to promote or attract business downtown but you say I don't have any reason to complain about Fort Lauderdale's bad city government.
What do you think warrants complaining about city officials in Fort Lauderdale who sit on their hands and ignore pressing issues about traffic flow, promoting tourism downtown that leads to jobs and parking revenue for the city of Fort Lauderdale and planting trees that clean the air and take carbon dioxide out of it as the sea next to Fort Lauderdale continues to rise because of the melting polar ice caps whether you believe in global warming or not since you don't think I have any reason to complain about the current crop of city officials in Fort Lauderdale doing nothing of what they get paid to do?
I'm not interesting in a public sector job and I don't believe that little community groups should be required to exist in order for public officials in Fort Lauderdale to do what they were elected and get paid to do, which means according to their own campaign promises, attracting tourism, creating jobs, getting rid of waste (like traffic lights that aren't working in sync?), and making our city an attractive place to live in.
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City Officials Don't Do Anything
