City of Fort Lauderdale - Community Area Planning Initiative (CAP) - Central Area Community Meetings
City of Fort Lauderdale - Community Area Planning Initiative (CAP)
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Central Area Community Meetings

Community Forum I
March 22 & 25, 2000

The City of Fort Lauderdale was proud to host the Central Area CAP Community Forum I on two separate occasions, Wednesday March 22, 2000 and Saturday March 25, 2000. City Manager Floyd Johnson and staff from the Office of Community and Comprehensive Planning were on-hand to personally welcome each charter member to the exciting new initiative of pro-active community planning. At each Forum, an overview of the CAP initiative was presented, including the CAP concept, the key players involved, and the Community Leadership Committee recruiting process. Discussions focused on the importance of public participation and the anticipated outcomes of CAP. The Forums also gave charter members the opportunity to sign up for any one of the six Community Workshops that took place throughout the month of June.

Community Workshops
June 2000

The CAP staff held six Community Workshops at the Greater Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce. At these workshops, attendees were randomly divided into small groups to express community issues and formulate goals for the Central Area of the City of Fort Lauderdale.

Planning staff facilitated the workshop discussions by leading each of the groups through a number of exercises designed to encourage hands-on participation. More than 160 citizens attended the CAP Workshops and developed over 900 goals that attendees envision for the future of the Central Area.

Six (6) of the most recurring themes included:

  1. Reducing Crime
  2. Enhancing Code Enforcement
  3. Encouraging Traffic Calming Techniques
  4. Improving Public Safety / Police Presence
  5. Improving Information Dissemination
  6. Encouraging Development / Redevelopment

Working with CAP staff, the Community Leadership Committee (CLC) consolidated the community input into a streamlined list of 147 goals and objectives. A complete list of the 147 goals was made available for public review two weeks prior to the Community Forum II so that the public had the opportunity to examine all of the goals before voting on them.

Community Forum II
August 16, 2000

Over 320 residents, property and business owners, employees and other individuals with an interest in the City's Central Area attended Community Forum II at the Mills Pond Park Pavilion on August 16, 2000. At Community Forum II, attendees were given the opportunity to review and discuss the 147 goals that were developed at the Community Workshops in June. Each participant was given ten dots to place on one or more of the goals that they believe are most important for the City to address at this time.

Community Forum II participants cast a total of 3,220 votes! Although each of the 147 goals was voted upon at least once (meaning that each goal had at least one dot) only 18 goals received a majority of all votes: 51%. These top 18 goals also received at least 50 votes or more. Based upon these statistics, the CLC determined that those top 18 goals should be forwarded for the development of cost estimates and implementation strategies.

Community Forum III
November 16, 2000

On November 16, approximately 200 individuals attended the Central Area CAP Community Forum III. At this forum, the public had the opportunity to review the 18 goals that received over 51% of all votes at Community Forum II. In addition, after reviewing and discussing the proposed implementation strategies for each goal with city staff department representatives, participants then ranked the 18 goals according to the order that they felt they should be implemented.

Central Area SNID Forum
September 26, 2002

About 200 individuals attended the Central Area SNID Forum to vote on a proposed funding strategy to achieve neighborhood and community-wide goals within the Central CAP Area. The proposed funding strategy, a Safe Neighborhood Improvement District (SNID) would have established a tax to fund the completion of Central Area goals by the year 2011, the 100th anniversary of the City’s founding. A plurality but not a majority of attendees supported the establishment of the SNID (45.63% yes to 41.88% no, with 12.50% choosing neither). While the voters indicated a desire for more police protection, and improved streets and drainage, there was not sufficient support to pursue the establishment of a Safe Neighborhood Improvement District (SNID) in the Central CAP Area at this time.