Fort Lauderdale’s Charter Review Board voted to ask city staff to develop a citywide orientation and communications plan and agreed to prioritize a short list of items the City Commission identified, including public-lands rules and election-related charter language.

Board members said the move is intended to improve public outreach after two years of education-focused meetings and concerns that the board’s prior work had not reached neighborhood groups. The board’s motion asked Anthony, the board liaison, to draft an outreach/education program and report back by the next meeting.

Why it matters: Board members repeatedly said that poor public awareness hampered the board’s previous recommendations and that better, smaller-format outreach could help civic associations and voters understand proposed charter changes. Members cited prior presentations, significant technical material and the need to break topics into digestible workshops.

During discussion, board members described several outreach channels the staff could use, including the city’s neighborhood support team, quarterly workshops, targeted civic-association briefings and links on utility bills and city web pages. Paul, a staff presenter, recommended breaking topics into larger categories and staging “a series of workshops per quarter” so material does not “glaze over” the public, and to use topic-focused presentations (for example, a session on the role of the charter, then one on elections, then on public lands).

Board member Richard Wise made the motion asking Anthony to draft the orientation and outreach plan. The board passed that motion by voice vote. Wise then moved a second motion to take priority items from the City Commission’s direction and address those first at board meetings, with the board preparing preliminary recommendations for targeted civic-association review; that motion also passed by voice vote.

Alongside outreach, members recommended sequencing topics so new board members could be brought up to speed efficiently. Several members suggested a separate orientation for the new board members in addition to public-facing workshops. The board asked Paul to provide an abbreviated update at the next meeting on work already completed on the high-priority topics, specifically public lands and elections.

The board did not set a formal deadline for the outreach plan within the motion text beyond asking staff to present a program at the next meeting. The motion language and the voice votes were recorded in the meeting transcript; exact roll-call vote counts were not specified in the transcript.

What happens next: Anthony (staff liaison) was asked to develop the orientation/outreach proposal; Paul was asked to prepare a condensed briefing on the board’s prior work on public lands and elections for the next meeting.