PO Box 4252 • Fort Lauderdale, FL 33338 • 954-614-9942 • coleman@colemanprewitt.com
Political advertisement paid for and approved by Coleman Prewitt for

Fort Lauderdale City Commission, District 4, Nonpartisan.

 

Please click on the Donate button above to make a  contribution to Coleman’s campaign.

A Vision for Prosperity
Fort Lauderdale’s Next Hundred Years

Like so many others, March 27, 1911 was a warm and sunny South Florida day.  However, unlike the others, this historic day saw the birth of a new city with a bright future--the City of Fort Lauderdale.  Our early pioneers could hardly have guessed that in a short hundred years, their small riverside community would grow into a cosmopolitan urban city famous throughout the world.  As this great milestone approaches, it gives us the opportunity as a community to come together, to honor our past, but most importantly, to plan our future.  We must always remember that we are custodians of this great City, holding it in trust for future generations—our obligation being to pass our City on to future generations in a better condition than we received it.  Only with careful planning and a clear committed vision can this be done.  And together we can then help Fort Lauderdale achieve its full potential, bringing prosperity to all of her people.

Like birthdays and anniversaries so often do, our City’s approaching centennial gives us the opportunity to look back from where we have come and to plan our future.  As a large city, this process is complicated by the sheer number of participants.  However it is important that we as a community work together and agree upon a common vision and goals for our City—for it is only by working together, with the participation of all people, that we can achieve the greatest prosperity.

We cannot continue to rely upon the successes of the past to bring about future prosperity.  While our climate and geography will continue to be great assets, future success will only be ours with vision, planning and hard work.  If we fail to plan, if we fail to act proactively, if we fail to work together on a shared vision for our future, we will never reach our full potential and Fort Lauderdale will never be the city it could be.  The world of today is far more dynamic and competitive that the world of 1911.  The rules have changed and if we are going to continue to prosper, we must change and adapt to the new world and be ready to compete on an international level.

It was not so long ago that Fort Lauderdale was a city of vision.  In the 1980’s, our community came together with a plan and vision to be the best city of its size.  As a result of these efforts, we now enjoy great institutions such as the Riverwalk, the Broward Center for the Performing Arts and the vital and dynamic urban core we see today.  However, the vision and planning that brought us to this point, and the shared common goals that made this possible, are gone.  We must recapture this energy and vision if we are to continue to prosper in the future.  The people of Fort Lauderdale are anxious for new vision and new leadership willing to do the hard work to bring about that vision.  We can do this again but we need new leaders of vision to bring our community together. 

Today our City is at a crossroads.  The turnover on the City Commission as a result of the earlier enactment of term limits gives us a once in a generation opportunity to remake the leadership, goals and  vision of our community—to define the city we want to become.  For this reason it is even more important that the citizens of Fort Lauderdale participate in the coming election and elect leaders with a vision for our future and the ability to build the consensus necessary to bring that vision to reality.  I will be that leader.  I have the vision, the energy and the courage to work hand-in-hand with our citizens to build and realize our new dream.