Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
MORAITIS
tive thinker.
‘There’s a lot of fake and phony people here [in South Florida],” she said. “It’s really nice to have some genuine people.”
Many Fort Lauderdale voters don’t know Moraitis. Though her husband, George, is a state representative, she hasn’t run for office. And because she won her city seat without opposition, voters haven’t had much exposure to her opinions.
Her views on some of the city’s biggest issues:
THE WAVE: The controversial rail system whose fate hangs in the balance has Moraitis’s support. “The Wave is part of a piece of the puzzle in terms of connectivity for this region,” she said. “I believe it’s part of the future.” The overhead wires, which have drawn public scorn, could one day be removed, when technology for the system improves, she said. One day, it could connect to east-west transit, if voters approve a sales tax increase for transportation, an initiative she said she’d support.
THE JOB: She said she plans to convene groups whose opinions she can tap into, including a group of millennials and a group of women. She left her job as director of capital development at the YMCA and will work full-time as a commissioner, she said. “I love meeting with people, saying how can we do better, how can we do better, how can we do better?”
Moraitis will fill the seat currently held by Bruce Roberts, who is running for mayor. The District 1 commissioner represents Fort Lauderdale’s north side.
GALLERIA: A plan to wrap the mall in condo towers was withdrawn last year, and Moraitis said she didn’t support it. But she said she would work with the developer on “a solution” for redevelopment at the Sunrise Boulevard mall. Her husband grew up behind the mall, and his parents still live there, she said. DEVELOPMENT: Moraitis said she likes the growth downtown and doesn’t support a temporary building moratorium. “I’m not anti-development. People would probably say I’m development friendly. … I don’t want it to, obviously, grow to the point where we lose our feel and character of our neighborhoods,” she said. “We need to do what we can to protect our neighborhoods, while having some designated dense areas.” She also supported the redevelopment plan for the publiclyowned Bahia Mar at the beach, she said, because it helped ensure the boat show remains in Fort Lauderdale. BULLIES: In recent days, she shared publicly that she was the child of a teen mother, who was 16 when she got pregnant.
Her path “was not always easy,” she said. Consequently, she said she “hate[s] bullies.” “I’m a fighter for the underdog. It’s kind of how I’m wired. I want to defend people when someone’s bullying them. And I do. But I have to be careful,” she said. “I could have a good episode that goes viral.”
SCHOOLS: One of her top priorities is education, an issue rarely discussed by city commissioners. Moraitis said she spent a year researching the issues and found that people are displeased with the schools. As she scopes out solutions, she said she’ll visit the charter schools run by the city of Pembroke Pines, tour the public schools, and look at a school in Miami-Dade whose construction was city-funded. Her 16-year-old daughter attends private Christian school, but she said she thinks Broward’s school board and superintendent do a good job. “I want our residents to say we have great schools,” she said.
HOMELESS: Moraitis said leading a solution to the homeless problem is another of her top priorities. She doesn’t support using the county’s stockade on Powerline Road, a former jail, as a homeless help center, as some election candidates do. But she does think the homeless camp in the heart of downtown, at the Main Library, is a nettlesome problem. There are about 300 “chronic” homeless people, some mentally ill, who resist help and don’t want to go to shelters, officials say. Moraitis said she’d like to take a “compassionate” approach, but also doesn’t think homeless people should be allowed to break the rules of the community they choose to live in. “We have to be able to give these people some dignity in their everyday life,” she said. “I don’t know what that looks like.”