Incumbent Ryan is the best choice, hands down

District 7 includes all of Dania Beach and Wilton Manors, most of Fort Lauderdale, Davie east of University Drive and Hollywood north of Sheridan Street.

If elected to the Broward County Commission District 7 seat, candidate Rita Lipof would have to move one block to reside in the district. She should not be making any moving plans.

Incumbent Commissioner Tim Ryan is vastly more qualified for the job than Lipof, a librarian who until recently worked for the county library system. She was fired in June.

Lipof, 49, is upset that a communications tower that will complete Broward’s long-dysfunctional 911 emergency call system will “literally be in my back yard.” She’s also annoyed that the system’s design placed two of the 16 towers in Hollywood.

Ryan, a 64-year-old attorney who has served on the county commission since 2012, acknowledged that some Hollywood politicians and residents are upset about the tower slated for West Lake Park. But he knows the 911 system failed miserably during the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 and that compromises must be made to solve a problem that threatens lives.

Ryan said the city’s other tower — about five miles to the west — is “a half mile from where I live,” and “after it’s up, it’s amazing. You don’t even notice it unless you’re trying to look at it.”

Lipof also is annoyed that Ryan has continued to provide legal representation to the city of Dania Beach – which is in District 7 – since becoming a commissioner in 2012. “This is absurd,” Lipof said during an online joint candidate interview.

Ryan said he has had a legal relationship with Dania Beach since 1986 and requested a ruling from the Florida Commission on Ethics about whether it was appropriate for him to continue working for the city after joining the County Commission in 2012. The ethics commission said there was no conflict, he said. Lipof says the ruling is more nuanced than Ryan portrays.

Before spending eight years on the commission, Ryan served in the Florida House of Representatives from 1998 to 2006. He ran for the Florida Senate in 2008 and lost.

Voters would be foolish to jettison all of Ryan’s institutional knowledge.

Furthermore, Ryan embraces good policies, judging by his answers on the Sun Sentinel’s candidate questionnaire. The county’s top three challenges, he said, are creating good jobs, addressing sea-level rise and improving transportation.

He said Broward depends too much on tourism and that he wants the county to partner with business, educators and labor to “develop a better trained workforce” and lure more high-paying industries to the county.

He also said that the scientific evidence that the planet is warming is “unequivocal,” and that regional leaders can’t “afford a perpetual political debate as to whether facts are, indeed, facts.”

He said he’s supported programs to conserve energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and backed changes to the county’s land-use plan that will strengthen the county’s ability to better withstand storms and flooding.

Also, he said the county can no longer solve traffic congestion by building more roads. He sponsored the penny sales tax increase that will pay for improved public transportation, better synchronized traffic signals and development of autonomous vehicles. We came away from the interview doubtful, however, that Broward will ever build the light rail system promised during that campaign.

Lipof ’s goals are more ambitious, according to her questionnaire. She wants to end homelessness, have more gender and economic diversity in government, eliminate for-profit prisons, reduce the pay of many high-level county supervisors, make the county’s animal shelter a “no-kill zone,” radically slow development in the county, urge employers to allow workers to work from home to curb traffic congestion and pollution – and more.

“We have commissioners who are millionaires making decisions” about the lives of the county’s many poor people, she said. The commissioners “are not living in the world that most people are.”

Commissioners earn $100,400 a year.

Lipof said she decided to become politically active in 2017 when she was still employed by the library system. She said she tried to alert her supervisors that the person they were hiring for a high-paying job didn’t meet the qualifications. She said her warnings were rebuffed.

She said her goal now is to assure that “no employee or resident of Broward County is ever retaliated against for speaking truth to power.”

Though she doesn’t now live in District 7, she decided to run against Ryan because he voted to put the 911 tower in West Lake Park. She said that Ryan portrays himself as an environmentalist, but no true environmentalist would “vote to put a radio tower in a park.”

Ryan generally thinks the county government is doing well. He said County Administrator Bertha Henry’s leadership “has been strong and steady.”

The county is working with cities to resolve the county’s solid waste problems. It is addressing climate and water supply challenges. He noted that regional leaders are supporting construction of the massive C-51 Reservoir in Palm Beach County.

Despite occasional spats with cities, he said the county and its 31 municipalities get along quite well. Conflicts with the cities “are really overblown. On 95 percent of issues, we work together.”

Ryan has raised $96,905 for his campaign, according to county records. He has been endorsed by the AFL-CIO and the Fraternal Order of Police District 5.

Lipof said in her questionnaire that she didn’t want to share any of her financial information. She said she loaned her campaign $6,100 so she could pay the filing fee. She said she has been endorsed by a group called Save West Lake Park. County records say she has not raised any campaign money.

Ryan