2011 has been an amazing year for me. Personally, I continue enjoying being an empty nester although I find talking with my kids on a regular basis not quite as satisfying as cooking them dinner every night. The house is a bit cleaner, though!

Professionally, it was a challenging year. It was very hard sitting on the dais at the Broward County Governmental Center hearing people ask us not to make cuts to things like libraries and social services when we knew, as a Commission, we had to make some very tough choices. I’m very happy this year that we were able to re-establish several services that we cut last year.

Broward County Parks are now open nearly every day, reopening on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Those were days we had to cut last year because of budgets. The “Park Closed” signs were replaced with “Growing Not Mowing” as the County allows more areas to return to their natural habitat. Broward’s regional libraries are reopening on Sundays and while the smaller libraries around the County are still closed 2 days each week, the larger libraries are now available every day. We still offer some of the best social services programs in the country, despite all the cuts that every department was forced to make in past years.

The County is also creating jobs with projects that include a new County Courthouse, a south runway at Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport and several other smaller projects.