The past is prologue as he channels lifelong passions into policies
Commissioner Steven Glassman, who is currently serving his third and final term as the District 2 commissioner, is often a dealmaker but what sets him apart from many other politicians is that he is also the real deal whose achievements on behalf of the City and his constituents can be traced back through his lived experience and life passions.
Arts Advocate
Born in New York City and raised on Long Island, Glassman earned his undergraduate degree and Master of Education from SUNY in Buffalo, New York after which he was an instructor at the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts.
“Before I was actually elected, my entire working career has pretty much been in arts and culture,” Glassman said. “A teacher for almost 20 years at a visual and performing arts magnet school in Buffalo, I also spent about a decade at the Broward County Cultural Division. I worked on establishing the ArtsParks throughout our county and was the project manager for the Hollywood Young Circle ArtsPark, Miramar, Pembroke Pines and Lauderhill. I carried that passion through in my elected office. I was instrumental in creating a public art ordinance for the city of Fort Lauderdale and that also meant that we have a public art advisory board now. We also have, for the first time ever, a cultural affairs officer.
Glassman’s district includes The Broward Center for the Performing Arts, The Parker, the Museum of Discovery and Science, NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale and numerous theaters and galleries.
An Educator on the Dias
“All the years that I used to observe the Fort Lauderdale City Commission, I was always amazed at how sort of hands-off we were when it came to education,” Glassman recalled. “We just let the school board handle all of that. That changed in 2018 when I was elected and two other commissioners had a background in education. We hired a chief education officer and we really re-energized our educational advisory board so now we are not just passive observers of what happens in the schools.”
We Create Community
“District 2 is the most diverse – ethnically, culturally, you name it – that’s my district,” Glassman said. “Along with that comes a very special responsibility to make sure that we’re serving that constituent and we do.”
Glassman is a proud part of the community having moved here in 1994 with Rande, his spouse of 53 years.
“We fit together because whatever’s a strength of mine is pretty much a weakness of Rande’s and then vice versa,” Glassman said, interlocking his fingers. “It really works because we take care of each other in a way that we probably would not be able to take care of ourselves if we didn’t have the other half. Rande had just returned from service overseas during the Vietnam War and I was a student when a mutual friend introduced us one night out at a very popular place in downtown Buffalo called Big Daddy’s. I guess, as they say, the rest is history.”
Fort Lauderdale has been active in fighting Florida’s demand to remove the rainbow street art.
“We’re still negotiating with the state and still have a variety of avenues that we’re pursuing to try and make our case but, bottom line, we are the last city standing,” Glassman reported. “If we just give in right now, what does that say for the future? Are they going to come and be able to say, ‘Hey, we don’t like the art that you put on your lifeguard stands on the beach, it’s too LGBTQ?’”
Visit Lauderdale
“I have been coming to South Florida since I was10 years old,” Glassman recalled. “We used to go to all of the hotels in Miami Beach and then my parents decided to actually have a second home in the area and purchased in Palm Aire right around the mid ‘70s.”
He is now active in making Fort Lauderdale a destination city for others as well as enhancing the quality of life for residents with projects that include the Aquatic Center with the tallest dive tower in the Western Hemisphere, the Jimmy Evert Tennis Center, the planned aquarium that will be a Fort Lauderdale first, lifeguard towers on the beach wrapped in art, and a vertiport on the planned Holiday Park garage where six-passenger air taxis will ferry passengers to Palm Beach, Miami, and beyond.
“The Aquatics complex and War Memorial Auditorium with the Panthers’ presence and the ice rinks’ creation, Holiday Park and the Parker Playhouse renovation, this is all in my district,” Glassman said. “These are projects that I’ve been working on for eight years now. Some of them have come to fruition and are really successful, but we have others that I’m working on like reimaging Breakers Avenue. I put together about $12 million in funding for that main artery that runs parallel to A1A to make it a beautiful, beautiful people street. These are big, sexy projects, but the day-to-day is also just very much helping people deal with neighborhood issues.”
Building a Future
“Our goals for the foreseeable future as a city will always be dealing with infrastructure,” he noted. “Water, storm water, and sewer are always going to be priorities. Our city is still growing and we have to make sure that that growth is sustainable.”
Before taking office, Glassman served on the City of Fort Lauderdale’s Beach Redevelopment Advisory Board and the Planning and Zoning Board. He has also served as president of several beach condominium associations including his current 12-year tenure at the Sapphire Condominium.
“Affordable housing will continue to be a challenge. There are building projects that you would never know are workforce housing or affordable housing because of the beautiful job that they are doing. We have some tools in the toolbox with regard to incentives to build that kind of housing. No other city in Broward County has built as much of that housing as Fort Lauderdale.”
Making a difference
“I’ve always been a civic activist my whole life,” Glassman said. “As a young student, I always ran for student council. There’s a lot of amazing work that’s going on with our agencies and our organizations in Fort Lauderdale and I would welcome people to be a part of that. Just get involved and find an organization that you think really speaks to you and to your passions and give it everything you’ve got.”
Glassman clearly relishes his role.
“I’m the commissioner of District 2 and I don’t say this objectively, but District 2 is the home of all of the action. Most of the beach, Las Olas Isles, Flagler Village where all the growth and all the density and all the young people are, all of this is District 2. I mean, my district is busy, busy, busy, busy because we’re always looking to do better.”
