Voters will face a crowded ballot of 10 candidates in Pembroke Pines — one of the three Broward cities with open seats for the March 19 elections.

One of the three contests in Pembroke Pines will be the mayor’s race. It comes after the longtime mayor, Frank Ortis, decided not to seek reelection. Ortis served on the commission since 1996, the last 20 years as mayor.

“Twenty-eight years was enough,” Ortis said. “I had a good run. I enjoyed every bit of it.”

Two additional Broward cities with races will be Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, where seven hopefuls are competing for three open seats, and Hillsboro Beach, where three candidates will compete for two positions.

Four Broward municipalities — Oakland Park, Lighthouse Point, Sea Ranch Lakes and Lazy Lake — ended up with no contested races, allowing many candidates to win seats without opposition. Even though Sea Ranch Lakes was among those with no contested race, it still will have referendum questions for voters.

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Here’s a look at the Broward races.

Pembroke Pines

Pembroke Pines, Broward’s second largest city with a population of 171,000, has a list of candidates for three races: the mayor’s seat, District 2 and District 3.

The three candidates for mayor are Vice Mayor Iris Siple, Commissioner Angelo Castillo and political newcomer Elizabeth “Liz” Burns.

Burns, an event planner, is running for mayor for the first time but ran for City Commission twice before. Although she hasn’t yet served in elected office, “I’m a good fit” for the mayor’s job, she said, with a desire to tackle issues including traffic and crime.

She has lived in the city for 25 years but knows an election against two candidates with name recognition will be a tough fight.

But “nothing is easy. I’m a good fit because I can bring new ideas, new thoughts, new energy to my city. It’s a diverse city, I’m from Jamaica, and we’ve never seen diversity on this commission at all. I want to make sure my city is a safe and healthy lace to live,” she said.

Burns said it’s the same people who seek office over and over again: “Twenty years you are going to come up with the same ideas and nothing changes. ‘Same old, same old’ brings same old same old results. Change is now,” she said.

Castillo, retired, was first elected to the commission in 2004, but briefly left twice for failed runs at the city mayor’s spot and the county commission.

Castillo once was a member of former Broward Sheriff Scott Israel’s command staff, and also is the former director of the Broward County Human Services Department.

Because of staggered seats expiring at different times, Castillo’s commission seat does not expire until the next mayor is sworn in, which will be in April. The election for his commission seat is likely to be in November.

Castillo said he wants to be mayor because “we’re at a critical point in the history of the city where we must shift (from) a city predominantly concerned with westward expansion to a city that is now built out, maturing, and facing a new set of urban challenges that we’ve never faced before. We have to retool City Hall for the next reiteration of our history.”

He said it was once common for 5,000-6,000 new homes to spring up at a time, which was “guaranteed new money coming into the city. That’s going to start to dry up, now we’re built out. We have to find ways to continue to uphold our quality of life.”

He said the city’s issues surround traffic mitigation, public safety, affordable housing, taxation and fees and managing garbage and recycling.

The other candidate for mayor is Siple, a retired chief administrator at the Broward County clerk of courts. She has served five terms on the Pembroke Pines City Commission, having first been elected in 2004.

“We have a very beautiful city and my goal is to keep that quality of life going,” she said.

Moving into the future, she said, will mean staying on top of issues such as public safety, traffic, development and zoning concerns and “how do we best spend the money that we have to make a good quality of life for our residents. Our residents expect that. It’s up to the electeds to make it happen.”

Ortis has been a good mayor, she said, and his retirement is “my opportunity to carry on a lot of good works that’s already been started.”

Seeking Siple’s now-vacant District 3 seat would be new to elected office: Maria A. Rodriguez, Christopher “Chris” Ziadie, Glenn R. Theobald, and Misael “Ace” Almeria.

The District 2 contenders are Jay D. Schwartz, the incumbent, Brandon Carrero, and Catherine A. Minnis.

Lauderdale-by-the-Sea

Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, a town sandwiched between Fort Lauderdale and Pompano Beach, will decide among three contenders for the mayor’s seat: incumbent commissioner Edmund Malkoon, Ann Marchetti and incumbent commissioner Buz Oldaker.

The candidates for District 1, Seat 3 are Howard Goldberg and John A. Graziano.

The candidates for District 2, Seat 4 are Kenneth Brenner and Richard DeNapoli.

Hillsboro Beach

In Hillsboro Beach, two candidates receiving the highest number of votes will be elected to the town commission.

Those candidates are Richard Crusco, Dawn Miller and Jane Reiser, an incumbent.

Facing no opposition

There will not be an election in Lighthouse Point where three candidates are unopposed: incumbent Mayor Van Buskirk, incumbent Everett Marshall III for Seat 4, and Abby Stafford for Seat 5.

There was one seat up for election in March on the Oakland Park City Commission: Letitia Newbold, the incumbent, was the sole qualified candidate and was unopposed. Therefore, there will be no election.

In Lazy Lake, a small village of one street surrounded by Wilton Manors, there are six candidates who qualified, all of them unopposed: Carlton Kirby, Ray Nyhuis, Jeff Grenell, Warren Nadeau, Mark DiPaolo and William Daughtery.

Ballots on the agenda

In the gated, 210-home village of Sea Ranch Lakes, there won’t be an election either because three people filed for four open seats. The council members will be Herbert Yardley, Jason Robichaux and Slava Borshchukov.

But voters will be asked to cast a ballot on two charter items: Whether the Village Council of seven elected members should only have five seats, and whether the rule that four votes are needed to adopt anything be amended to permit only the majority of members present at a meeting to adopt any resolution or ordinance.

If the first referendum item passes, that fourth open council seat will disappear.

Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at . Follow on X, formerly Twitter, @LisaHuriash