Why Joe Rasco is Wrong for the "City Beautiful". By Geniusofdespair

In my humble opinion, Rasco is wrong for Coral Gables City Manager. I first met him when Key Biscayne wanted to put soccer fields on 50 acres in Bill Baggs Park. That is a State Park. Putting anything in a State Park that is not for the benefit of all the State residents is plain wrong. For example, I don't want to go to a Sarasota State Park gummed up with athletic fields for neighboring schools. Our State Parks are for ALL the people not just a surrounding community. Local parks and school grounds are where athletic fields should be put...and where they are put.

Rasco was loud and brutish in his insistence on the ball fields as he tried to commandeer the land in Bill Baggs for the soccer fields. He said the Village had nowhere else to put them. Well, whose fault was that? Why should all the rest of the people in the State of Florida have to give up their parkland because the Village of Key Biscayne didn't think ahead and preserve land for soccer fields: That is why we have growth management plans Joe! The City of Miami had land on Virginia Key that might have been available, but Rasco did not want to hear it: too stubborn. He brushed activists aside when they tried to offer him alternatives. He wouldn't budge. The State ( I am pretty sure Lawton Chiles was Governor), after much ado with Rasco, finally put it's foot down - hard - and he whimpered away.

I was there. I saw this man in action and only have foul memories of the way he treated people like me. He wasn't someone you could agree to disagree with. He was a bully and as a teacher might say: "He doesn't work well with others". This post has put me in a bad mood, I will have to write more later on Rasco.

P.S. Because the County had signed an agreement with the Matheson family (the owners of the land), the soccer fields could not go in Crandon Park. Lee Niblock was the Park Manager at Bill Baggs at the time and the land fight resulted in the formation of the March 15, 2001 Bill Baggs Cape Florida Management Plan which said:

During the development of this management plan, the Village of Key Biscayne and the Key Biscayne Athletic Club proposed that up to 50 acres of the park be used for development of ball fields and ancillary user-oriented recreation facilities. The Division does not support this proposal for the following reasons:

1. The purpose of acquisition of the state park was for resource based outdoor recreation, such as beach use, wildlife observation, natural and cultural resource interpretation, fishing, boating and picnicking, as opposed to user oriented recreational facilities, such as developed sport fields.
2. The acquisition of portions of the park with funding from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund Program restricts the conversion of the land to uses and purposes other than those for which the land was acquired.
3. Substantial amounts of public monies were invested in and devoted to the restoration efforts undertaken at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park. Some of the grants also include a requirement to repay the grant amounts should the conditions of the grant request change.
4. The conversion of state park land to user-oriented facilities such as ball fields would be incompatible with the resource-based outdoor recreation mission of the state park system, and with the outdoor recreation goals and objectives of this plan.
5. The clearing, development, and operation of ball fields would create unacceptable impacts to the park's natural resources and to a number of federal- and state-listed plants and animals that use the park, including sea turtles, least terns, piping plovers, a variety of hawks and other birds.
6. The operation of the proposed facilities would greatly increase traffic congestion on the park roads and detract from the quality of the recreational experience provided to other state park visitors.
7. The operation of the proposed facilities would create off-site impacts to adjacent property owners in the form of light and noise pollution and increased traffic congestion.