Ronald Wasson: Aventura city manager seeks to develop parks, open spaces
For the past six years, Ronald Joseph Wasson has been running the City of Aventura as the city manager – putting the residents’ quality of life first.
Mr. Wasson says he plans to continue to provide beautiful landscaping, open spaces and parks along with negotiations for a new school development and maintaining the most qualified city staff.
With over 35 years of executive-level management experience in public administration, Mr. Wasson first served as commanding officer of numerous New York City Police Department units. He commanded three patrol precincts, the NYC Property Clerk, NY Housing Department and the elite Emergency Services Unit.
He was responsible for directing the deployment of up to 4,500 police officers in controlling crime and emergencies. He was also responsible for all rescue and tactical emergency response for the city and supervised crime control strategies, deployment and assignment of personnel, investigations of crime and administration of all aspects of policing a large city.
After receiving his master’s degree in public administration from Marist College Graduate School, Mr. Wasson went back to his hometown of the Village of Rockville Centre as a city administrator for five years and then made his way down to South Florida in 2007 when he accepted the role of city manager for Bay Harbor Islands. In 2018, he was recruited to his current role at the city manager for Aventura.
A few recent achievements for Mr. Wasson in Aventura include negotiating the police department’s contract agreement twice with no mediation or work-related issues; implementing the $18.5 million American Rescue Plan to oversee numerous stormwater, park and recreation, public works, finance and technology projects; and applying for and receiving about $4 million in state and federal grants for public works projects.
“My overall goal is to continue managing those expectations and managing the growth of the City of Aventura and Miami-Dade County,” he said. “We are always looking for ways that we can do to make the city even better, which is the bottom line for government.”
Mr. Wasson spoke with Miami Today reporter Abraham Galvan.
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Ariel Penzer
March 27, 2024 at 9:14 am
Ronald Wasson has destroyed Aventura’s parks in his short time with our city. The young parents and people who use these parks are devastated
Shaun Moss
March 27, 2024 at 1:00 pm
This article was written extremely one sided by a journalist who didn’t bother to seek both sides of the story. Or this was something put out by the city. Many aventura residents, mostly young families, are furious and heartbroken over the destruction that Ronald Wasson has done to our parks. Including destroying the only quiet park we had and replacing our children’s fields with poor quality plastic Astro turf. With a company that he uncomfortably close ties with. I hope who ever wrote this does their due diligence and talks to the residents of Aventura before putting out more articles like this.
Ofelia Duran
March 27, 2024 at 10:19 pm
With a crime rate of 45 per one thousand residents, Aventura has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes – from the smallest towns to the very largest cities. This man has destroyed 3 parks, two of them replacing the real grass by plastic toxic turf, and I. The 3rd one, convert a beautiful peaceful park in noisy pickleball courts against the city residents mandate