About a month ago Mike Lagasse, who’d headed Flagler County government’s environmental projects and been its land manager since 2011, left the county for a job in St. Johns County government as its environmental division manager.
On Monday, Lagasse got a tribute from the floor of the County Commission “for his contribution to the park and land preservation in the county.” The tribute wasn’t from county staff or commissioners but from Richard Hamilton, the local philanthropist and naturalist with an eye for environmental issues.
“I’ve trudged through woods and swamps with him in search of pieces of history,” Hamilton said of Lagasse. “I know firsthand his work for the land acquisition committee, the Bings Landing and Malacompra master plan, and countless efforts to preserve and enhance our land and water trail systems.” In his role at the county, Lagasse oversaw acquisitions under the Environmentally Sensitive Land program (known as ESL), which uses tax dollars to buy land for preservation in perpetuity. Voters in renewed referendum approved taxing themselves to fund the program, which had for several years been relatively dormant, having been depleted, but has since been revived with new infusions of dollars.
“So I know he was a dedicated, knowledgeable employee, and I congratulate him on his move to greener pastures in St John’s County,” Hamilton said. “I hope that Ms. Petito will be able to find a worthy replacement in very short order, considering the importance of his efforts or his past efforts to our future comprehensive plan.” Heidi Petito is Flagler County’s administrator.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about Mike moving on and state funds coming in for the Environmentally Sensitive Land fund, and how important it’s going to be without him to get that executed and spent within the time frame,” Commissioner Leann Pennington said. She was hoping that “we really push forward with the state funds to identify and purchase lands. I get a lot of lot of questions in the community about that lately, the ESL.”
Lagasse hosted periodic tours called “A Walk in the Park,” some of them on kayaks, such as the one in March that took participants from Marineland across the Intracoastal’s estuary to Princess Place Preserve, in a discovery of the importance of the estuarine system where Pellicer Creek and the Matanzas River join. He is also a folk musician and host of a weekly radio program on Flagler College’s radio station, Radio Free Ocklawaha County, which features the state’s folk music, and he’s a past board member of the Gamble Rogers Music Festival.
Sunny says
Seriously people?
Michael J Cocchiola says
A good man. Our loss is St Johns’ gain.