I\u2019m writing not just as a concerned parent\/resident, but as a lifelong supporter of what makes Key Biscayne special. We are a resident-led community. We\u2019ve always taken pride in looking out for one another and ensuring that the needs of our residents come first. That\u2019s why it\u2019s so difficult to understand why our largest youth program, our soccer club, is being allowed to operate with no resident leadership, no transparency, and no accountability.<\/p>\n
Years ago, our soccer program was run by parents in the community. Today, not a single Key Biscayne parent has any meaningful say in how the club is run. The results show it. The club has rebranded its top-tier teams as \u201cAcademy\u201d and raised prices by 42% ($3,600) before even factoring in coach per diems, tournament fees, and hotel costs. The real cost to play on one of these teams is between $7,000 and $8,000 per child.<\/p>\n
For a community program, that\u2019s outrageous and exclusionary.<\/p>\n
This is not an isolated incident.<\/p>\n
Two years ago, right after resecuring the Village contract, the club tried to raise fees by over 30%. Only massive pushback forced the Village to act but even then it was a betrayal. The Village let the club raise fees 20%, justifying it with the new 10% club surcharge after residents were promised by Council that it would not be passed on to us. And the additional 10% increase? Supposedly, it was due to costs related to providing \u201cextra training and access to 54D,\u201d which never happened. Worse, the club brazenly disregarded the Village\u2019s 20% limit by raising the fees of some teams by 29%, without any consequences.<\/p>\n
If the club is willing to act so brazenly on pricing, something that\u2019s easily trackable, imagine what goes on unseen.<\/p>\n
Our kids are not revenue streams. They are the heart of this community. Yet we\u2019ve handed control of their largest extracurricular activity to an outside, for-profit vendor that is motivated by margin, not mission. Just recently, the club admitted it collects half a million dollars annually in \u201cmanagement fees,\u201d which don\u2019t include coach salaries. And that\u2019s before the new 42% price increase.<\/p>\n
We need to ask ourselves: Why is the largest youth program on this island that affects over 3,000 residents, the only one that isn\u2019t run by residents?<\/p>\n
We have given a monopoly to a for-profit corporation, with little accountability and no transparency. With Village staff over-stretched and Council concerned with more long-term Village matters, this leads to the monopoly doing what monopolies do. This is not necessarily about the people involved being bad people. It\u2019s about a system that no matter who you put in, will naturally devolve into a money-making operation instead of a community-based organization focused on creating a healthy athletic, educational, and learning environment for our kids.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s time for this to change. It\u2019s time to return control of our soccer program to the residents of Key Biscayne. Until we do, we will continue to see decisions made for profit, not for the well-being of our children.<\/p>\n
I urge the Council to do what every Key Biscayne leader before has done; put our residents first by allowing our island paradise to be run by residents.<\/p>\n
It takes courage, yes. But our community, and especially our kids, are worth it.<\/p>\n
Ana Rojas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019m writing not just as a concerned parent\/resident, but as a lifelong supporter of what makes Key Biscayne…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[25952,49,48,1050,25950,25951,6390,561,82],"class_list":["post-34273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ana-rojas","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-community","tag-key-biscayne","tag-key-biscayne-soccer-program","tag-miami","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}