“I think that might be the big difference.Six years' worth of names have already been planned out, including 21 names per year. “Being mayor of Sanibel was a tough job because we were being sued all the time by development people, but I was working with people I trusted,” he said. Goss compared the Sanibel mayor’s job favorably to heading up the C.I.A. Goss could not get beyond his partisan background and did not have the skills for the post, but others said he was sandbagged - not the type to prevent hurricane damage - by colleagues who had their knives out for him at the insular agency. regroup after monumental intelligence failures ran into fierce opposition, and he was replaced after 18 months. Then he was tapped by President George W. Goss put his covert credentials to use on the House intelligence panel and helped lead the joint congressional inquiry into the Sept. Many other residents of the storm-torn region are facing homelessness or other desperate situations.įirst elected to Congress in 1988 after his stints in local government, Mr. He was routinely listed as one of the wealthiest members of Congress, and his escape plan last week consisted of heading to his family’s 582-acre expanse in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Goss was lucky to have somewhere to relocate to. And I think a lot of people feel that way.” “I’m not going to ask government to come and bail me out. “I tend to feel if you are going to live in a high-risk area, you’ve got to accept the risk,” he said. “They both have different jobs.”īut he said residents of Sanibel should be ready to bear some of the financial responsibility. “I’m not going to get dragged into a feud between the governor and the president,” Mr. Goss said the need for money for Florida and other states punished by Ian is “pretty obvious,” but that was about as far as he would go. Ron DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio - for opposing federal aid to New York and New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Goss knows that Florida lawmakers are going to have to make their case for emergency money and that some Republican leaders are already under fire - including Gov. “Because when I look to see where it is supposed to be, there is a helicopter parked there.”Īs a veteran of federal funding fights, Mr. “I know it is not where it is supposed to be,” he said. Goss has not been able to spy via photos and footage is his 26-foot outboard motor boat, a gift from his family on his 70th birthday and appropriately named 0070. If you are looking at Sanibel compared to Fort Myers, we came out a whole lot better because we’ve got a lot better building codes.” “We brought that information back and put it in the code. “We saw what survived and what didn’t, and I learned a lot about foundation structures and first-floor elevations,” he said. He takes some credit for imposing strong building standards on Sanibel after he and other city officials visited Dauphin Island, Ala., following a severe strike there by Hurricane Frederic in 1979. He said that the exterior damage does not look bad, but that the question was whether water flowed through the storm-fortified front door. Goss has tried to assess the damage to their house - a yellow pine and cypress structure built on stilts atop “many, many pilings” - from aerial photos. Since fleeing with his wife, dog and their overnight bags before the bridge was closed down, Mr. “I’m literally sitting up here wondering what is next.” They are uncertain what happened to their Florida home and possessions in the maelstrom of a near direct hit from the storm. He is now worried about the future of the fragile island cut off from vehicle traffic by a collapsed causeway, as well as what comes next for him and his wife, Mariel, who evacuated to a farm they own in Virginia. Goss, now 83, got his start in politics in the 1970s as a leader in the successful effort to incorporate Sanibel to hold off beach-hungry developers, eventually becoming its first mayor. Goss, better known in Washington as a former 15-year congressman from Southwest Florida, a fixture on the House Intelligence Committee and the former director of the C.I.A. WASHINGTON - The founding mayor of Sanibel, Fla., fled his waterfront island home so quickly last Wednesday as Hurricane Ian approached that he left his computer on and the refrigerator full.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |