McGrail addresses campaign approach, criticism
To the editor:
I am 53, have lived in my same Cape Coral home for 20 years and have watched this city grow around me. I know what you’re going through working, paying property taxes, and your sewer and water assessments.
I have taken the time and effort to personally walk miles of neighborhoods in Cape Coral, placing my signs in people’s yards. I have met well over 1,000 of you starting at Red, White, and Boom, at candidate forums, and knocking on your doors myself. Hopefully I have earned your trust and your vote the old-fashioned way, by personal contact and a handshake.
I have spent the past several months taking the time during this campaign, to meet with seven department directors, attended several Financial Advisory Committee meetings, and numerous Council meetings and workshops. This education has proven to me, we do have many valuable, civic minded city employees, most of whom are city residents. They are just as concerned as you and me about the Cape’s current challenges. Instead of publicly bashing them for political reasons, we should be working together to come up with reasonable solutions to the problems we all are facing. We survived hurricanes Charlie and Wilma working together, surely we can get through these “tough times” without dividing people and playing blame-game politics.
I have been questioned concerning my reliability as a Council member, based on the fact I currently work in a position I have now held for 18 years at North Collier Hospital as the Lead Medical Technologist on the midnight shift. I can only answer by saying, over those 18 years of helping people as a hospital worker, I have also managed to support my family, be there for my two children growing up during the Cape Coral school years and college, chaired five different professional and volunteer organizations, personally renovated my home, and been involved in several local issues important to my neighborhood and community. With more than 600 unused vacation hours, I have ample time to deliver on my promise of representing the voters. More importantly, if you’re willing to take the time to get to know me, I guarantee you will find I have never in my life taken on commitment I did not meet.
We are a community that needs to pull together for our mutual best interests now more than ever. We must develop real plans for growth, respecting the need of both businesses and residents. We need smart, strong, fiscal leadership to build prosperity and jobs in the Cape. We need leadership that remembers as a city we are a collection of neighborhoods.
This is why, even though I’m not rich, I committed well over $6,000 of my own money to run my campaign.
Please vote on Tuesday, Nov. 3.
Kevin McGrail MT(ASCP)
candidate, District 6, Cape Coral