Senator Rick Scott tours the Cape Coral Yacht Club as ‘more work needs to be done’ after Ian

CAPE CORAL, Florida. Senator Rick Scott received an update on recovery efforts in the Cape Coral area following Hurricane Ian.

The senator visited the Cape Coral Yacht Club with city officials, seeing first hand some of the damage caused by the hurricane. Damage that takes longer to recover.

“We have a lot of issues that we are dealing with, but this is very important,” said Senator Scott.

A matter of importance as the yacht club and beach continue to be restored.

“It’s amazing to see the spirit of people,” Commissioner Brian Hamman said. “They are resilient, they recover, and that is what we are here for. We are here to remove the obstacles to this process.”

Removal of roadblocks, both figuratively and literally, as the beach remains closed in the aftermath of Hurricane Jan.

“It gets better every year, but it doesn’t happen overnight,” said Senator Scott. “I mean, rebuilding everything takes a long time, but the most important thing is to keep everyone alive. You can restore all of this, but you just want people to stay safe.”

The senator’s visit comes just a day after Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that millions of dollars will be sent to counties across the state to restore beaches, with more than $23 million going to Lee County.

“The challenge is that you have to get all the municipalities to work together to do this,” the senator said. “Whether you’re building dunes or something like that, you have to think about what you’re doing to make sure that if it happens again, it won’t be destroyed again.”

Senator Scott also says he’s working on other issues. Those that can be addressed at the federal level, such as returning mail to those who live on the beach.

“I’ve been talking to mayors, I’ve been talking to county commissioners to try to resolve these issues. I know we’re trying to return mail to Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel. I think we’re getting closer to Fort Myers Beach and hopefully within a week Sanibel as well.”

As for the timetable for when we can expect the Yacht Club to reopen, that could also take a little longer.

“We were planning on making some improvements with the transition to parks that was passed back in 2018, but now we certainly have another element that we need to address,” said John Gunter, Mayor of the City of Cape Coral. “So this is what these discussions will be next week.”

Something, Gunther says, will require partnerships across all levels of government.