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Kevin Ross says military career prepared him for city council
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Published: September 19, 2009
Kevin Ross is a relatively new full-time resident of Statesville. But he has a good reason for that.
Ross, 53, spent 30 years in the U.S. Coast Guard and reached the rank of captain before retiring last year.
As a former military officer, Ross feels he has what it takes to be a good addition to the Statesville City Council and is running for one of its two at-large seats.
One of Ross' stints was as the commanding officer of a Coast Guard facility called LORAN Station Port Clarence, Alaska,
The station is located within the Arctic Circle on the the Bearing Strait.
"There weren't many of us," said Ross. "But we were a city by ourselves."
Ross, as CO of the installation, was responsible for ensuring that the signal tower there transmitted properly.
He was also the executive officer on a Coast Guard ship and it was there, Ross said, that he had to deal with a vast array of matters concerning his subordinates.
"There were always things coming up," he said. "Medical issues, civil rights matters, personnel management issues. All those kinds of things I had to help resolve."
Ross said he was consistently in situations during his Coast Guard career that forced him to tap into his reserve of management skills.
"I dealt with people from congressional aides all the way down to the needs of local people if there was local crisis of some sort," he said. "And I developed a sense of how to bridge all those things together. I had to combine leadership with planning with resource management."
Ross said he also had to "strain our resources" and squeeze his budget when the Coast Guard was called upon to play a larger role in U.S. security following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
And, Ross said, those skills are similar to those required of a city council member.
"I think that all plays a role," he said.
But Ross said his sharpest skill is being able to see the big picture.
"I like look at all the variables to see what impacts they might have on each other," he said. "For example, if you push the balloon in one place, you can know how and where it is going to pop out some place else."
Ross said he would take that kind of analytical approach to the dais of the city council.
"Statesville has a lot of neat areas," he said. "So the question is, how do you do you use all these different parts in a way that benefits the entire city?"
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