JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan called out the Republican-led city council and said the outrage surrounding the removal of the Confederate monument in Springfield Park was a “manufactured controversy.”
The monument’s removal was also a hot-button issue at Tuesday’s city council meeting.
On Thursday, council members will once again hear from the city’s top lawyer and his staff, who’ve already said the decision to remove the monument from Springfield Park was within the mayor’s authority.
That decision involved using private donations, not city funds, to remove the statue.
Ahead of Thursday’s meeting, the mayor released this statement:
“It has been nearly one month since the last Confederate monument was removed from Springfield Park. Yet some members of the City Council continue to take political cheap shots and try to create distractions to undermine the mayor…removal of the Hemming statue in James Weldon Johnson Park never went through the City of Jacksonville Procurement Division. In a clear double standard with the previous administration, past City Councils have not previously scrutinized contract awards to this degree.”
That decision Deegan referred to was made in 2020 under former Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
The statue issue has caused a growing rift between Deegan and Council President Ron Salem. Deegan said the back-and-forth has become a “political food fight” and said it’s time to move on, but Salem pushed back on that premise on Wednesday.
“I’m not ready to move on. I think there’s some major policy issues here that I think we need to get through,” Salem said.
Salem will bring up those issues on Thursday in a special council workshop where he plans to ask the new general counsel why he told Deegan she had the right to order the removal without additional approval.
“We need to vet the process that was used. I would be more than willing to have a discussion with the mayor or anybody about how we handle these monuments,” Salem said.
Deegan said she wants to focus on unity.
“Look guys we have accomplished so much together in the first six months, absolutely we can move past this. We just have to start focusing on those things for our city that’s going to bring our city together. They’ve already said they don’t wanna put the monuments back, let’s move on, let’s focus on what we need.”
Salem agreed the two sides could move past the issue.
“Sure we can, but we need to...I just get upset, I get concerned when there’s a disagreement on policy, and it’s called politics. We’re going to have disagreements for the next three and a half years or as long as she is there, there were disagreements during the Curry administration. I don’t take it personally,” Salem said.
News4JAX was there in December of last year, as crews removed the monument from Springfield Park. It was dedicated to the Women of the Confederacy.
The city council’s review of the Springfield monument’s removal comes as Salem pushes for legislation that would prevent private funds from being used similarly.
Several people spoke out during Tuesday’s meeting, both for and against the statute’s removal.
“Why would you inflict shame upon the removing an icon, a tribute if you will in secrecy. The only shame is the signature it took to remove this icon to women,” a resident said.
Others said this action was needed so the community could heal.
“That was necessary because as long as that symbol of hate existed we couldn’t move forward,” another resident said.
Thursday’s meeting will be held at City Hall and runs from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.
MORE | Legal questions remain following removal of Confederate monument from Springfield Park
There’s also a development on the state level.
A bill that would give the governor power to suspend or remove local officials who move or destroy monuments, advanced in a senate committee on Monday. Some Republican lawmakers want it to be retroactive.
The House version hasn’t been through any committees.