JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The controversy surrounding the removal of the confederate monument from a Jacksonville park last month could come to a conclusion Thursday. Jacksonville City Council members are set to hear from the Office of the General Counsel regarding their legal opinion of the removal.
Since the monument was removed, city council members have expressed frustration over the removal process and even introduced legislation to address it. First Coast News sat down with Mayor Donna Deegan who called the city council's actions 'selective outrage.'
"It's really been unfortunate to me, an unfortunate turn of events the way that it's all been handled," Mayor Deegan said.
City council members will get the change to ask staff from the General Counsel's Office questions about the legality of the process of taking down the Women of the Southland monument at Springfield Park. Council President Ron Salem said he read the opinion and he is prepared to find clarity.
"I'm more interested in some processes regarding security that I'm concerned about that I will bring up tomorrow. And some follow up on questions about whether that opinion was mine in terms of a privilege between the attorney and myself,” Salem explained.
President Salem and other city council members believe the Mayor left city council out of the process. The monument was taken down on December 27th, 2023. Deegan said council members knew this was something she had been wanting to get done, they just did not know when it was going to happen.
"This council had every opportunity to act on this issue, they decided they did not want to do that. I made it very clear, I was looking at my options for how to do that. Everyone knew that it was coming. They didn't know the date, but they knew it was coming," Deegan explained.
The mayor said her office followed the advice of the General Counsel who determined she had the authority to remove the monument without consulting city council members since she used private money. The funding came from a grant from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund and anonymous donors made to 904WARD.
"I handled everything exactly by the book. I went to the General Counsel, I asked him for an opinion. I want to be very clear...never in the time that I was interviewing him or or the woman that I nominated before I nominated him, never with either one of those candidates had I asked them how they would rule on this issue," Mayor Deegan said.
President Salem believes city council should have been involved in the process. He is now taking steps to ensure this does not happen again through a new ordinance.
“That legislation is very important to me. And it's for a mayor that may try to raise private dollars to do virtually anything in this city, bypassing the city council," President Salem said.
President Salem added if all of the council's questions are answered during Thursday's meeting, they should be able to conclude this matter. Deegan hopes that will be the case so the city can address other issues.
"I'd love to see our city move forward to tackle things like literacy and homelessness, and affordable housing and all those things that we all have done a really good job of working together on. But for some reason, we seem stuck here. So I hope that we can move past that,” Deegan said.