JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Jacksonville City Council members want answers from the city’s top attorney after Mayor Donna Deegan’s decision to remove a Confederate monument from Springfield Park, using private funds.
The monument, honoring Women of the Confederacy, had been there since 1915 and is now being stored in a warehouse in Brentwood.
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The council will hear from General Counsel Michael Fackler and have the opportunity to ask questions at a 2 p.m. Rules Committee meeting Tuesday.
Deegan said she consulted the General Counsel’s office before deciding she had the legal right to remove the monument because using private funds meant she did not need City Council approval.
Deegan shared with News4JAX the legal opinion from the Office of General Counsel that she used to make her decision.
It concludes that “the mayor has exclusive authority over the city’s parks and parks property, through the parks director, as provided in the Charter and Code… Therefore, the mayor has the power to remove a parks monument, without the use of city funds.”
Deegan said when it became clear that the City Council was not eager to take up the Confederate monument issue, she went to the General Counsel to find out what she could do.
“I said, ‘Do I have the executive authority to take this down if it’s done with private funds and not funds out of the CIP?’ — because I couldn’t use those funds out of the CIP without asking council approval,” Deegan said. “And he said, ‘Yes.’ And so that’s exactly what I did.”
It cost $187,000 to remove the monument — money that was made available through a grant that the Jessie Ball duPont Fund and anonymous donors made to the group 904WARD.
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City Council member Nick Howland adamantly disagreed with Deegan’s decision, saying in a statement that the City Council Finance Committee specifically mandated that any funding being spent on the statue — whether for removal, relocation, or contextualization — must follow a Council policy decision. He said that mandate was unanimously approved by the Council and signed by the mayor.
“Regardless of anyone’s personal opinion of this historic monument, Mayor Deegan’s actions are both an abuse of power and a blatant disregard for transparency. This was City Council’s decision to make. Period,” Howland’s statement said.
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Jacksonville City Council President Ron Salem also expressed concerns about the executive action, saying one thing that has been overlooked is the historic nature of the statue.
“This statue was in a historic area. And there are rules for altering items that are in our historic areas. And it doesn’t appear like that was done in this case,” Salem said.
The General Counsel is expected to address their concerns at Tuesday’s meeting.
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