 Welcome back. I'm here with Ron Salem, president of the Jacksonville City Council, with much to discuss after a lively week in City Hall. Welcome. Thank you, Ann. Pleasure to be here. You get a little closer to that microphone. President Salem, you asked for a special meeting to discuss the sudden removal of the Confederate monument in Springfield Park. I watched that meeting. It seemed like there were a few distinct buckets of concern. Run through, if you can, as briefly as you can, kind of what those concerns are. Thank you, Ann. Number one was the fact that the opinion was a draft agreement. It was not signed by the general council. It was not dated by the general council. He indicated that he was still making changes to it, and yet the mayor acted upon this, and we still do not have an opinion from the general council. I hope to have it today, but we're two weeks post the removal of the monument, and we don't have an opinion from him. I need to reinforce I am not litigating the monument coming down. I'm litigating the process that was used to take the monument down. Number two, private dollars were used. Any dollars used for on a city property needs to go through the city council. That's very basic. Number three, it was roughly $180,000. Anything over $100,000 requires it to go through the CIP. Explain what the CIP is. That is the capital improvement plan. Anything above $100,000 needs to go into that plan, and it did not. And also get council approval. Absolutely. Absolutely. Number four, clearly historically, and it's well documented, this park is historical, and this statue was historical. Any changes to that monument need to go through the COA from the planning department. COA. Certificate of appropriateness. Thank you. And it was not. There were, in the past, there were four COAs in this park, one specifically to the monument. And that's when they have to do something to or modify or change something. In this case, it was painted. And a COA was obtained to do some painting on the monument. The general council said he was not aware of these four, and he indicated he had not contacted the planning department to see if this thing was historic. Now, he has said he doesn't believe it was covered by the historic protections of that park. But why not contact the owner of that, the planning department, to verify it. It seems almost something that anybody would do to contact the planning department to verify whether this was done or not. I just want to reset for a second for our listeners. If you have a call, we're at 5492937. You can also email First Coast Connect to wjct.org or reach out on social media. So a big concern of yours being the lack of council awareness or being apprised of this, it sounded at one point during the questioning that some city council members had been notified, others weren't. I was not notified. I got up that morning and I have no issue with that. I understand the security concerns of the mayor. I was not notified. I learned about it on TV when I got up that morning, got on the treadmill. It just appeared there were some council members that were out there very, very early in the morning who appeared to have gotten a heads up on it, which aggravated other members of the council. That could, to be fair, have been through social media or other things. Is that right? It could have been. No question that it could have been. It just seemed like they were out there very early in the morning. So a lot of people have observed that the council didn't seem to take similar interest when Mayor Lenny Currie removed twice pieces of historic statue from James Weldon Johnson Park. There was initially the Confederate soldier that was removed from the top and then later the pedestal or the pillar that it stood on. That actually did happen under cover of darkness, something that was a criticism levied at this mayor when in fact this one was removed during daylight. When Mayor Currie was in office, he also didn't get council approval. What's the difference? I'm going to explain those to you. There are three or four significant differences. Number one, the cost of that was less than $100,000, did not require the CIP. Number two, that monument is not historical. So you did not have to go through the planning department. How is that possible that that monument is not historical? It is not historical. I mean, it was through the great fire that was, you know, it is not designated historic through the planning department. I'm just telling you, it's not. Number three, city dollars were used to take that monument down. The mayor had the ability to move money around in the parks department, hired a contractor to take it down. Now, and those are the- Should council have been made aware in that case? Well, I was not happy with what happened and I expressed it to the mayor. And- Did you express it publicly? I don't recall if I did or not, but I was upset about it because I have looked at ways in the past of dealing with these monuments privately. I've not done it publicly because I don't think it's helpful to do it publicly. Why do you think this is helpful? Why do I think it- What is helpful? This current process, this very public process that you've initiated in this case. Well, because I think it's what happened is wrong. I think it's a bad opinion and the process, it appears to me and I hate to say this, but it appears to me the general council was told to come up with a process to get that monument down and he came up with something that violated several parts of the ordinance code and that should never happen. I have spoken to leadership of the Austin, Delaney, Payton, Curry administration, they are appalled about what's happened here. I feel like this is just a terrible thing and the process and the fact that we still do not have an opinion from this general council is just atrocious. I'm going to just throw a complete hypothetical, but I want you to think about it. If this statue was instead like a statue of a swastika and it was removed in using private dollars, would anyone raise an issue? Would anyone care about the process if it was something as manifestly offensive to everyone as a swastika would be? Well, as I said, I have no issue with the monument coming down. My issue was with the process and I think the process, we have an ordinance code. If we're going to follow it, let's follow it. But do you take my point? I mean, if it was something that everyone was in agreement on. Let me throw something back at you. If we had a right wing Republican mayor that went in there and took down the Charlie Bennett statue, I'd be having the same argument about process about the process. Yes. I guess what I'm wondering though is you don't think that there's enough community backing of removing the statute that it would be just without worrying about the process right in and of itself to take down. I hope not. I hope people believe in the rule of law and that things should be followed. We have two branches in this government that are co-equal and they ought to be respected. And in this case, the council was not respected through this process. Fair enough. And I know that one concern was that this was happening quickly. I do want to point out that there is this bill that is being proposed by a local lawmaker that retroactively put back statues. Dean Black has proposed a bill that would make it impossible to take down these statues. Do you not think that there would have been some justification for alacrity in this case, given the fact that the legislative session is getting underway and that bill could pass? Well, I would hope at the very least the mayor would have an opinion signed and dated by the general council before she moved. And we're two weeks later and we still do not have an opinion. We have a number of calls. No surprise. We've got Lisa calling from Tallahassee. Good morning. Welcome to First Coast Connect. Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. There's certain words I keep hearing process and authority. Power would be another word that I would throw into the hopper because I hear a lot of parsing here about the historic nature. But the biggest three big questions I have. Why has the council not pulled the trigger or made some decision after the past several years of trying to get the monument down? And why was groups like, take them down, not actually respected or given any concern or consideration when they tried to schedule meetings with the council, which were either turned down or canceled when they were already there? So that seems to be disrespectful to citizens. My second question is, when you're talking about going after the general council, I'm curious about how many people in the city council actually have any kind of legal training or if they are lawyers themselves because the way they were going after the city council, I thought was abusive and disrespectful. Lisa, just quickly, your third point. The third question is, what does he think about Home Rule and Dean Black and how much respect and authority is he showing to our local government? Very good. Thank you so much for your call. Council President. Number one, I had discussions over the last two or three years with people on both sides of this issue. I approached the Curry administration with the idea of moving both the Hemming statue and the statue in Springfield Park to Camp Milton, far over on the west side, which is a civil war encampment area and thought I was making some progress. The problem out there, that's public land. And there were concerns of moving from one piece of public land to another, even though it's far on the west side. And I thought it was a way of finessing the issue, getting them out of this very visible area, but into a place where people could visit and look at it. So to say that members of the council were not having discussions about this over the last three or four years, that's just wrong. I had probably discussions on a weekly basis on this issue. I had a long discussion with Ben Frazier before he passed. My concern with Ben's position was it was just not the monument, it was the markers, it was the bandstand and other things. And I felt like this process was never going to end. To her point, where are you getting your legal advice from? Is that from the general council's office? On this issue? Well, my point, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to understand that an opinion of the general council should be dated and signed. If you get a will from an attorney, isn't it signed and dated? Sure, but your analysis of, you know, what could have should have happened in other cases, is that coming from the general council's office? It's my own analysis and reaching out to members of the Austin, Delaney, Peyton and Curry administrations helping me understand exactly why they didn't do it. Lenny Curry wanted to do this. He wanted to take that monument down, but he knew he was advised that he couldn't by his general council. Mayor Deegan was advised by the first general council, Bob Rhodes, that she could not take this statue down. And he was basing that again on kind of a historical requirement. His staff in there worked on it, presented him a memo which he reviewed with the Deegan administration. We just are going to have just a minute here, but I'm guessing despite the pushback from the council, there's got to be a lot of members of council that are just thrilled to have this off their plate. It has been an albatross and taken up enormous amounts of council time. Have I said my issue is not with the monuments. It's with the process it was used and my legislation going forward will prevent something like this from happening again. We should not have a situation where money is not appropriate by the city council. That is our role in this government. Just very briefly, what happens now? Well, I've introduced legislation, which will prevent this from happening in the future. The general council has said that she could do this again. And I want to prevent that. And I'm looking at various options on the general council right now. I want to apologize. We haven't been able to get to a number of callers. So my apologies to you all. But thank you, Council President Salem, so much for being here. We really appreciate it. Thank you, Anne.