In an unanimous vote, Lowndes County supervisors selected Monday a piece of land adjacent to Confederate soldiers’ graves at Friendship Cemetery as the new location for the Confederate monument outside the county courthouse.
The spot is one of the two locations proposed by Columbus officials at the city-owned cemetery — where both Confederate and Union soldiers are buried — as potential relocation sites. The alternative, which is located near the Tombigbee River toward the west of the cemetery, is easier for heavy-duty trucks to navigate, city officials previously said. Mayor Robert Smith has said the city will yield the ownership of either parcel to the county to facilitate the process.
Compared to the alternative, some supervisors previously said the approved site may prove more challenging for monument movers. Despite the difficulties, they agreed the selected site is a better fit because of its proximity to the Confederate section of the cemetery.
District 1 Supervisor Harry Sanders said Monday he and his fellow supervisors visited the sites Aug. 3, and all favored the one selected.
“We looked at both sites, and I think the consensus was … the best site would be the one over where the Confederate soldiers are buried, rather than the other end of the cemetery where there’s no historical value to put it there,” he said.
The next step, said County Engineer Bob Calvert, is to submit several materials to Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) for approval, including a legal description and photos of the new site, photos of the cracks and damages on the monument and plan on how to relocate the structure.
During the meeting, supervisors agreed the plan should be to relocate the entire monument, although some expressed concerns that such a plan may be expensive.
District 3 Supervisor John Holliman, who is also presiding over board meetings as the acting president, told The Dispatch he would favor relocating parts instead of all of the monument.
“Moving all of it is going to be really expensive. I suggested one time before about leaving the bottom part and just taking the soldier, the top part, and moving it,” he said. “Right now, taxpayers, they tell me they don’t want to pay for it.”
Sanders shared the same concern and raised the question if the board could reverse its June 15 vote to relocate the monument.
“If the cost to move this thing is so high … is there any chance we can leave it where it is?” Sanders asked Calvert during the meeting. “That could be an option down the road as we look at all the data.”
Former Columbus Packet owner Roger Larsen, who spoke at the Monday meeting, told the board he can raise enough private funds for the relocation of parts of the monument. Although the language of the state law prohibits the alteration of a war monument, he said there may be “leeway” for the county. The county could also wait for the local delegation to the state Legislature to push for bills that would allow the move, he said.
“The law … it sounds strict initially, but it gives you all kinds of outs,” he said. “The last thing the Archives and History (Department) is doing right now is trying to impede a good-faith effort to solve the situation.”
Board Attorney Tim Hudson said the county could have submitted a plan to MDAH to relocate parts of the monument for approval. If approved, that could have left the county with some flexibility to decide how much of the monument it wants to move.
“If you submitted a plan to approve part of it, that doesn’t mean you have to do that. But if they OK that, you save money and move it. And if the board decided, ‘No, we want to move it all,’ well, hell, if they’ll approve moving parts, you know they’ll approve moving all,” Hudson told The Dispatch.
But District 5 Supervisor Leroy Brooks said moving only parts of the monument goes against people’s will.
“There needs to be some discussion with the people that made the request,” he said. “In their mind, they said ‘monument,’ and the rational thinking would be the entire thing.”
Employee COVID policies
In other business, supervisors passed a set of COVID-19 policies across county departments, which was drafted by incoming County Administrator Jay Fisher.
Instead of screening employees daily, the county requires employees to self-report to their supervisors if they develop symptoms or have been exposed to positive COVID-19 patients, Fisher said. They must then receive a test, self-quarantine for at least 14 days and remain symptom-free for at least 72 hours before coming back to work.
While under self-quarantine, employees will be paid up to 80 hours of sick leave, Fisher said, but since there is no designated testing location for them, the wait period for the results may vary.
Sanders asked Fisher if the county can recommend employees to take the tests in clinics in West Point, which he said can yield results in 20 minutes.
“If somebody … is paid four days or five days waiting on the results, and all of a sudden it comes back … negative,” he said, “we pay somebody four days or five days sitting at home when there’s no reason to do that.”
Fisher said the safest option is to take the standard tests, which he said lowers the risk of false negative results.
“The ‘instant’ tests … I think, have less accuracy than the tests that are processed by laboratory, which is taking multiple days,” he said. “If you exhibit symptoms, it might be in your best interest to take the longer test, because you are going to be out regardless.”
The Dispatch will file a public records request today with the sheriff’s office for its COVID-19-related policies regarding employees and jail inmates.
Sanders clashes with Smith, Brooks over abstention from agenda items
Two months after Sanders made remarks that Black Americans remained “dependent” since slavery ended, two Black supervisors — Jeff Smith of District 4 and Brooks — continue to abstain from most county businesses discussed during board meetings.
On Monday, they abstained from items such as the county’s claim docket, water utility permits and designating new private roads in District 1.
Sanders questioned their abstentions — a method Smith and Brooks said shows their refusal to move on from Sanders’ comments.
“We’ve got (supervisors of) District 4 and District 5 abstaining every single issue that’s brought up,” he said. “Then all of a sudden, when something comes up … spending the county’s money in District 4 on the roads, all of a sudden, you got the supervisor down there voting for it.”
Brooks refuted Sanders’ claim, arguing that Sanders was the reason they abstained.
“If we choose not to vote, that’s our prerogative. It’s not your job to question what we do,” Brooks said. “We abstain because every time we look at you, we get sick to the stomach. So don’t you question when we vote and why we vote, you just handle your business.”
During the meeting, Lowndes County NAACP President Lavonne Latham Harris also called for Sanders to resign. Protesters, local business and church leaders as well as the majority of the supervisors have called for him to entirely resign from the board.
Yue Stella Yu was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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