Mr. Mayor and Honorable Members of City Council:
I am writing to oppose adoption of an ordinance authorizing the transfer of $250,000 from a contingency line item in the FY 2020 Adopted Budget to the Department of Engineering to fund removal of the monument located in Town Square. My reasons are as follows:
1) According to the draft minutes and the corresponding official video recording of the June 10, 2020, virtual special meeting of the Portsmouth City Council, by consensus the council members attending approved a public hearing on whether or not to remove the aforementioned monument. As the meeting in question was styled as a work session, and the public received less than eight hours notice of the meeting with only the barest outline of its purpose, you effectively precluded any meaningful opportunity for citizen input to the proceedings. I consider the council action inappropriate, therefore, and request that the issue be revisited in a regular meeting wherein the public can make our preference known.
2) The draft minutes and video recording previously mentioned show that the council by consensus also called on the city manager “to come back with an ordinance to appropriate $200,000 to relocate the confederate [sic] monument which would include surveying and information on soil integrity at the possible relocation sites.” As the public hearing commissioned in item #1 above is not scheduled until July 28, I can only speculate as to why council is moving forward as though the hearing outcome is a foregone conclusion. Although I have on more than one prior occasion expressed my support for removal of the monument and assure you that my perspective remains unaltered, I object, nonetheless, to elected officials treating public input to policy decisions as little more than annoying formalities. The timing of the appropriation in question suggests disrespect for both the process and public opinion.
3) Despite the council agreement to a $200,000 appropriation during the June 10 special meeting, the ordinance drafted for your June 23 virtual meeting states the allocation as $250,000. That is an alarming two-week inflation rate, particularly when the economy as whole is undergoing a major contraction. The supporting documentation for the ordinance offers no explanation for the discrepancy between what all members of council tacitly approved previously and the draft at hand. I believe some justification for the new figure would be appropriate. Additionally, the background material accompanying the proposed ordinance should recapitulate the “back of the napkin” calculations that took you to the $200,000 figure in the first place. In 2015 the estimate for relocation itself was in the neighborhood of $112,000, but that estimate may also have come from the back of another napkin. Whatever the case, like good math teachers, other citizens and I want to see the work that yielded the final figure.
4) Relative to the core issue of removal, the process out of which a “go/no-go” decision evolves needs to be as inclusive and equitable as possible. My sympathies lie with those who view the monument as a symbol of oppression, but some defenders of its presence in the historic heart of Portsmouth see it as a memorial to fallen heroes. Other perspectives value it as a work of art or devalue it as a form of propaganda. Like beauty, each eye that beholds it esteems it to a greater or lesser extent. As one schooled in history, I recognize that no single explanation of what the monument symbolizes is right or wrong. In defining who we are as a community, though, we need to ask if this particular monument, occupying as it does a place of prominence in our city, is the epitome of “the Portsmouth story”. I believe we should have that discussion citywide, then put the matter to a vote of the citizenry and move on accordingly. Save the appropriation for after the community makes its decision through democratic process.
Please let me know if you need additional information.
Yours truly,
Mark Geduldig-Yatrofsky
The bigger issue here beyond the, once again, cart before the horse routine of this City Council, is the fact that the Circuit Court in 2017 ruled that the City does not have any right to do anything with the monument as they neither own the property or the memorial itself. But on the other hand, they and unfortunately we may be liable for millions of dollars in damages and destruction that occurred due to our police department standing down, even while the Sheriff twice offered his assistance. Numerous class 5 Felonies were committed while the Portsmouth Police stood around and did nothing and were ordered to do nothing. While the Mayor thinks that he saved 80 square blocks of glass storefronts and retail property, his assertion must be taken as nothing but a cowardly capitulation of a extortion and threat from the NAACP, who he got down on his knees to four years to and met their demands to move the monument or else they would call out the dogs and tear the city apart.
Portsmouth will either have a government and a police force that is the law and stands for the law, uses the law and defends the law or we have a government whose leadership should have their ears nailed to the pillory post for their cowardice and cavorting with intimidation by racist thugs spewing slander, libel, defamation, and intemidation. Appeasement to racketeering, thuggery, gangs or anything threatening the government must be put down with he harshest means and quickly. To do otherwise is to invite anarchy and history is replete with the mistakes of soft backbones fools who thought they could allow tyranny slip its filthy nose under the tent and that they could restrain it. Our fathers fought a second world war as a result of such fallacious foolishness.
But when it comes to spending the people’s capital the City has a state legal responsibility to remove any and all graffiti as it is deemed a public blight. Routinely the city uses its local ordinance, which is not in compliance with the State law, to intimidate and coerces citizens to clean up graffiti, put on their own property, when in fact, it is a City responsibility under State Code. In this matter, destruction and defacement of a monument or property is a Class 5 felony, based on its value, and the City did nothing to stop such action being done by a riotous mob which was a Class 1 misdemeanor and lead by individuals, (some with firearms and other weapons) which were a class 5 Felony. The entire leadership of the Government is culpable for this travesty and must be held accountable civilly and criminally and individuals need to be terminated, starting with the Police Chief!