Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Any more excuses to delay MLK project?

By TIMES EDITORIAL
Published April 29, 2007

At a time when Largo has gained a national reputation as a backward and discriminatory local government, the city seems to be trying to cement that reputation. It wasn't enough that the city made national news for firing City Manager Steve Stanton shortly after he announced he plans a sex change.

Now the city has found a way to further delay and water down a plan for a memorial to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Unbelievably, the city has been working for more than four years on a way to honor the civil rights leader. And just last week, city commissioners sent the effort back to square one - again.

Could it be more clear that the city lacks the will to get it done?

Officials in Largo, where the percentage of the population that is black is in the single digits, began talking about how to memorialize King in 2002. A festival? A memorial? Rename a street? Unable to decide, they formed a citizens committee in 2003 to come up with ideas.

That committee envisioned a small plaza on the edge of Largo Central Park that would have a drinking fountain, a granite lectern, tiles inscribed with quotes from King speeches, and a reflecting pool with a footbridge. The cost was estimated at $20, 000 in 2003.

But the plan languished. Nothing was built.

Early this year, City Commissioner Rodney Woods, Largo's first black commissioner and a former member of the memorial committee, revived the idea and urged the city to move ahead. The city manager proposed a budget of more than $200, 000 for the project - a figure that raised some commissioners' eyebrows.

Last week, commissioners scaled down the proposal considerably, eliminating the water feature and reducing the project estimate to about $84, 000, which is not surprising given the likelihood that city governments face lower tax revenues or even spending caps from the state.

However, it was a suggestion by Commissioner Gigi Arntzen that really threw a wrench into the plans. Arntzen proposed that the plans be changed so the memorial would honor other "great Americans."

Arntzen's specious reason: "...My concern is if we build a plaza for one person, we are going to have people come forward and say, 'I want you to build a memorial for someone else.' "

No such concern kept the city from naming its government complex for former mayor Thom Feaster. Did that result in hordes of people coming to the commission to demand that a building be named for them? No such concern kept the city from putting the names of notable citizens James S. Miles and Richard A. Leandri on the city's Military Court of Honor at Central Park.

Now the city Recreation, Parks and Arts Department not only has to consider a redesign, it also has to figure out who else should be honored, whether to allow the public to make suggestions, how to choose the "winners, " and whether inscribed recognition pavers should be sold to raise money. That was a suggestion of Commissioner Mary Gray Black's, but when asked if someone should be able to have a paver inscribed with the name of former manager Stanton, for example, Black said the commission should have the final say on honorees.

This kind of delaying behavior is an insult to those Largo residents, both black and white, who believe a memorial dedicated to this country's most revered civil rights defender is appropriate and long overdue.

Largo, just do it.

[Last modified April 29, 2007, 07:37:10]