Volusia County board votes to give $25K in taxpayer money for Mary McLeod Bethune statue
A new date has been set for the unveiling of a marble sculpture of Mary McLeod Bethune in Washington, D.C. after months of delays tied to COVID-19.
The statue, one of Florida's contributions to the U.S. Capitol building's National Statuary Hall, will be unveiled July 13.
Nancy Lohman, the head of the local committee that coordinated the sculpture's creation, revealed the new date at a special meeting of the Volusia ECHO Advisory Committee on Thursday.
"We're delighted about that because we really worked hard at trying to convince those in Washington, D.C., to allow us to have an in-person unveiling," Lohman said. "We think that when words aren't enough, you have ceremony and you can't really have a wonderful ceremony without the human connection of being there in person."
The ECHO Advisory Committee gave its unanimous blessing to spend $25,000 to chisel the county's name on the near-identical bronze sculpture that will be placed in Daytona Beach's Riverfront Park. That statue will be unveiled about a month later on Aug. 18.
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The Volusia County Council asked for the special ECHO meeting last week when it learned it couldn't use federal COVID relief money to pay the $25,000 asking price.
Lohman said they recently realized they were short about $40,000 and she asked Volusia County councilmembers Billie Wheeler and Barb Girtman separately about whether the county could donate.
Wheeler, who also serves on the statue's board of directors, brought the matter up during the Feb. 1 workshop in which the Volusia County Council sorted out how they would spend the $107.5 million Volusia County received under the American Rescue Plan Act.
The so-called "direct expenditure," which the county council will give its final approval to at its regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, will come from Volusia ECHO coffers.
ECHO, which voters overwhelming renewed in the last general election for another 20 years, uses property taxes to pay for the preservation of the county's environmental, cultural, historical and outdoors resources.
"I would just want to make sure that ECHO is actually listed as the donor, not the Volusia County Council," committee member Jeffrey Ault said.
The sole member of the public who spoke Thursday had complaints about the transparency and "rushed" nature of the process.
"Is this the process the voters were led to believe they were approving?" DeLand resident Keith Chester asked. "Does this kind of last-minute off-the-cuff use of ECHO funds not make ECHO nothing more than a slush fund for the county council?"
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Both the marble and bronze statues were created by master sculptor Nilda Comas and feature Bethune in cap and gown holding a black rose standing beside a pile of books.
Lohman said the statues are remarkably similar, sculpted from the same clay model.
"They’re both originals, though, so they’re not identical," Lohman said.
The front of the marble base below Bethune's feet in Daytona Beach will be identical to the one in the U.S. Capitol, but instead of the other sides being bare, they will contain the names of everyone who has donated $1,000 or more.
Volusia County will be one of eleven $25,000 donors, one of which is the city of Daytona Beach. Lohman estimated the total cost of the Daytona Beach statue would amount to somewhere between $195,000 and $225,000.