DALLAS (WBAP/KLIF) – Dallas City Councilman Philip Kingston joined the Morning News to defend taking down the Robert E. Lee statue with Hal and Brian.
Kingston was one of thirteen council members to vote that the statue needed to be removed from Lee Park in Oak Lawn. He said he believes that the council heard from everyone who wanted to speak on both sides of the issue, after receiving criticism that residents weren’t given enough time to express their voice on the issue.
“Over the course of the last few months we kind of heard from everybody,” said Kingston. “The Mayor heard from everybody who wanted to speak. It was a pretty long affair.”
The councilman said that after the monument is removed, the Dallas Independent School District will discuss changing school names. He said changing street names will be a difficult task.
“We need to look at why they were being commemorated at the time and what the name means now,” Kingston said.
The Dallas City Manager said that the statue removal will cost the city $450,000. Kingston said the money will come from the Equipment and Building Services Fund and that an assembled task force will ask for private funding.
When asked about the people in Dallas who are opposed to the statues removal, Kingston said he believes that the majority of people that council heard from were in favor of taking it down. He said that if the issue were put to a public vote he thinks the majority of voters would vote to have the statue taken down.
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