by James A. Bacon
A bid-protest letter from the Ratcliffe Foundation and the Trevilian Station Battlefield Foundation to Charlottesville City Council represents more than a bid to block the melting down of Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee statue. It delivers a devastating indictment of a dysfunctional city government.
The city removed the statue in July. In September, the City of Charlottesville issued a formal solicitation for offers to relocate and recontexualize it. The city received six proposals, with groups offering to pay as much as $50,000 to acquire the statue. On Dec. 7, City Council voted to convey the statue to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, which planned to melt down the bronze sculpture and forge a new piece of public art. In the words of the Heritage Center director, the Swords into Plowshares project would “allow Charlottesville to contend with its racist past.”
The Ratcliffe/Trevilian letter seeks to thwart the transfer on two grounds: first, that the City lacks the legal authority to alter or destroy a monument, and, second, that the City violated its own procurement and public-notification regulations.
The Ratcliffe Foundation operates the Ellenbrook Museum in Russell County in the historic home of William Alexander Stuart, founder of the Stuart Land & Cattle Company. The Trevilian Station Battlefield Foundation is dedicated to preserving the Louisa County site of the Civil War’s largest cavalry battle.
The award was illegal. In amending the monument-protection law in 2020, the letter argues, the General Assembly refused the city authority to alter or destroy a monument. The legislation did allow localities to remove, relocate, contextualize or cover monuments but not to destroy them. Indeed the House of Delegates had proposed allowing localities to destroy the monuments, but the Senate balked — not once, but twice.
Further, contends the letter, “the City cannot do indirectly what it lacks authority to do directly” — in other words, Charlottesville cannot convey the statue to a third party that intends to destroy the statue.
Violation of laws and ordinances. The award process, says the letter, contravened Virginia’s Open Government Law, the Public Procurement Act, and Charlottesville’s own ordinances.
City Council gave no notice to the public of its pre-drafted resolution to accept the Heritage Center offer. An agenda item published Friday, Dec., 3, for a meeting the following Monday referred only to “the disposition of statues.” States the letter: “The general public never saw or heard of the resolution before the vote, let alone having online access to it simultaneously with the Councilors as the law requires. The vote on the resolution is null and void.”
Initially, the four attending members of City Council had agreed to postpone the item. But public comments at the end of the five-hour meeting persuaded council members to reverse themselves and to accept the melt-down offer.
“Council’s willingness to bend to the will of insider activists after the late night public comment underscores the competitive disadvantage of outsiders deprived of advance notice” says the letter.” They had no opportunity to speak for their offers, or marshal support. The Trevilian Battlefield could have brought their apparently ignored or forgotten offer to the city’s attention.”
Additionally, contends the letter, the City acted unlawfully without a city manager or interim city manager, and with no designated manager for the solicitation. “Without executive leadership authorized to act, the City Council should have postponed or canceled the orphaned solicitation. Instead, it fumbled along by inertia.”
Charlottesville has struggled with frequent turnover in the city manager position over the past two years. In the leadership vacuum following the departure of the most recent city manager, administration of the statue solicitations apparently fell to a deputy city manager for racial equity, diversity and inclusion, states the lawsuit. The position was new, the deputy city manager had been with the City less than nine months and, whatever qualifications she had, “they do not include procurement training or expertise.” Further, City Council neither delegated her management authority nor disclosed her role, whatever it was, to the bidders.
Council’s discussion of the Lee statue hand-over was “perfunctory,” the letter says. “The very fact of a pre-drafted resolution is damning. The fix was in for the Center’s illegal proposal.”
The city’s response. The city outlined its legal response in response to the Ratcliffe/Trevilian letter.
Regarding the procurement act requirements, wrote City Attorney Lisa Robertson, the act applies only when the City seeks to obtain goods and services — not when it gives something away. Furthermore, the Virginia code gives local governing bodies “sole authority” to determine statues’ “final disposition.” The word disposition includes the “parting with, alienation of, or giving up of property.”
The City Council virtual session can be viewed here. Council’s discussion of the statues begins around the five-hour, 28-minute mark.
Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly described the Ratcliff-Trevalian communication to the City of Charlottesville as a lawsuit. It was, in fact, a letter of protest.
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