re: Mitch Landrieu responds to blog about the monuments Now w/ PICS

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it was decided to build structures around them to protect them until their final resting place could be determined

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The blog went viral; and Monday night, the Mayor’s office reached out to me at home to talk about what I wrote. Tyronne Walker, Mayor Landrieu’s Communications Director, expressed concern over what I had written, but also that the criticism came from me, a talk show host who had often defended the Mayor amid controversy.

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it was decided to build structures around them to protect them

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The Mayor had plans to place all of the monuments in a warehouse, as he announced, but the warehouse that was expected to house the P.G.T. Beauregard statue did not have the equipment to safely protect it

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it was decided to build structures around them to protect them until their final resting place could be determined.

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Landrieu has said that private funding would be used for the removal, but when the city had to step up security, the costs of removal escalated.

"We're absolutely going to be doing a full accounting of all the costs, both public and private, in the next several days," Berni said Monday (May 22). "Once the process is finally complete, it takes time to get invoices and fully reconcile. But we fully intend to have a full public accounting of the dollars and where they went."

Berni also said that originally, city officials thought they would have "very minimal" cost to taxpayers in removing the monuments. But waves of threats began emerging on social media and in phone calls to people involved with the removals after the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals cleared the way for the city to proceed with its plans.

"Some of our homeland security costs did raise because this process went from a standard capital project to a large-scale homeland security event," Berni said. That included posting snipers above monument removal sites and large-scale deployment of New Orleans Police Department officers.

The first three removals cost an estimated $60,000 in overtime for police alone, Berni said. Fire department officials were also deployed in response to the monument removals because that's a standard protocol when homeland security resources are needed, Landrieu has said.

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