GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – After heated debate last night, Green Bay’s city council decided to take another look at what to do with the city’s deteriorating, and factually inaccurate, 9/11 memorial.
The process of taking down the falling apart memorial started last week on the 16th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.
However, upon Barb Jack’s urging, the council will wait before doing anything else with the memorial.
“I mean you guys have to realize there is a remnant of a victim in there,” said Jack, who helped raise $250,000 to put up the monument in 2005.
Jack says the memorial’s base not only includes victim remains, but also artifacts blessed by the Pope, and a piece of Pentagon stone. However, both Jack and the city say there are no documents to back up those claims.
Mayor Jim Schmitt doesn’t remember anything that Jack described being part of the memorial.
“Zero recollection. Really, body parts, things from the Pope, I mean that would have caught my attention.”
Jack says she didn’t hear about the council’s vote to take down the memorial until she saw last week’s ceremony.
That is when a steel beam from the World Trade Center was taken off the memorial and transported for temporary display and safe keeping in the police station’s lobby.
Jack says the beam was given to the city specifically for the downtown monument.
“It is to be 24/7 that anybody can see it, touch it and look at it. It had to be in a place that is handicap accessible. It had to be like an outside memorial.”
Members of a subcommittee that looked into what to do with the memorial question Jack’s claims.
Alderman Randy Scannell….“I think a lot of information that is currently floating around is a lot of misinformation and information that is very old.”
Jack says she reached out to Schmitt several years ago to fix the memorial, but was turned away.
“I did raise the money to give to Mr. Schmitt and it was not accepted, neither was the plans because Mr. Schmitt had said at that time that he didn’t want anything to do with the people that originally built it.” “We never received a formal offer or proof of money to repair that memorial in full,” said Schmitt. “That was an inadequate memorial that the city shouldn’t have accepted it as is and they should have been responsible for it and they weren’t.”
Until the council decides what to do with the memorial, the steel beam will remain on display at the police station and the towers outside the Neville Public Museum will remain standing.
No estimated dollar amount to repair the existing memorial has been released.
