Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn has written a $1,000 check towards the effort to relocate a Confederate soldier's monument from the county courthouse grounds.
During Wednesday's Hillsborough County Commission meeting, commissioners voted 4-2 to set a 30-day deadline to raise $140,000 in private dollars to pay half the cost of relocating the monument to a private cemetery in Brandon.
If the money isn't raised by September 16th, commissioners say the monument will remain where it is now.
In a statement, Buckhorn says it's not the city's obligation to move the statue, but "my moral obligation".
"This monument represents a dark time in America; it's time for County Commission to stop playing politics with people's very real emotions and remove this monument immediately," he added.