Monument may be doomed

DUCHESNE — Duchesne city officials gave it a pretty good shot, but their efforts may not stand up in court against precedents in other states.

Duchesne has a Ten Commandments monument in Roy Park, and the Society of Separatists wants it off city property. The society filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court Sept. 16, naming the city, Mayor Clint Park and all six City Council members as defendants.

The city tried to stay one step ahead of the movement to order religious monuments off government property by deeding the 10-by-11-foot piece of ground around the monument to the Duchesne Lions Club just one month before the suit was filed.

Newly hired city attorney Cindy Barton-Coombs recommended the move, but according to Brian Barnard, attorney for the Maryland-based nonprofit Society of Separatists, that strategy has been attempted before in other cities and failed.

"The court says you can't make a pretense that a 10-by-11 plot smack dab in the middle of the city park is no longer part of the city park," Barnard said. "The point is, why was this particular plot of land given to the Lions Club? It was given to the Lions Club as a subterfuge to maintain the monument."

Barnard also said the city cannot "willy-nilly" give a piece of government property away without having its motives questioned.

Barton-Coombs declined comment, but Park said that for the time being the city has no plans to move the monument. They will discuss the issue in more detail at their City Council meeting tonight.

"We are going to try and leave it where it is for now. Our attorney will go in and file for an immediate dismissal," he said.

In an interesting twist, it turns out the Ten Commandments monument in Duchesne is not one of the nine donated to cities in Utah by the Fraternal Order of Eagles in the early 1970s.

However, Barnard's lawsuit mistakenly identifies it as such. The ninth monument had just been located in Brigham City when a member of the Society of Separatists ran across the monument in Duchesne. The monument is framed by three trees in the park's northwest corner at 250 S. Center St. — the road that leads to the county fairgrounds.

Park said he was surprised the monument wasn't spotted earlier, given its location. "I thought someone had found it a long time ago. We had the county fair last month, and it's right there where everyone can see it."