City Commissioner Michael Dunn is pushing an idea he heard on the campaign trail last year: that people be allowed to carry alcoholic drinks from bar to bar downtown. Bay News 9 talked to a bar owner who was excited by the idea, but the director of the Lakeland Downtown Development Authority questions the idea because of unintended consequences it would bring. Before Dunn was elected, his wife sparked the move that led to Sunday morning alcohol sales in Lakeland when she told the City Commission that people should be able to order mimosas at brunch before noon.

Nearly 108 years after a Confederate monument was placed in the center of Munn Park, Lakeland city commissioners voted unanimously today to move it to Veterans Park, where it will stand alongside other memorials to war veterans.

✓ Read previous LkldNow coverage of the monument issue

With the Lakeland City Commission scheduled to vote Monday on a new location for the Confederate monument that’s currently in Munn Park, The Ledger devoted its entire front page and two more full pages to an exploration of Lakeland’s past. Reporter Kimberly C. Moore’s package includes a video previewing Monday’s choices, historic photos of the monument, and :

• A look at some of the early residents of Lakeland, who included both Confederate veterans who became prominent citizens and former slaves. The article ends quoting a woman whose family had to move from the African-American community of Moorehead when it was leveled to build what is now the RP Funding Center. She opposes moving the monument to Veterans Park, which was one part of Moorehead. “We didn’t give our land up for that,” she said.
• A review of 21 lynchings in Polk County in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Five of them took place during 1906 to 1909, years when plans were being made to build the rebel monument in Munn Park, and one occurred soon after the memorial was dedicated in 1910.
• An interview about Lakeland’s past with Ernest Combee, an 86-year-old great-grandson of a Confederate soldier who settled on the shore of Lake Parker and whose family has remained here for generations | Video of the interview