Plans are underway to build a memorial to honor Fayette County’s first-elected black commissioner who died last year after only six months in office.
The privately-financed granite monument and garden will be erected in Kenwood Park for the late Fayette Commissioner Pota Coston. Coston was elected in November 2014 to serve as commissioner of District 5, a mostly-minority district in the northern part of the county set up under a federally-ordered change to Fayette's electoral system. The 57-year-old former government executive died July 3, 2015 from breast cancer.
The Coston Memorial Garden will include a natural gray monument with four granite cornerstones, gray granite and tile pavers, benches, plants, a drip-irrigation system and a three-year maintenance plan. County commissioners approved last week to accept a $37,000 donation from a group of private citizens. The money will be used to build the monument.
“We approved the memorial in the park but it will be funded by a group of private citizens,” Fayette Commission Vice Chairman Randy Ognio said Tuesday. “She did a great job. She was very good to work with. It’s sad we didn’t have more time to work together because we didn’t get a chance to learn all that she wanted us to know. I look forward to seeing what (the monument ) looks like.”
Coston's election grew out of a fractious, three-year legal fight between the county and a group of black citizens and the NAACP over Fayette's voting system. The NAACP said the county's at-large voting system, which had been in place nearly 200 years, prevented black residents from being elected to countywide offices such as the board of commissioners and the school board. The fight symbolized a major political and social change in the normally staid county.
In September 2015, District 5 voters elected Charles Rousseau, another black candidate, to fill Coston's seat.
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