Three members of the Mathews County Board of Supervisors resisted supervisor Mike Walls’s efforts to set a date for a public hearing on deeding a piece of the Court Green to two private organizations during Tuesday night’s board meeting.

Walls’s motion failed 2-3 after extensive discussion, sometimes heated.

In April, Walls expressed a desire to eventually deed county property under the Confederate monument on the Mathews Court Green to two organizations—the local chapters of the Sons of the Confederacy and the United Daughters of the Confederacy—and a survey of the public square was ordered.

Before making his motion Tuesday night, Walls told fellow board members that supervisors had delayed action on the monument in order to get through the budget process, but that action was needed. He disputed a remark made by Mathews resident Hunt Thompson during public comment period to the effect that the monument does not belong to the two organizations. Thompson had said the Mathews M...