CLEWISTON – Hendry County Commissioners hope to resolve ongoing problems with cemetery maintenance.

“I have been the biggest proponent of getting the cemeteries into a condition that we can be proud of,” Commissioner Ramon Iglesias said at the June 10 meeting of the Board of County Commissioners.

“Our team doesn’t do a great job on it because they are not able to because of the knick-knacks and the flags and anything you can possibly think of mementos that are at a cemetery. It makes it very difficult for our staff to maintain at the level they need to,” he continued

“We finally hired somebody, and they are going through the process of cleaning up sites. They are putting items at the foot of the cemetery plot,” he said. This has upset some of the families of the people buried there.

“I did the process for 18 years myself. There is a time-stamped picture every time a cemetery lot is marked. We take a picture. The sign is put there with a phone number on it. Those sit there for an average of 60 to 90 days,” said Commissioner Mitchell Wills.

He said the notices on graves with decorations that violate cemetery policy state the family has 30 days to resolve the problem, "but we still give it 60 to 90 days.”

Cemetery staff tells the families what they can have on the graves, he explained. “We hand them a set of rules and regulations,” he continued. “Every time I went  back, everything I told them they cannot have was on the lot.

“And then the problem was, you put nice stuff there and they take it. It’s not the county taking it. We have found stuff in the Glades County cemetery that was taken from the Ridgelawn Cemetery. A lady came, she was irate, she cussed our staff. A month later she came back and said ‘I found my arrangement. It was in Ortona.’ You would think no one would do that. They do it. We had one in Fort Denaud Acres that was stealing stuff. They set game cameras out there and we caught them.

“When we started moving stuff ourselves, it was really hard. A lot of the lots are infants. Those are the hard ones. I’ve got loved ones at Fort Denaud. The infants, that’s hard. You’ve got a parent who just lost a child. They want to put a headstone in. We tell them to wait a year to put the headstone in. It will settle and the headstone will lean,” he said.

“Once they put a border around it, county staff can’t go in it at all. But here’s the problem with that. Borders are to be concrete, granite or marble, but we get all kinds of little scalloped blocks. Then you have the ones who go to Home Depot and they buy the blocks that look like granite, but they aren’t granite. I worked there for 18 years and it’s hard.

“A lot of that stuff is really nice things. When we went to court with the one from LaBelle, the family was told ‘those where abandoned goods.’ When it comes down to it, the lady got no charges, the only thing they could do was trespass her,” he said.

Commissioner Michael Atkinson asked about solar lights. “I think that is a very picky thing to not allow them to have. I ride by it every night, every morning and it was always lit up. Now it’s dark. If it’s within the border, it should be allowed.

“Those people should be able to do what they want to do to those graves if it is within the border or on the slab,” he opined.

Chairperson Emma Byrd said the county should show compassion for the people who grieving.

County Administrator Jennifer Davis said the county ordinance doesn’t allow solar lights at the cemeteries.

She said they did not have a cemetery director for a while, but the new cemetery director is doing what the ordinance states.

“If the board’s pleasure is for us to go back and look at some of those requirements, we can update this ordinance,” she said.

“My daughter was buried there in 2007,” said Jennifer Atkinson. “At least three or four times a year, I spend hundreds of dollars decorating her grave for that season. That is what I can still do for her.

“That’s how I show my love to her. I put borders around her grave so I could do what I wanted. They went out and took the lights off her grave. I was of the understanding that as long as it had coping around the grave, I am responsible for taking care of it and   I do. When they mow, they could care less. I have gone out there and I’ve cleaned, I don’t know how many headstones that you couldn’t see because the grass was so thick. It needs to be a mulching mower when they mow,” she continued.

“The lawnmowers make a lot of mess out there, just throwing grass everywhere,” she said.

Chairperson Bryd said the county commission will try to revisit the ordinance and correct the problems.

She said the borders around the graves must be done by contractors.

“Our grave is in ordinance. Everything was permitted when we had it done in 2007,” Atkinson said.

She said she had the grave enclosed and mulched, but it is full of grass because the grass is thrown all over the place when they mow.