The Holbrook City Council convened on March 11, during which former city council member Mark Jackson and resident Elizabeth McPherson each addressed the council during Call to the Public to voice their concerns regarding the city’s use of heavy equipment driving over grave sites within the Holbrook Cemetery. This was observed by both Jackson and McPherson, whose father Tim McPherson was recently buried in one of the burial plots.
Jackson started by stating. “I’ve seen it for myself that the backhoe is running directly halfway over the plots almost on a daily basis.” He also noted that a semi-truck has also backed into the cemetery to load in dirt, which also drives directly over those resting places. “Everybody knows that when you go to a cemetery the one thing you do is you try not to walk on people’s plots out of respect for the person who’s buried there. In my opinion it’s just disrespectful to run them over.”
Jackson advised that the cemetery fence should be moved further back to allow room for vehicles to enter and exit the area appropriately.
“It’s to the point where his (McPherson’s) wife wants to have him exhumed and cremated because of what’s happening with this,” Jackson stated. “It makes me not want to be buried in the City of Holbrook’s cemetery.”
Following Jackson’s remarks, Elizabeth McPherson voiced her concerns for what is happening at the cemetery, as well as her interactions with City Manager Ted Soltis on the matter. Through tears, McPherson explained to the council that although she is not naïve to the potential of occasional traffic over plots, this is a prevalent issue that can be fixed. “I understand that it happens and that it’s unavoidable in some situations, but it is not unavoidable in this situation.”
Prior to the council meeting, McPherson contacted The Tribune and stated that she had called the city manager on two occasions with her concerns and was told it would be addressed in the first call, but the vehicles continued to travel over the burial sites. She also noted that she had spoken with cemetery staff several times and knew they were just doing the job they were told to do to the best of their ability.
After multiple attempts to contact Soltis a second time, he called her back and in the course of conversation accused her of threatening him before hanging up the phone on her.
McPherson addressed Soltis directly during the council meeting, although he continued to look down as he appeared to be taking notes. “You’re not going to be able to scream at me and hang up on me and tell me that the conversation is over after I had an assurance from you that you would take care of the issues and that I could reach out to you if the issues weren’t taken care of. And I did not threaten you, what I said was that I’m not the only person in this town who has somebody buried in this cemetery that they care about.”
McPherson explained that after the call with Soltis, she decided to come to the council for a resolution. “There’s absolutely no reason the fence can’t be moved back 20 feet,” she said, adding that she had no issue raising the money or finding the manpower to do it herself. “The plots that are there at the very end that are new are being used as a roadway because the fence is too close.”
Soltis gave his response to the matter later in the meeting stating to the council, “I spent about 30 minutes with Elizabeth at the cemetery and I assured her that we’ll do a better job of being more careful at that site.” He then indicated that cemetery staff and a funeral home vehicle were the problem. “I hear two different things, one is the equipment can be more careful and there’s plenty of room, and the other one is no, the equipment does not have enough room and so they end up riding over gravesites.”
He added that he told McPherson the city has plans to remove the fence and create a road. He then told McPherson, “I apologize if I had screamed and sorry that it wasn’t a very good conversation,” to which she responded that he had left out information for the council regarding their interactions. There was no response or direction from the council regarding the matter following Soltis’ comments.
