Upkeep at the Davidson Cemetery was non-existent this year until town workers and a private company got onto the grounds last Monday to try and bring it up to reasonable standards of expectation and that is not sitting well with one town leader.

“It was in terrible shape,” said Davidson councillor Gerald Kenny. “It was (in) really bad shape. It was probably the worst cemetery for miles around. Lots of it was underwater, (so) they couldn’t maybe do something with it. They’ve hired somebody to go in there, but no it was in bad shape before Monday.”

The Davidson Cemetery looked abandoned until July 7 with uncut grass towering close to the top of most headstones, numerous weeds growing throughout the grounds and the roads in the cemetery appearing to be almost impassible. In addition, some graves that were not filled in with a slight mound had sunk resulting in a possible tripping hazard for people walking in the cemetery as well as holes appearing over the graves where water could lay.

According to a July 8 Facebook post by the Town of Davidson, town workers have been busy with other things this spring including garbage pickup issues and problems with the lagoon pivot. The Town states the garbage trucks have been fixed and are ready to go to pick up any garbage and the pivot is fixed and it shouldn’t be too long before issues are worked out at the lagoon.

Kenny said town leaders have talked about moving to private maintenance options for the cemetery instead of the current practice of having Davidson employees look after the upkeep, but he is unsure if there is an organization around that would be available to do the work. He said one option could be hiring somebody for the summer to look after cemetery maintenance, which would allow town employees to focus on other pressing issues.

He said the weather drying up and the “pressure” put on the town to do something at the cemetery finally forced them to hire Summit Excavating to haul gravel in and gravel the roads along with fill in the sunken graves. Kenny added the town employees who began work there last Monday cutting grass and trimming around monuments have helped better the condition of the grounds, but more work needs to be done to improve the reputation of the Davidson Cemetery.

“The weeds in the past haven’t been controlled good enough,” he said. “We’ve got to do a better job of that if we’re going to do (maintenance). We just have to. As far as I am concerned as a councillor there is no ifs, ands or buts about it. We just got to do it (and) have a little more respect for our deceased people. Most of them are the ones that probably developed this community at one time whether it was farming or working in town as a business person.”

Gary Edom, administrator for the Town of Davidson, said maintenance work did not begin at the cemetery until last Monday because the ground was too wet. He said they are “not proud” of how the cemetery looked this year, but could not do anything about it with water laying in “a good part” of the cemetery grounds.

To read more please see the July 14 print edition of The Davidson Leader.