This is a bit of local(Huntsville, AL) folklore that’s about to make way for more dead people. A place to bury the dead apparently means more money for the city.
An e-mail last week from Huntsville cemetery Director Brenda Webb – who was out of the office Wednesday for medical reasons and could not be reached – to the City Council and other officials addressed a proposition to turn the park into an area for burial spaces and crypts.
“It is hardly ever used for much except vandals, drug deals, lovers and employees hiding out from their employers,” Webb wrote. “It is thought too dangerous for most children to play in.”
Some folks are calling shennanigans.
“For the past 10 or 11 years, we’ve gone to the park regularly on weekends with our dog, and we’ve seen families playing on the playground,” Lattanzi said. “And there was a great baseball field with a backstop.
“Saturday morning, it was all still there. When we went back on Sunday, it was all gone.”
Lattanzi doesn’t approve of voting on the proposal the week of fall break, when he said many of the families who might like to protest the park’s closure are out of town.
“They say illegal activities are going on, but I’ve never felt anything but safe at that park,” he said. “And anything illegal that was going on probably had nothing to do with playground equipment.
“I don’t see how expanding a cemetery is going to fix that.”
Parks and Recreation Director Greg Patterson said he doesn’t love the idea of losing park space, but he said it is an under-utilized area that has security problems.
I’m oddly sad to see it go.
(via huntsville LJ and al.com)
(photo credit to beepboop’s livejournal and flickr)
Update: Looks like the ghosts will live.
“It was poorly handled,” Mayor Loretta Spencer said Tuesday after meeting with department heads involved in the equipment removal decisions.
Spencer said she will yank the cemetery expansion ordinance from the City Council agenda and restore the park. “I am pulling this from the agenda and I have ordered new playground equipment,” she said. Spencer said the equipment will be paid from a $50,000 line item in the budget for recreational equipment. It should be installed within a month, she said.
“That’s wonderful. That’s what we needed in there all along. I think it will be a real benefit for the neighborhood,” reacted Blossomwood resident Nancy Grayson Van Valkenburg, who joined other residents last week in begging the council to protect the park.
City workers on Tuesday began repainting a pavilion and reinstalling picnic tables and benches. Spencer said she has instructed her city landscaping director to remove overgrowth to enhance the park’s safety.
The park resurrection comes on the heels of public outcry at last week’s City Council meeting over the dismantling of the park with no advance notice. Council President Glenn Watson apologized to residents for the way it was handled.
