About this Website
On April 28, 2006, my vibrant, brilliant 13-year-old niece, Shoshana, died suddenly of myocarditis. She was laid to rest in Austin Memorial Park (AMP). Soon afterwards, when visiting her daughter's grave my sister-in-law, Tina Huckabee, discovered tire tracks from maintenance equipment cutting through the grave. She found this emotionally distressing and demeaning to the memory of her daughter. Huckabee is an avid gardener who specializes in native and adapted plants. Noticing that other graves were covered by memorial gardens, often outlined in stone or brick, she twice contacted the office at AMP to request permission to plant a memorial garden on her daughter’s grave. When she received no response, she and my brother outlined their daughter’s grave in cut limestone and planted a number of native or adapted plants, which have continued to thrive and bloom. December 13, 2012, my father passed and was buried next to his granddaughter. We requested that AMP personnel not place sod on his grave and instead we outlined his grave with with stone and planted a memorial garden there.
In September of 2013, Huckabee heard a rumor that the Austin Parks and Recreation Department (PARD) planned to force families with loved ones at AMP to remove gravesite gardens, plantings, and other decorations, many of which had been in place for years. Huckabee contacted PARD and was told that beginning October 1, 2013, PARD would be identifying graves that were not in compliance with cemetery rules and regulations and requiring families to bring these graves into compliance. The cemetery rules referenced by PARD were enacted May 4, 1978; however, PARD had never publicized such rules and regulations. Our family has purchased a total of six plots at AMP and we never received a single pamphlet, brochure, or any other document containing the rules. Nor were these rules and regulations included in the City of Austin Code of Ordinances. For over three decades, PARD had permitted Austin citizens to create gravesite memorials and gardens as part of their mourning process. Many of these memorials had been in place for years, even decades, and cannot be removed without causing extensive damage to gravesites. Cruelly forcing the removal or destruction of these personal tributes would cause tremendous and unnecessary grief.
On October 17, 2013, I and other members of the public appeared before the Austin City Council to protest the sudden declaration by PARD that it would be enforcing the long-neglected cemetery rules. In response, the City Council enacted a resolution requiring the City Manager, in collaboration with stakeholders and a working group of the Parks and Recreation Board, to evaluate whether current cemetery policies related to grave ornamentation were appropriately sensitive to personal and cultural expressions of grieving, while preserving necessary safety for cemetery workers and respect for the values of all families. This process was to be completed over six months.
This website documents the subsequent NINE years of bureaucratic foot-dragging, equivocations, and broken promises by PARD in violation of the October 17, 2013, resolution. PARD has failed to work with the stakeholders and has done everything it can to limit public participation and input. PARD's attitude appears to be that the cemeteries are its own private fiefdom and it should be free to impose any rules it wants, no matter how capricious, unfair, arbitrary, or cruel. For NINE years I have tried to work with PARD in good faith, only to be betrayed again and again. I am now making all the information and documentation I have gathered over the past nine years available to the people of Austin so that they can judge just how well PARD really cares for their friends and families lying in Austin's public cemeteries.
The following pages provide more details and documentation on the various issues regarding PARD and the Austin cemeteries (please check back for updates and new information, indicated in red):
Timeline of the past nine years, Time After Time
Past criticisms of proposed rules and the rule-making process:
PARD's continuing neglect of Austin Memorial Park, Not-So-Benign Neglect
PARD's continuing blatant violations of state and local law regarding the Perpetual Care Trust Fund, Grave Robbery
PARD's failure to give public notice and hold open meetings, We Don't Need No Stinkin' Public Input
PARD has effectively waived the 1978 rules and regulations and lacks legal or moral authority to retroactively impose new rules, Waive Goodbye
Updated November 6, 2022: Over the years PARD has claimed that it lacks sufficient funds to properly maintain the cemeteries. Yet, PARD has paid significant public funds over the past nine years to outside consultants and organizations regarding Austin's cemeteries. In August of 2015, the City of Austin Historic Cemeteries Master Plan was released. City of Austin paid Amaterra Environmental, Inc. from May 1, 2014, through July 22. 2015, a total of $236,910.53 for the Master Plan. Yet, PARD is not only apparently ignoring much of this Master Plan, its proposed cemetery rules and regulations actually contradict numerous recommendations set forth in the plan. In 2014, PARD retained Smith and Associates to provide facilitation services and coordinate updating the rules and regulations, but the subsequent proposed rules were withdrawn and the stakeholders were told that instead the rules and regulations would be developed as part of the Cemetery Master Plan. Smith and Associates was paid at least $32,920.92 for this failed and pointless endeavor, Money Down a Rat Hole?
Over the past few years, water at Austin Memorial Park has been repeatedly shut off due to water line breaks. I have made a Public Information Act Request (PIAR) for all records regarding water main damage, breaks, and repairs at AMP and will update this page when I receive the requested information, Not a Drop to Drink
Analysis of a September 30, 2022, news report by local NBC news affiliate KXAN touching on the rule process, News Blues
Added October 13, 2022: Analysis of an October 10, 2022, news report by CBS Austin touching on the rule process, News Blues Two
Added October 18, 2022: Analysis of an October 14, 2022, article by "The Austin Chronicle" touching on the rules process, News Blues; Three Times is not the Charm
Added November 6, 2022: PARD has claimed that: mowers running over objects left on gravesites can cause injury to employees or citizens; and potential buyers have expressed distaste for the "unsightly look" of city cemeteries and purchased lots elsewhere, resulting in lost revenue. However, PARD cannot produce any documentation supporting these claims, The Paper Trail to Nowhere
Added November 9, 2022: Summary of the October 10, 2022, ZOOM presentation by PARD regarding the new cemetery rules, with my accompanying analysis, Beware of the Leopard
Added November 10, 2022: An opinion piece by me, entitled "Flawed Cemetery Rules Process Violates City Council Resolution and Betrays Public Trust," appears in the November 11, 2022, edition of "The Austin Chronicle.
Added December 29, 2022: Photographs taken at Austin Memorial Cemetery on December 29, 2022, showing the disgraceful desecration of multiple gravesites from deep ruts and tire tracks left by PARD's careless and callous use of heavy equipment, Demolition Derby
Added January 17, 2023: I revisit the desecrated gravesites pictured in Demolition Derby, discovering little or no attempt by PARD to repair the significant damage to multiple graves caused by PARD's heavy equipment. I further note that the proposed cemetery rules and regulations posted by PARD on January 12, 2023, not only fail to address this sacrilegious defilement of graves, but in fact will make things even worst, Demolition Derby Part II
Added January 18, 2023: I explain why I carry four one-gallon jugs in my car--in order to haul 30-odd pounds of water during my weekly visit to my family's plots so that I can water the memorial gardens on their graves regardless of periodic water cutoffs and disappearing hoses. I also explain why I have been delinquent in updating the results of my Public Information Act Request for all records regarding water main damage, breaks, and repairs at AMP, A Pint's a Pound
Added January 21, 2023: Discussion of a January 19, 2023, news report by KXAN entitled "Woman calls Austin cemetery condition ‘disrespectful.’ Here’s what’s being fixed" and misrepresentations made by PARD in that article, Piling it High and Deep
Added January 22, 2023: Austin Memorial Park has been designed a Historic Texas Cemetery by the Texas Historical Commission. It is the final resting place of many important Texans and a vital link to Austin and Texas history. Instead of preserving the history of AMP, PARD is removing numerous artifacts, some of definite age and both historic and monetary value, from gravesites and storing them haphazardly and unsecured among waste, trash, and heavy equipment, Tomb Raiders
Updated February 6, 2023: I added the City of Austin's response to my public information request regarding displaced or dismantled grave ornamentation as set out in Tomb Raiders. The city has stated that it anticipates completing the request on or before March 10, 2023.
Added February 8, 2023: My comments regarding the proposed rules, February 8, 2023, Comments Regarding Proposed Rules
Updated March 10, 2023: On March 9, 2023, I received a response from the City of Austin to my public information request regarding the removal and disposal of grave ornamentation, requiring me to substantially revise my request. I have added the City's demand and my response to Tomb Raiders
Added March 25, 2023: On March 24, 2023, I finally received a response from the City of Austin to my public information request regarding the removal and disposal of grave ornamentation, stating the City "has no responsive documents to my request." In other words, although PARD is relentlessly looting Austin's historic cemeteries like a tinpot Napoleon, it has no documentation regarding when or from where potentially hundreds of grave ornaments were removed or the ultimate fate of many of these pillaged grave decorations: NapolePARD on the March
Added August 12, 2023: Sometime between July 27, 2023, and August 9, 2023, without any notice or warning, PARD desecrated our family's gravesites, utterly destroying the long-established memorial gardens, despite promises made this past April that our family would be allowed to maintain the gardens and that PARD would not touch them. Although PARD has apologized and offered to reimburse us for the destroyed plants, we have no information regarding who authorized the destruction, when, or why: Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
Updated August 13, 2023, Timeline has been updated through August 12, 2023: Time After Time
Added August 20, 2023: Following the destruction of the long-established memorial gardens on my family gravesites sometime between July 28, 2023, and August 9, 2023, on August 14, 2023, I submitted a public information request for all documentation regarding any and all landscaping work orders and requests at Austin Memorial Park from July 27, 2023, through August 10, 2023. On August 18, 2023, I received a response claiming that the City of Austin has no responsive documents or information to my request. If there no documentation regarding any maintenance or landscaping work in AMP (or by extrapolation, any of the public cemeteries), the City of Austin has no meaningful oversight over PARD and the citizens of Austin have no way to research just what is happening to the final resting places of their friends and family: Where Have All the Documents Gone?
Updated August 20, 2023, Timeline has been updated through August 18, 2023: Time After Time
Added August 30, 2023, At a recent visit to AMP I saw several gravesites tagged with flimsy "notices" by PARD that unspecified "items" on the gravesites were "not in compliance" with the nonexistent cemetery rules and regulations and that PARD would "remove and dispose of any remaining items" in 30 days: Tomb Raiders Rampage On
Updated August 31, 2023: The benches discussed in Tomb Raiders Rampage On have all apparently been removed and, thanks to PARD's well-documented lack of documentation, their fate is unknown.
Updated December 12, 2023: Despite PARD's desecration of the memorial gardens on my parents' and niece's graves, many of the hardy, native and adapted plants had survived and were regrowing and filling in. On December 8, 2023, I visited AMP with some gardening equipment, having decided that the surviving plants were tall and established enough that I could weed and prepare the soil for mulching. However, upon arriving at my parents' graves, I discovered that the memorial garden on my parents' graves had been once again desecrated, completely shredded by a weed-eater and the still-green ruined foliage left scattered on my parents' headstones and over their gravesites: There are Lies, Damn Lies, and PARD
Updated December 12, 2023, the timeline for this blog: Time After Time
Added March 23, 2024, among wide variety of the grave ornaments being ripped out of AMP by PARD are angel sculptures with significant sentimental, historic, and monetary value. These sculptures sit for months behind a trash pile and then disappear, but PARD admits it has no documentation regarding the removal of these statues and what was their ultimate fate: Fallen Angels
Added April 14, 2024, I am now trying to collect stories about PARD dishonoring or desecrating gravesites in the Austin public cemeteries: Power to the People
What We Want
I want to make one thing very clear—I and other stakeholders completely understand and agree that there is a need for reasonable regulations to protect the safety of PARD employees and the public. All we have ever wanted is to sit down with PARD to express our concerns and exchange ideas regarding the development of reasonable cemetery rules and restrictions, as envisioned by the October 17, 2013, City Council resolution. We request the following:
- a restart to the extremely flawed and unfair rules and regulations process. The process must be open to all the citizens of Austin, not just those who happen to be on PARD's e-mail list or have Internet access. This means public notice not only on city websites and through e-mail, but notices posted at cemeteries, community centers and libraries, in the local press and other media, and sent out through social media;
- multiple in-person meetings held throughout the city to ensure that all of the public has an opportunity to attend and be heard;
- public input be sincerely considered and incorporated in any new rules or regulations as much as possible;
- any rules and regulations must be prospective only and existing gravesite memorials and garden be grandfathered in;
- the recommendations of the 2015 City of Austin Historic Cemeteries Master Plan regarding the use of heavy equipment around gravesites, the planting of native and adaptive turf and plants, and encouraging the establishment of ground covers within curbed or walled family plots be incorporated in any proposed rules and regulations;
- the proposed rules and regulations allow the continuing exercise of religious and ethnic practices in the cemeteries, such as the Jewish tradition of visitors leaving a small stone on a grave;
- the Perpetual Care Trust Fund (PCTF), as enacted by the city in 1992, be implemented by PARD in accordance with state and city law so that families can finally contribute to the perpetual care of their loved ones' final resting places. Such implementation must include clear, open, and transparent accounting of funds donated to the trust and the expenditure of any revenues; and
- an intensive independent audit of the administration of the PCTF regarding all transactions, revenue, and expenditures since 1992.
