Money Down a Rat Hole?

 UPDATED OCTOBER 18, 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.

Smith and Associates

On April 29, 2014, PARD announced that it had retained Smith and Associates to provide facilitation services and coordinate updating the rules and regulations. The subsequent interactions overseen by Smith and Associates were a series of on-line surveys and a handful of meetings that were little more than allowing stakeholders to respond to such surveys, with PARD and Smith and Associates controlling all discussions. The resulting proposed rules and regulations published by PARD and its consultants were supposed to be presented to the PARD board for approval on July 22, 2014. I and other stakeholders planned to appear at that meeting and protest not only the process by which the rules and regulations were developed, but many of the specific proposals as well. That meeting was canceled and the stakeholders were later told that instead the rules and regulations would be developed as part of the Cemetery Master Plan. According to documents I received through a Public Information Act Request (PIAR), request, Smith and Associates were paid at least $32,920.92 for this failed and pointless endeavor. 

However, another stakeholder told me that in 2014, then Cemeteries Manager Gilbert Hernandez stated that PARD had paid Smith and Associations a total of $125,000. So far, I have not been able to document this. 

City of Austin Historic Cemeteries Master Plan

UPDATED:  In August of 2015, the City of Austin Historic Cemeteries Master Plan is released. As far as I can tell at looking at the conditions at Austin Memorial Park, PARD appears to have ignored the Master Plan proposals and recommendations. According to the Master Plan, it was prepared by Amaterra Environmental, Inc. (Cultural Resources, GIS Mapping/Digitization), John Milner Associates, Inc. of Charlottesville, Virginia (Historical landscape architecture), McDoux Preservation LLC, of Houston, Texas (Historic preservation, community engagement, document design and preparation), and Davey Tree Service, Austin, Texas (Tree survey). On October 5, 2022, I made the following PIAR t: Any and all records, including, but not limited to contracts, invoices, payments, and receipts, regarding each and any of the following parties concerning the development of the Austin Historic Cemeteries Master Plan: AMATERRA ENVIRONMENTAL, INC.; JOHN MILNER ASSOCIATES, INC.; McDOUX PRESERVATION LLC; and DAVEY TREE SERVICE.

On October 13, 2022, I received a response from the City of Austin. According to the city, "The other two firms listed are subcontractors hired by AmeTerra Environmental, Inc.(sic) Since the City does not contract with or pay subs we do not have the requested contract or payment information for them." Considering I requested information regarding FOUR entities, I will be contacting the City to clarify this. However, the information I received revealed that from May 1, 2014, through July 22. 2015, the City of Austin paid Amaterra Environmental, Inc. a total of $236,910.53 for the Master Plan. 

In other words, the City of Austin paid almost a quarter of a million dollars for a Master Plan that PARD not only continues to ignore, but is in fact actively working against under its proposed cemetery rules and regulations. For example, specifically regarding Austin Memorial Park, PARD's instance on removing long-established gravesite gardens, planted with the both implicit and explicit permission of PARD, so that it can drive heavy mowing equipment over gravesites, ignores the following recommendations in the 2015 Master Plan:

• "Encourage the establishment of groundcovers within curbed or walled family plots, to reduce the amount of mowing and trimming required."

• avoid using riding mowers and metal core trimmers within twelve inches of markers and plot enclosures and instead use weed trimmers using light gauge nylon line without metal cores for detailed trimming.

• "in dry and sandy soils, a groundcover comprised of sedges, horseherb, and Texas frogfruit. Most of these are evergreen to semi-evergreen, depending on the severity of the winter. They also require very little mowing." 

• Establish turf within the cemeteries composed of a mix of native grasses.