Lubbock City Cemetery cleared after hip-high weeds due to contractor cancellation
Published: Tue, 06/20/23
Lubbock City Cemetery cleared after hip-high weeds due to contractor cancellation
everythingLubbock.com
by: Payton Reeves
Posted:
LUBBOCK, Texas — Father’s Day is supposed to be a celebration. For some residents–like community leader, Phyllis Gant. That the joy quickly became anger once she arrived at Lubbock City Cemetery on Sunday to find overgrown weeds.
“It personally infuriates me,” said Gant. “It is a planned holiday, whether your father is living or not, and when you take the time to come out with your family to spend that time, you should be able to do that without stepping over weeds.”
Gant said the cemetery hadn’t been landscaped for the holiday, after recent rains caused the weeds to grow as high as her hip.
“I try to be proactive not reactive,” said Gant. “We’ve had a lot of rain and we’re grateful; that’s not a complaint, right? But we had four to five days of no rain, [and] that could have been done.”
According to the city, it wasn’t neglect, but a lot of unfortunate factors including a last-minute cancellation.
“It’s definitely not to the standard of quality that we uphold all of our parks and our facilities to,” said Park Operation Superintendent, Gabby Anglin. “All of that rain came in, which made it so we couldn’t mow out there yet because it was too wet. The contractor that we had squared away ready to go to maintain the cemetery canceled on us, so then I had to go back out to bid, which took another couple of weeks. Now we are squared away and have a contractor set ready to go tomorrow.”
Anglin issued an apology on behalf of her department.
“We are horribly sorry for the lack of beautification that did not happen out there,” said Anglin. “I know that that’s a very hard day for a lot of people, especially going to visit the cemetery and so from this point forward we will have all of it maintained to the best of our possible ability.”
As of Monday afternoon, all of the weeds had been cleared out of Lubbock City Cemetery. Anglin also said the parks department found a new contractor with a new schedule, and don’t anticipate this issue for years at least.