If you have loved ones buried in Flomaton Cemetery, you need to read the letter to the editor on Page 5A written and signed by Dewey Bondurant Jr., Jim McCutchin and Melissa Johnson about what the future brings.
Bondurant, McCutchin and Johnson are the overseers of a trust fund, that was designed to provide perpetual care for the cemetery. More than 60 years ago, $200,000 was set aside to take care of the cemetery but the ordinance that created that fund, only allowed for the interest from that investment to be used for maintenance. There was a time and place where such interest on that money was enough. Not any more. It's kind of like the state law that gives the Escambia County Industrial Development Authority up to $100,000 per year in oil and gas severance tax money to run its operation. That money went a long way back in about 1984 when the law was passed, but it can't scratch the surface of what's needed today to really compete in attracting new industry to the county.
Things change, times change and the interest off of $200,000 in the late 1950s can't keep up with the cost of keeping our cemetery clean and presentable. There's also the issue of needing about $80,000 to repave the roads throughout the cemetery. If you've visited the cemetery lately you will see the need for repaving.
Even if the $80,000 is raised to repave, the interest off of the $200,000 is not enough to keep the cemetery grass cut and maintained.
So, now here we are some 60 years later asking families to help fund the perpetual care of the cemetery. Even if you don't have a family member buried there, if you are reading this you likely have a friend who was laid to rest in the Flomaton Cemetery.
So, we join Bondurant, McCutchin and Johnson in asking people to make donations to the Flomaton Cemetery Fund that has been established at Escambia County Bank.
In our opinion it's not an expense the town of Flomaton can absorb. It needs to come from people who care about the future of the cemetery.
