Atlanta citizens attend township meeting to protect their way of life and preserve their history

[April 11, 2018] 

ATLANTA 

At Tuesday night’s monthly Atlanta Township meeting there were two agenda items that drew a significant crowd. The township board meetings are usually sparsely attended by the public, but on Tuesday night more than 80 people came out at the Atlanta Park District Community Center to voice their opinions.

Both agenda items concerned the disposition of the Atlanta Cemetery District. Prior to 2016 the Atlanta Cemetery District was owned and maintained by a private concern, the Atlanta Ladies Cemetery Association. That organization recognized that they were running out of money, and turned the ownership and the maintenance of the 20 acre Atlanta cemetery over to the Atlanta Township in 2016, along with approximately $133,000 in the perpetual maintenance fund for upkeep. According to Illinois State law, the private organization could not access the funds in the perpetual maintenance fund, but the Atlanta Township could.

Concerned citizens in the Atlanta community circulated a petition and garnered enough signatures to place the first referendum item on the agenda, which was to transfer ownership, control and maintenance of the Atlanta Cemetery to the Logan County Cemetery District. The motivation for the petition to transfer was not mentioned.

Significant discussion took place citing concerns about how well the Atlanta Cemetery had been cared for and for how great an effort had been made to document and digitalize the history of burials in the cemetery since its establishment in 1856. The Atlanta Township people did not feel that the Logan County Cemetery District would maintain their cemetery as well as the private association previously and the township currently was providing, and that the careful records of burials and history of the cemetery would come to an end (and be dumped in the corner of a shed).

There was a motion and a second to place the item on the November ballot, and Melanie Blankenship, township clerk, clarified that the vote on Tuesday night would determine whether the ownership/control/maintenance of the cemetery would go on the November 6 ballot as a referendum item. Blank ballots were passed, the votes tallied, and it was determined by a landslide that the item would not go on the November ballot, thereby guaranteeing at least for the next year that the Atlanta Cemetery would remain under the township’s care, custody and control.

A large crowd attends the monthly Atlanta Township meeting

Township board members at table.

Township clerk Melanie Blankenship

Cemetery history printout in bag

The second agenda item of concern was an advisory vote on whether to place a referendum item on the November ballot to levy a .20% property tax for the Township to cover the costs to maintain the Atlanta Cemetery. It was explained that the $133,000 in the perpetual maintenance fund would only provide enough funding for about 5-7 years of upkeep. One of the township board members told the crowd that if there was no motion and no second that this referendum question would die right there Tuesday night. However, a motion and a second was received to let it die there on the meeting floor. The voice vote carried unanimously in favor of its death, and the crowd applauded.

The final word from a member of the Atlanta Township board was that all that had been done and decided at the Tuesday night meeting might be moot in upcoming years, because the State of Illinois was pushing for the dissolution of Townships in the state to consolidate taxing bodies.

[Jim Youngquist]