Woodstock cemetery forced to clean up ‘terrible mess’ from encampment

Woodstock city council is giving a local cemetery $500 to reimburse it for cleaning up a homeless encampment on its property.

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Councilors voted unanimously at a meeting Thursday to give the money to Woodstock Baptist Cemetery in the city’s northeast end to compensate it for cleaning up the encampment.

Coun. Deb Tait, who brought the motion to council, told colleagues it took three cemetery officials eight hours over two days to clean up debris left behind by those living at the encampment.

“Because it is private property, obviously the city can’t go in and clean it up,” Tait said. “That was a lot of work, so that is the reason for that motion.”

Jerry Tree, 82, who did work at the cemetery and helped with the cleanup. He said some people “think (the encampment) was there two or three weeks” before “police came and did the eviction.

“They walked away and left a terrible mess there,” Tree said. Eight grocery cart loads were removed from the site, he said.

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Tait said Tree and two other men in their 70s who maintained the cemetery grounds were involved in the cleanup.

In a post-debate interview, Tait said she was told by someone who works at the cemetery that items left at grave sites were stolen.

Although the $500 provided to Woodstock Baptist Cemetery is only a fraction of what’s been spent on encampment cleanups this year, Tait said the city has an encampment problem.

“Yes, it’s (a problem). . . we have 40 encampments, so taxpayers have to pay for that,” she said. “I think everybody sees it’s getting worse.

“I don’t know what the answer is, but we haven’t done anything to prevent it,” she said.

Tait noted last week city workers wearing hazmat suits tore down a structure at a homeless encampment at the Henry Street dog park in Woodstock’s west end. She also said another structure was dismantled this week at Barrie Park, also in the city’s west end.

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“We’re going to have to pay for both those cleanups,” Tait said.

Woodstock staff said in a report in September there were a mix of 44 abandoned and active homeless encampments in the city.

Woodstock has earmarked $100,000 from the community and social well-being fund for cleaning up encampments in the city. Those funds don’t include a $100,000 cleanup in August at an encampment at Clarke Street South that put the parks department cleanup budget in a deficit of more than $15,000.

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