A woman whose relative is buried in an Ooltewah cemetery that is the center of a controversy said Thursday she won’t go along with the Hamilton County Commission’s vote to move the graves.
Margaret Tate said her great-grandfather is buried on the property. After commissioners voted 9-0 Thursday to allow the 100-year-old cemetery to be moved, Ms. Tate said she planned to hire an attorney.
“If I have to go up there and sit on the graves, this will not go any farther,” she said.
However, Commissioner John Allen Brooks said of the vote, “What we’ve worked out is the best of a bad situation.”
The old Wells Cemetery off Snow Hill Road has been an issue since the company that manages the property, First Management Services, cut down trees in a 50-foot buffer zone that was supposed to be undisturbed. The company had planned to move the cemetery into the buffer zone so the site can house commercial and office buildings, officials said.
When the County Commission voted in 2002 to rezone the property then owned by Ooltewah Properties LLC — four tracts on Snow Hill Road — it imposed several conditions including the 50-foot natural buffer.
After the trees were cut, the county issued a stop-work order against the developer, Morgan Construction.
The construction company since has said it would restore all the trees and move the graves to another location on the property that is not in the buffer zone.
Because the trees had been cut, there was a possibility that the current commercial and office zoning could have reverted to its original agricultural zoning. The commission’s vote Thursday en sured that wouldn’t happen.
Ms. Tate told commissioners that she brought her granddaughter to the meeting and they both could not understand why the commission could not allow the “dead to be dead.”
“There’s no reason this cemetery should have been disturbed,” she said.
County Property Assessor Bill Bennett, who lives in the area, said that those who live close by agreed with Sam Boles of First Management Services, who plans to replant trees and place a fence.
“He assured us he’ll do everything possible to make it better than it did when the area was encroached upon,” Mr. Bennett said.
Frank Blair, representing the nearby Mill Run Homeowner’s Association, said Thursday that his group also approved the plans.
“From our perspective, green lights go,” he said.