Standing Room Only Meeting Turns Disorderly During Lafayette Cemetery Discussions

Shouts and screams roar Thursday night over the City of Lafayette's Cemetery.

Earlier this week we told you that city workers cleared flowers and mementos from hundreds of tombstones.

To call this meeting disorderly would be an understatement. Lafayette's Mayor tried to tell the crowd that they received a number of complaints recently and were following city rules when they cleared the cemetery. But residents who have loved ones buried at the cemetery say this grave situation has never should have happened.

The standing room only crowd did not remain silent for long at Thursday night's public meeting in Lafayette. A loud shout sparked a sea of screams from residents demanding to know why their flowers and valuables have vanished from grave-sites at the city's cemetery.

Shana Green tells us her husband's gravesite is now barren.

"It's awful I mean what are you going to do when an eleven year old look at you and say where's my daddy's cross that's been there for eight years," Green says.

Thursday night council members voted to reimburse residents like Green if they buy replacement flowers and bring the city the receipts. The elected officials then decided to form a committee that may modify the cemetery's strict rules. All this came while residents held grave robber signs and called for resignations.

"Having seen the emotions of this meeting, do you regret at all the way this has played out?" NewsChannel 9 Reporter Will Carr asks Lafayette Mayor Neal Florence. "I think that our intentions were to clean up the cemetery. The problem is that we did not put publication and did not put enough time of notification," Florence responds.

But for Green this is a problem that time will not bury.

"And next election I will be here, I will vote and they will be out," Green says.

The Mayor tells us the committee will take a close look at the cemetery's rules which are more than thirty years old and then hold a public meeting to discuss their recommended modifications.

That meeting will be held December 14th at 7:30.