The city of Belleville has owned one cemetery for 174 years. Now it will own two

The city of Belleville bought Mount Hope Cemetery for $1 at a foreclosure auction held Thursday by St. Clair County Circuit Court.

Associate Judge Leah Captain determined that the city was a qualified buyer, capable of getting a license (it already has one) and operating the historic cemetery. The last owners abandoned Mount Hope 15 years ago.

The city has owned and operated another cemetery, Walnut Hill Cemetery, since 1850.

“We’re very happy that the city of Belleville has stepped up to help,” said Sara Wooley, an Illinois comptroller’s office attorney who has been serving as Mount Hope’s court-appointed receiver.

Wooley could’ve placed her own bid of $609,889.32, which matches the value of a lien the receivership held on the 132-acre property.

Such a bid would have forced other interested parties to pay $609,889.33 or more. But Wooley didn’t take that action, essentially giving the cemetery to the city. No one else showed up for the auction.

“The city had already expended a lot of money to maintain the property,” Wooley said.

The city representative who attended the court hearing and placed the $1 bid was Cliff Cross, director of economic development, zoning and planning. He told Judge Captain the city had spent about $1.4 million on mowing and trash pickup since it took over maintenance in 2010.

After the sale, Cross said he was most excited for family members of loved ones buried at Mount Hope because of what they had been through since the cemetery was abandoned.

“Now they can become an official not-for-profit and help with the cemetery,” he said, speaking of a group called Friends of Mount Hope Cemetery.

The foreclosure process began in 2018, when Wooley filed a lawsuit against former owners, stating that the receivership had spent $609,889.32 to operate Mount Hope from 2009 to 2016.

In the past year, the city has been working with Shine Development Partners, a Texas company that wanted to lease land behind the burial grounds off West Main Street, to clear a 25-acre section of woods, build a 5-megawatt solar farm and operate it for 25 years.

City officials saw the expected $75,000 to $80,000 in annual rent payments as a way to help offset maintenance costs.

“I just think it’s a solution to a problem,” Mayor Patty Gregory said in April.

Neighbors opposed solar farm

The city’s proposal to lease land for a solar farm sparked controversy at Zoning Board of Appeals and Belleville City Council meetings over the winter

About 10 neighbors argued that a flat, vacant lot would be more suitable for a solar farm than a steep ravine and that massive clear-cutting would eliminate a scenic natural area filled with wildlife and change the character of the cemetery and neighborhood.

“It just doesn’t seem like the type of place that we should be destroying,” neighbor Lisa Griffith said last week. “The city has a lot of open space that could be used for a solar farm.”

The project also was opposed by Clay Bertlesman, a Belleville trucking-company owner with property in the vicinity. He contemplated bidding on Mount Hope earlier this year but didn’t attend the foreclosure sale and couldn’t be reached for comment.

Cross told Zoning Board members at a Dec. 21, 2023, meeting that the solar farm would be surrounded by a “buffer” of trees, hiding it from view of people visiting the cemetery. Edward Ulkus, Griffith’s husband, called that “laughable” at a City Council meeting on Jan. 2.

Aldermen voted to approve a special-use permit for a solar farm at that meeting. Ward 7 Alderman Phil Elmore told opponents that it wasn’t a done deal and “chainsaws don’t start tomorrow.”

It appears the solar farm is a done deal now. At Monday night’s City Council meeting, aldermen voted to give city officials permission to enter into a lease with Belleville Solar Inc., a limited-liability company formed to operate it.

“We have received the signed lease from them, so it should be completed this week,” Cross said Thursday.

Aldermen gave city officials permission at a special meeting on April 30 to bid on the Mount Hope property at a foreclosure sale. On Thursday, Cross joked with Wooley and her attorney, Derek Filcoff, about whether the $1 would be paid by cash or check.

The court is expected to give Belleville a deed to the property in the next few weeks, Filcoff said.

Friends group supported purchase

E. Gayle Schneider, founder of Friends of Mount Hope Cemetery , had strongly supported the city’s purchase of the property.

Schneider, 77, of Greenville, North Carolina, described the past 30 years as an “ordeal” for people who have loved ones buried at the cemetery. It was abandoned twice and fell into disrepair with tall grass, weeds, trash and vandalism before the city took over maintenance.

“The cemetery needs a perpetual owner, like a city,” Schneider said last week. “It doesn’t need a mortal owner, like a private individual or a funeral home, for profit, that’s run by private individuals who die and then everything changes and it ends up in receivership again.”

Schneider has never lived in Belleville, but she plans to be buried next to her mother at Mount Hope in a family plot that her paternal grandfather bought in the early 1900s.

Schneider said the solar-farm plan is “not ideal,” but she believes the city would have been reluctant to take on the responsibility of operating a cemetery without an income source.

“You’ve got to look at the whole picture, and you can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” she said.

An estimated 27,000 to 30,000 people are buried at Mount Hope, which dates back to the late 1800s. The Friends group includes 154 people who communicate through a Facebook page.

Schneider would like to see the group evolve into a non-profit foundation that could receive donations to help with maintenance now that the city is buying the property.

“I have a couple of IRAs that I would like very much to earmark (for) the benefit of the cemetery,” she said.

Schneider plans to reach out to a highly-successful foundation that operates a historic Peoria cemetery and come up with ideas for protecting and improving Mount Hope.

City works to determine cost

It’s unclear how much it will cost to fully operate Mount Hope, said Jamie Maitret. the city’s finance director.

The public works department spent $370,540 to operate Walnut Hill last year under the guidance of a Cemetery Board. That included mowing and other groundskeeping, the opening and closing of graves and the salary of a clerical employee.

Revenue consisted of $54,519 in burial and plot fees. The city also receives about $2,000 a year from an endowment-care fund. Families buy their own tombstones through monument companies.

“That’s why municipalities have been stuck taking over (private) cemeteries,” Maitret said. “They’re not profitable.”

The $100,000 that Belleville spends each year to maintain Mount Hope is just enough to keep it looking “decent,” Maitret said. The city hires part-time, seasonal workers who are supervised by a street-department employee for mowing and trash pick-up.

As the new owner, the city will hire a full-time Mount Hope employee but continue using seasonal workers under an agreement with Laborer’s Local 459, whose contract normally requires union laborers to maintain city property, said Jason Poole, director of public works.

City employees will begin opening and closing graves. Wooley, the receiver, has been contracting with nearby Mount Carmel Cemetery to do this in recent years. Mount Hope had 24 burials in 2022, 25 last year and eight so far this year.

The city also will handle miscellaneous needs.

“If there’s a foundation problem (at Walnut Hill), we repair it,” Poole said. “We reset headstones. We unclog ditches. We cut down dead trees. There’s a lot more to it than mowing.”

Burial grounds at Walnut Hill cover about 80 acres, compared to 55 acres at Mount Hope (out of the 132 acres of land). Poole expects the city to standardize fees for plots and burials.

Fees at Walnut Hill are $800 for plots; $700 for casket burials Monday through Friday ($1,000 on Saturdays and $1,200 on Sundays and holidays); and $350 for burials of ashes Monday through Friday ($500 on Saturday and $600 on Sunday and holidays).

Fees at Mount Hope are $495 to $695 for plots; $1,150 for casket burials Monday through Friday ($1,250 on Saturdays); and $795 for burials of ashes Monday through Friday ($895 on Saturdays).

Walnut Hill also offers chapel and/or graveside services for additional fees. Those haven’t been available at Mount Hope.