BENTON — The last of the century-old pine trees standing high over Goodwin Cemetery were cut down Jan. 10, leaving residents grappling over the loss of a grove that had looked over some of the town’s most historic headstones.
The warrant article seeking to cut 20 trees at the cemetery passed at the town meeting last June, allotting a maintenance budget twice as high as in previous years. Yet some residents said they weren’t aware of the tree cutting included in the cemetery maintenance warrant article, and that the matter was discussed only briefly at the sparsely attended 2024 town meeting — leaving the question of why the trees had to come down in the first place.
Robin Cyr, chairman of the Benton Board of Select Persons, said older trees in cemeteries pose a risk to the headstones.

“We’ve had a lot of trees come down in different cemeteries,” Cyr said. “A lot of older trees. And when they do come down and hit the stones, it’s very expensive to repair the stones. I think the goal was to clean those so we would have less damage.”
In 2023, the cemetery maintenance budget was $17,860. Last year, the town meeting warrant sought to appropriate $34,965 to support activities like cemetery maintenance and repair as well as a “one-time project removal of pines (20) in Goodwin cemetery.”
Brenda MacArthur, 72, who has lived with her husband Bruce next to the cemetery for 43 years, said it will be difficult to get used to the new view from their porch.
“It’s a very old cemetery,” Brenda MacArthur said. “And they planted those trees for one reason a hundred years ago, who knows why, but they planted them. And it really was beautiful, you had these trees here. It’s always been a farming community, and it’s just a small cemetery in the country, and now — it’s just different now.”
The cemetery is located off River Road next to the intersection with Wyman Road. Named for the Goodwin family, the cemetery contains centuries of history, with some of the oldest gravestones dating back to the 18th century.
One resident who voted against the cemetery maintenance warrant article was Barbara Warren, who lives in Benton Falls and is the chair of the town’s Historical Preservation Committee.
Warren said the tree-cutting article was “railroaded through” at the 2024 town meeting, quickly discussed then passed among 33 other articles that received little individual attention.
“That whole thing with cutting down these trees at the cemetery, it was just thrown in as part of one of the warrants for the town meeting,” Warren said. “And it was the first time most of us heard about it.”
The warrant articles were available in the town office at least 10 days before the town meeting, Cyr said.
Bruce MacArthur said he heard about the warrant article ahead of time and spoke out against the tree-cutting provision at the town meeting.
“I said, ‘Why do you want to cut down these trees?'” he said. “They said, ‘Protection of the headstones, sometimes these trees are going to fall.’ But it’s going to raise the taxes.”
The Board of Select Persons and the Budget Committee recommended that the town vote to pass the cemetery maintenance article, which it did with around two-thirds of the vote.
The article approved the cutting of 20 trees. However, after the arborist company wrapped up work Jan. 10, residents realized that 24 trees were down — compounding feelings of confusion and distrust toward the town.

Devon Strasnick, owner and arborist at Mow For Low, counts the rings on a pine tree Jan. 9 during tree removal work at Goodwin Cemetery in Benton. Pine trees ranging from 60 to 80 feet tall and as old as 100 years were cut down to protect the cemetery from falling trees, angering some residents who felt they weren’t appropriately notified. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel
Devon Strasnick, an arborist who owns the company Mow For Low, charged $17,000 for the job, which never went out for bid because of its low cost, officials said. He said he wasn’t given an exact number from the town on how many trees to cut; instead, he was told to clear them all.
After the select board meeting Jan. 13, Cyr said she didn’t know that four extra trees were cut down.
“It’s no extra charge, so my guess is he had to take them down for different reasons,” Cyr said. “But I don’t know, I can’t answer that. I didn’t even know 24 were taken down.”
That wasn’t the only thing the select board wasn’t told. At the same meeting, Randy Raymond, the town’s road commissioner and sewer director who is also charged with cemetery maintenance, revealed that a headstone had been damaged the year before in Goodwin Cemetery during another tree-cutting job.
Raymond, whose three-year mowing contract came under fire in 2023 because of a possible conflict of interest as a town employee, said the decision to cut down Goodwin Cemetery’s trees had nothing to do with him, but added that the trees were old and made it hard to maintain cemetery grounds.
His concern wasn’t unfounded. Strasnick said that many of the pines that came down turned out to be rotting on the inside, which could eventually lead to collapse.
Other natural forces were also at play. The cemetery overlooks the Kennebec River on a small hill that is prone to high winds. Samantha Boyce, who lives directly behind the cemetery at 6 Wyman Road, said that clearing the trees could help prevent damage to the cemetery.

Headstones top a ridge Jan. 9 at Goodwin Cemetery in Benton as workers, right, walk away from pine trees they were preparing to cut. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel
“We get so much wind out here, and a lot of the branches fall and ruin the fence and some of the stones,” Boyce said. “We have family that grew up here and lived here all their life and are buried over there … everyone pitches in around here, picks up the branches, tries to keep it pretty and looking nice. But then I heard they were going to clean this up and put a new fence up.”
While Boyce is excited for more sunlight to come her way without the trees, Brenda MacArthur said that the pines were a part of the town’s history as much as anything else. She said she is worried that the town will continue to make decisions that isolate residents.
“Are we just in the mode of taking down all these trees?” she said. “I’ve got to say, my cemetery looks horrible now.”
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