At its December monthly meeting, the City and Borough Assembly approved future expansion of Memorial Cemetery.
Located near Heritage Harbor and City Park, Memorial is one of two public cemeteries managed by the city, the other being Sunset Gardens just across the road. A deepening problem the city has faced in recent years has been a lack of space at the two sites.
The newer of the two, Sunset Gardens currently has only 18 unreserved plots available for purchase, with another 31 niches in its columbarium available for cremated remains. Memorial Cemetery has a number of plots which are vacant but reserved, though a number of spots have been found to already have occupants when opened. At the moment it is considered to be at capacity.
“Since I got here we’ve been low on space,” said Kim Lane, who has been city clerk since 2012.
The city cemetery
committee has forwarded
recommendations, but there are several obstacles to siting a
new graveyard. One of these is the expense to develop, which at past meetings borough
manager Jeff Jabusch has explained the city does not have on hand. Cost to develop new gravesites varies depending on the terrain as well, with
considerable fill material needed to properly prepare the predominately marshy spaces Wrangell currently has at its disposal.
Adjacent to Memorial Cemetery, the community garden and former ballfield was deemed to be suitable for a new cemetery site, and has been recommended by Public Works for repurposing. At one time the area had been beach, but was filled with stumps and other materials before being capped with dirt and gravel. The majority would need to be dug up and replaced with new material, and surveyed for future reuse.
Benefits to the site include a lack of trees, nearness to town, and probable cheapness to develop compared to other sites. Other candidates were along Spur Road, across from Shoemaker Bay, and further upland from Sunset Gardens.
“It’s a pretty decent-sized area,” Jabusch told the Assembly, and could yield perhaps three or more acres for graves. He said city staff had already contacted the local gardening group, which it has an informal agreement with to use the site.
Lane said the next step would be to work with Public Works to prepare a site plan, and to contract a developer to formalize a design and run a cost analysis.
“We’re going to have to figure out how to pay for it,” she added, suggesting grant funding for such projects may be available.
“It’s something the community absolutely needs,” Lane stressed.
Money is one hurdle to cross, but time is another. Preparing a grave site can take years to undertake, with soil having to settle after development before it can be used.
“We don’t have years. This is why it’s important to start the process as soon as possible,” Lane said.
In a worst-case scenario, the city could contact people who have currently reserved spots at either of the two cemeteries. A number of these had been purchased years or even decades in advance for future family blocks, but in the intervening years some of the families intended for burial there have since left. Lane said she has issued letters in the past checking to see if they still intended to use the plots, with several relinquishing them.
Another option people may choose to take is cremation, with the remains buried in the plot of a loved one. This option has become more commonly used as cremation has become more normalized, and due to its lower cost and simplicity.
If eventually developed, a less-pressing problem would be what to call the new cemetery, and whether it would be included as an expansion to next-door Memorial, treated as separate from Memorial or if the two would be combined and renamed.
“You never know. They might be willing to change its name,” Lane said of future assemblies.
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