City attempting to address limited plots available at Pioneer Cemetery

As space is running out at Pioneer Cemetery, the Graham City Council adopted a first reading of an ordinance amendment this week to extend a prohibition on curbing for graves to the newest section of the cemetery.

The Graham City Council met Thursday, March 14 to discuss a major issue at Pioneer Cemetery, the shrinking number of purchasable plots for the remaining sections, I and J.

“Pioneer Cemetery is running out of room. We are down to about 215 available spaces in the cemetery,” City Manager Eric Garretty said. “In a normal year we sell 20-30 spaces.”

The city manager said the previous city council anticipated an issue and moved from allowing curbing in Sections A-H to prohibiting it starting with Section I as well as reducing the grave width from 52 inches to 48 inches.

“The 4 inches per grave makes a big difference on the total number of graves you can get in a section,” Garretty said. “The ordinances before you today extends the no curbing prohibition to the newest section of Pioneer, Section J.”

Despite the council approving the first reading of the extension of the prohibition on curbing to Section J, the question remains about what the plan is moving forward. Following the meeting, Garretty said the city currently has no official plans regarding a new cemetery or extension of a previous cemetery.

“If you are going to (build) a cemetery like that, you want to buy a significant tract of land (because) you don’t want to be doing this again in 5, 10, or 20 years. And if you look around the city in general, nothing pops to mind,” he said. “So then what do you do? Do you look out in the county? Do you get out of the cemetery business altogether? We haven’t even really officially started those discussions, but… I think that’s coming up. We’re really going to have to think about it.”

The city manager said limited options are available for expansion at Pioneer Cemetery with it being located near the highway, a residential area and Pioneer Elementary School.

Oak Grove Cemetery has no lots available, with some being unoccupied but purchased to be used for burials at a later date. The only remaining city cemetery with plots available for purchase is Pioneer Cemetery in Sections I and J. Garretty said that when Sections I and J were opened that the council at the time thought it would last until 2030-2040.

When the city was in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, the amount of space also decreased at a quicker rate.

“There was a pretty substantial number of folks that maybe did not die of Covid, but during that period (there were) more than we consider what would have been the average up to that point and so that put some additional pressure,” he said.

The city manager said he will have to develop options for the city council at a later date on what the city can do moving forward.