Editor’s note: This is the second story in a series about Soldotna’s search for a cemetery site.
Photo by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter The view from a bluff above the Kenai River on a city-owned parcel of land between RIverwatch Drive and Linda Lane looks over a city sedimentation pond and the Kenai River beyond. The parcel was suggested as a site for a cemetery.
By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter
Peeking through the trees to the west from a bluff above the Kenai River in Soldotna, a man-made pond sparkles stationary below, while a glimpse of the blue-green Kenai River sweeps along beyond it. The vista climbs with rooftops and treetops and comes to rest on the horizon, where Mount Redoubt draws its cloudy veil up around its shoulders.
To members of the Soldotna Historical Society, two city task forces, the director of the Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery, the city’s planning and zoning commission and a majority of Soldotna residents who voted on the issue, the spot would make an ideal location for a cemetery in Soldotna.
“It’s peaceful. There are a couple places where you may get a nice view, where you could sit there, look at the mountain and think, ‘Gee, isn’t this pretty.’ And think about Mom or Dad or whoever. There’s no Alaska lawn ornaments — no dead Buicks. No Fords. No wild parties going on. Honest to God, it’s a no-brainer to me,” said Jim Fassler, who has served on two city cemetery task forces.
That same site — a 10-acre, city-owned parcel atop a bluff above the Kenai River between Linda Lane and Riverwatch Drive — is described much differently by neighbors opposed to putting a cemetery there.
“I think a lot of it was the neighbors felt strongly that they would prefer to have a cemetery more outside of town rather than inside a neighborhood.
“Neighborhoods should be for living — for homes, people, kids. The neighborhood association felt it really didn’t belong in a neighborhood,” said Jay Rohloff, who owns two parcels of property along the northern border of the city’s lot, and is head of the area homeowners’ association.
The parcel is alternately described as peaceful and noisy; secure and a draw for vandals; roomy and lacking space for future growth; a manicured, unobtrusive boon for the neighborhood, and a water-contaminating, traffic-clogging threat to property values.
People on either side of the argument — which has been a re-occurring hot topic at Soldotna City Council meetings since 2003 — gained alternate descriptions, too. In public testimonies over the years, neighbors opposing the site have been labeled as unreasonable, selfish, elitist and ascribing to the philosophy of NIMBY — not in my backyard. Those supporting it were also deemed unreasonable, and seen as bullies for trying to force their will on others who would be more directly impacted.
“They’re NIMBYs, they just don’t want it in their neighborhood. They’ll use any old excuse, in my opinion,” Fassler said. “… They want a cemetery. Not a one says they don’t want a cemetery in their town. But all you hear from them is, ‘Don’t put it in my neighborhood.’”
Rohloff disagrees.
“The neighborhoods who are impacted by it, I can understand their opposition or their emotional connection. It’s next door to me, in our neighborhood, it’s next to our school,” Rohloff said. “The group that was pushing it had no real stake in the issue. I was surprised by the emotional connection that was picked up there. … I don’t think it’s the American way to steamroll a group of individuals who are being impacted the greatest.”
The battle for Redoubt
After the city abandoned efforts to obtain a 10-acre, borough-owned parcel along West Redoubt Avenue for a cemetery in January 2006, the council formed the second cemetery search committee, this one called the Memorial Park Task Force, in July 2007 to again look for government-owned parcels in town that would be suitable for a cemetery. The task force selected the city’s 10-acre parcel to the north of the borough parcel that was previously identified as the top choice. The parcel was transferred to the city from the borough in 1997 for use as a sedimentation basin to catch pollutants and debris from runoff before going into the river.
The area was now favored by two task forces, had the support of the Soldotna Historical Society and was recommended by Donald Warden, director of Anchorage Memorial Park, when he was commissioned to review the city’s possible cemetery sites.
It was not favored by many neighbors.
When the borough property was being pursued, neighbors to the south of West Redoubt Avenue protested the site selection. When focus switched to the city parcel, neighbors in the Mooring by the Sea subdivision to the north and Rivervista to the west joined the opposition.
Tom Boedeker, who was Soldotna’s city manager at the time, said he wasn’t surprised that some folks were opposed to having a graveyard next door. He figured some just wouldn’t feel comfortable with the idea.
“I knew some people that just don’t like it,” he said. “A cemetery makes them feel creepy. I don’t have any problem with people feeling odd about that. There’s things I feel odd about that don’t bother other people. Everybody has their preference. But I did not think it would have quite a lot of opposition.”
Boedeker said he was surprised with some of the reasons people had for opposing the cemetery. If there were undeveloped land across the street from his home that could be turned into any number of things — a sewage treatment plant, for example — a well-maintained, parklike cemetery would be just fine, he said.
“I looked at it myself as something that wouldn’t bother me,” Boedeker said. “But some people just don’t like cemeteries next door, or playgrounds or parks. They just don’t like it, and I accept that as a reason.
“I could appreciate that, if you come up and said, ‘I don’t want to go see that movie because it creeps me out.’ But you never just say that, because you’re afraid people are going to laugh at you or make fun of you. It’s always going to be what they consider to be legitimate reasons, instead of, ‘It just creeps me out.’”
Residents complained that chemicals from the embalming process would leach out of buried bodies and contaminate their well water or wash into the Kenai River. Property values would decrease, residents said, and vandalism would go up.
If people were opposed to a cemetery because they just didn’t want to live next to a cemetery, that’s one thing, and there wasn’t much Boedeker would say or do to sway their opinion. If, however, they were concerned about things like formaldehyde and traffic patterns, then he felt he could present information to allay those concerns. But his attempts to do so weren’t always accepted.
“Like traffic. They didn’t want to hear a solution — ‘Your concern can be dealt with this way.’ And they’d say, ‘No, my concern can’t be dealt with because it’s an unacceptable problem.’ So you weren’t going to be able to have a dialogue about those things,” he said.
Boedeker said he devoted a considerable chunk of time to research in order to answer the examples and worst-case scenarios neighbors brought up.
“Why go to so much effort to create reasons that may be refuted? When you could just say, ‘It bothers me to have a cemetery next door. I just don’t like it. It may not bother you, but it bothers me,’” Boedeker said. “The fact that so many didn’t address that, but came up with other reasons, I didn’t know how many people just didn’t like it next door and wanted to make it sound acceptable, or were truly concerned about traffic or property values.”
In initial planning work for a cemetery, Boedeker said he thought he’d anticipated what the main concerns might be — parking, landscaping, traffic and the like.
“We could tell people what to expect of the normal types of impacts, so I was a little unprepared for some of the things that were brought up,” Boedeker said. “And a lot of bogus reasons. A lot of junk science came up. I had to spend a lot of time looking up information to refute that.”
People would come in with information they’d found on the Internet demonstrating water contamination or some other harm from a cemetery. And he would look them up, only to find the source had been taken out of context, or was missing information, or had been repurposed by a Web site wanting to use information to support their slant on a topic, he said.
One example of water contamination was from a cemetery in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In researching, Boedeker found there was, indeed, water contamination. But it was because the community had buried bodies in shallow graves on a steep slope above a water source. Construction had been a slash-and-burn affair, with nothing in place to stabilize the slope. Heavy rains took their toll in erosion.
“They had terrible contamination from the cemetery next to a neighborhood, but not because of the cemetery. It was basically because it was buried bodies, and they were not in caskets, just a shallow trench,” he said.
He researched another incident of documented chemical contamination in England.
“It had been closed for new burials from 1902 or ’03, prior to use of current embalming fluid,” Boedeker said. “People asked me, ‘Were you aware of this contamination?’ Even if I had been aware of it, it would have been irrelevant.
“It was interesting because the people bringing it up were sincere. They didn’t know. They didn’t spend the hours I spent researching these things. … I spent a great deal of time reading stuff to do it. I found out more about cemeteries and soils mechanics and things than I probably ever needed to know about, and a lot more than I ever wanted to know about.”
Rohloff said he wasn’t deeply involved in the debate about possible water contamination, since his neighborhood is on city water, and people to the south of West Redoubt Avenue were on wells, but that concerns from the homeowners’ association were sincere and legitimate.
“There was a view in the neighborhood that we would rather have the choice to live next to a cemetery, rather than after the fact,” Rohloff said.
He said he does feel like he was allowed to speak his piece during the process, and that his concerns were given consideration.
“I thought we were listened to. Our voice was heard. Whether they acted on it for our reasons, I don’t know,” Rohloff said.
One thing he does know, he said, is the city council’s decision to not select the city’s Redoubt property for a cemetery site had nothing to do with the incomes, property values or supposed prominence of people in the neighborhood, as was alleged in public comments during city council meetings.
“There was the accusation that city council members were in (our) pocket. If that is the case, how come I can’t get a pothole filled or a street light fixed?” Rohloff said. “As far as one neighborhood being better heard than another, no, it should be the same. As far as were we listened to more because of property values, no, I don’t think so at all. In fact, I think the city got more tired of us. I think the city council looks at the big picture of what is best for the city as a whole, rather than my particular neighborhood.”
He said the “elite” moniker is out of place, and that he’d barely ever spoken to a council member before the cemetery issue came up.
“We have in our neighborhood a really broad cross-section — teachers to policemen to oil workers. It wasn’t the elite neighborhood that was portrayed,” Rohloff said. “… There’s an awful lot of working-class neighbors in a neighborhood that is vehemently against (the cemetery site). I happen to be the spokesperson. I don’t feel it is fair to brand their viewpoint just because of me. Those same people do a heck of a lot of donating and fundraising for the community. I don’t know. I guess there was a real ouch felt in our neighborhood about an unfair accusation.”
Rohloff’s Mooring by the Sea neighborhood does contain high-value property. The average assessed parcel value for the 20 lots with homes along Riverwatch Drive and Knoll Circle within 675 feet of the proposed city-owned Redoubt cemetery site is $401,625. In contrast, the 15 developed residential lots ringing the parcels along Knight Drive that the city is now considering for a cemetery have an average assessed value of $246,467. Along with the teacher and trooper Rohloff mentioned, the Mooring by the Sea neighborhood also is home to dentists, the director of Kenai Peninsula College, a property appraiser, a real estate agent, a judge and prominent businessmen, to name a few. (Not all lived in the subdivision during the cemetery debate, and of those who did, not all spoke out about the issue.)
Another sentiment to come up in the debate is that the council was ignoring the wishes of homesteaders and other longtime residents who supported the city’s Redoubt site, in favor of more recent Soldotna residents in the adjoining neighborhoods. Tim Wisniewski, director of Peninsula Memorial Chapel, said that the funeral home will provide services to the new cemetery no matter where it is, but, personally, he thought Redoubt was the ideal location, especially since it is already city-owned land, was favored by two task forces, a majority of Soldotna voters and homesteaders.
“I really felt bad for most of the people who lived here for 40, 50 years. They were the ones who wanted the Redoubt site. They’re the people who built Soldotna and a lot these people, Johnny-come-latelys, just feel like it’s all for them. Just look at when there were no jobs and no economy, no nothing. These people still stayed here and made it a good community,” Wisniewski said.
Rohloff said it isn’t an issue of newcomer vs. homesteader. No matter what their property values or length of time in the community, residents still deserve to have their concerns heard, he said.
“The newcomer issue and the elite issue, I felt the opposing side broke that down into a class warfare, and I think that’s unjust,” he said. “A lot of the newcomers do a lot of nice things around the community, and I’ve lived here 12 years, which I guess makes me a newcomer in some people’s eyes. It’s that old, ‘Everybody’s a newcomer after me.’ That shouldn’t be the way.”
Next week: The city council switches focus away from the Redoubt site, prompting supporters of that parcel pursue a ballot initiative.
Grave issues — Neighbors raise issues with Redoubt selection
Traffic
Neighbors’ concern
Having a cemetery in the neighborhood would increase traffic on otherwise quiet neighborhood streets. Internment services might be held on weekdays, and could disrupt traffic patterns at Soldotna Middle and/or Redoubt Elementary schools. Increased traffic from services or cemetery visitors could pose a threat to kids, either from the schools or in the neighborhood.
Response
Cemeteries just aren’t all that busy, said Tim Wisniewski, director of Peninsula Memorial Chapel. With cremations becoming more and more popular, Wisniewski said a couple traditional burials a month would be a lot for the funeral home. Even then, the number of people and vehicles involved in a traditional burial are very rarely enough to impact traffic flows, he said. If it were, the funeral home could work with the school and Soldotna police to schedule burials for times that wouldn’t create a problem, he said. He already counsels families to schedule services after people are off work. Wisniewski also contested the idea that funeral processions are dangerous.
“We go right through Soldotna with processions, and Kenai, so it’s never an issue. We just go slow and stay in our lane so it’s pretty much organized. I think it’s totally absurd to think we would be some kind of traffic hazard,” he said.
Road access
Neighbors’ concern
Neighbors in the Mooring by the River subdivision to the north of the city’s parcel were concerned cemetery access would come through their small, quiet Riverwatch Drive, rather than West Redoubt Avenue. To have access off Redoubt, the city would need to get permission from the borough to build a road across its 10-acre parcel to get to the city’s parcel, and pay to build that long a road.
“If they accessed it off the Redoubt side, they would have to, number one, get approval from the borough and build a road across 10 acres of land to access the site, versus they have a city road that touches it. To me, the practicality of that seemed to scream it coming in off Riverwatch Drive,” said Jay Rohloff, president of the area homeowners’ association.
Rohloff said he remembers seeing at least two plans drawn up that had access coming in off Riverwatch. He didn’t remember when those plans were from.
“I heard the other side say, ‘No, no it’s going to go in on the other side.’ But the people on the other side weren’t thrilled about that, either. To me, they can say that all they want, but the practical point is when it comes to clearing land, they’re not going to clear across 10 acres when there’s a road that’s touching. It doesn’t make sense that it would go the other way,” Rohloff said.
Response
Boedeker said having cemetery access off Riverwatch was never the plan. It was always intended to go from Redoubt.
“When I was dealing with that, it was not really acceptable down Riverwatch. It was not wide enough and not designed for that kind of traffic, and why would you move it through that kind of neighborhood? My view was you were always going to have to develop something through the borough land,” he said.
Barbara Jewell, who served on the first two city cemetery task forces, also said the site was never intended to have access from Riverwatch.
“We never, ever, when we were proposing that, we never suggested that it would come through that neighborhood,” Jewell said.
Water contamination
Neighbors’ concern
Neighbors, especially those on well water, said they feared chemicals used in the embalming process might leach out of buried bodies and contaminate their water, or leach into the Kenai River. Research was presented to the city of examples showing where contamination had occurred from cemeteries.
Response
“That’s just something that’s been disproved time and time again,” Wisniewski said. “We even had people from the Anchorage cemetery, and we had an affidavit from the embalming chemical companies responding to their concerns, and everything’s been negated. I guarantee you, if we were polluting the groundwater, if there was a real environmental issue, you wouldn’t see cemeteries. It’s just that simple.”
Vandalism
Neighbors’ concern
The area, with the borough’s and city’s vacant lots, already has vandalism, and neighbors fear a cemetery would invite more, Rohloff said.
“The more secluded you make a site, the more chances for vandalism. As it stands now there have been some kids that set fires back here and things like that. So it isn’t always the best-patrolled thing,” he said.
Response
Tom Boedeker, former Soldotna city manager, said police would patrol the area, and he didn’t expect vandalism to be an issue.
“People heard these stories of parties and things, and I’ve been a lot of places, and I just don’t think there would be that many parties at the end of a street that would be regularly patrolled by police and that would be visible. I didn’t see it as an area that would be attracting drug dealers or anything like that,” he said.
Marty McGee, an assessor in Anchorage, said that, to his knowledge, Anchorage’s two cemeteries don’t draw increased vandalism. Parks, playgrounds and places like that are vandalized more, he said.
Property values
Neighbors’ concern
“For those of us surrounding (the proposed site) I did feel there was a pretty strong sentiment that it would have a negative effect on our property values, yes. … With the clearing of all the land, the traffic, the vandalism, it didn’t seem like it would be a positive thing for the property values,” Rohloff said.
He said he wouldn’t compare his neighborhood’s situation to cemeteries elsewhere because, “Each particular city is specific and how it would impact my property values are different.
“Did we hire 23 appraisers to figure that out? No, we did not. In talking to people who seemed reasonable and rational, it seemed a consensus that, yeah, it would hurt property values, and that was the consensus among people in the neighborhood. It was more of a gut feeling.”
Response
Shane Horan, retiring assessor with the Kenai Peninsula Borough and former Soldotna council member, said he’s seen no evidence of cemeteries negatively affecting property values anywhere on the peninsula, or in Juneau, where he worked for 20 years before coming to the peninsula.
“Based on my experience, I don’t think the Mooring by the River values would be impacted at all. I assured them everything would be done in the most respectful, tasteful, serene fashion possible,” he said.
Robin Potter, assessor for the city and borough of Juneau, submitted a letter saying that, “Juneau has several cemeteries, both historic and more recent, which are surrounded by residential property with no impact to value being evident.”
Marty McGee, an assessor in Anchorage, said the city has two cemeteries, one downtown and one in South Anchorage. One was put in with homes already in the area, and other people have chosen to build next to the cemeteries.
“Both have adjacent residential development. Neither have had any impact on values, desirability or salability of the property, etc.,” he said.
Size
Neighbors’ concern
The parcel is 10 acres, but the sedimentation pond takes up about three acres, and a slope coming up the bluff wouldn’t be usable for burials. That leaves about six to seven acres usable for a cemetery. And of that, there would need to be an access road that would probably have to be double-wide to accommodate people parking along it, Boedeker said.
Soldotna Mayor Peter Micciche said he saw the Redoubt site as only being big enough for 25 or 30 years.
“Even though less people are buried today, then were in the past, think of how difficult it is to find a cemetery site today in Soldotna. Then think about what it’s going to be like 30 years from now. The reality is we need to think about something that will service the community for a long time,” he said.
Response
Jim Fassler, a member of the first two city cemetery task forces, said six to seven acres would service the community for a long time.
“The argument is you can’t do that because where would we put everyone? My counter is you can put 700 graves per acres, times six. That takes a lot of years to run out,” he said.
Wisniewski said about 70 percent of people are opting for cremation these days. Even when family members want to bury cremated remains in order to have a memorial site to visit, five cremains fit in one traditional burial site. If a columbarium were built, that would house even more cremains.
