Complaints halt concrete storage bins
City cemetery officials had plans to build four covered, 17-foot-tall bins to store dirt and sod out of the rain and frost, but neighbors' complaints of the bins' size have scrapped the project. Within the next two weeks, the walls will be torn down, and cemetery employees will go back to shovelling mud and frozen dirt, said American Fork sexton Ray Garrett.
"That's what makes this country so good," said Garrett, who is sympathetic to residents' complaints of the walls' ugly exterior. "We had to go through the system, and the system is what stopped us, too. It's all good; we'll just have to hunt and figure something out that would benefit the cemetery and the citizens."
Garrett said his department spent about $65,000 from its budget to build the walls — construction on the structure stopped about a month ago when the complaints started rolling in — so now it doesn't have any funds to build anything else.
Garrett said he followed the city's process for getting the bins approved. Both the Planning Commission and the City Council agreed to the plans before work on the bins started, but Garrett hit a snag with a last-minute change of the direction in which the buildings would face.
Garrett didn't go back to the Planning Commission to ask for permission to approve the change and, ultimately, when the neighbors complained, that's what stopped the project from progressing.
"I think that's where we got into trouble," Garrett said. "We should have gone back to the commission to get it approved (before beginning construction), but I think even if we had gotten it approved, we would still have to tear the building down. But then it would have been on the (Planning Commission's) shoulders instead of ours."
Garrett says he doesn't have any hard feelings about the neighbors' complaints. He says the plans were to landscape the area in front of the bins, located on the corner of 100 West and 700 North, and put stucco over the concrete, but residents of the area say that wouldn't change the buildings' impact.
"It really doesn't belong there," said Jeff Sermon, who lives near the cemetery. "There's nothing you can do to mitigate the impact of it by having bushes or berms. ... We just wanted to have (the Planning Commission) remove it."
Sermon said he isn't trying to attack the cemetery by opposing the bins — he says the cemetery's grounds are the most beautiful in Utah County — but he and 140 other residents who signed a petition against the bins don't think the walls need to be so tall and the storageso close to the cemetery.
"I think the city is doing the right thing and the responsible thing and the appropriate thing by removing it," Sermon said. "(Cemetery officials) have been very good to work with, and they're doing the right thing. As citizens, we appreciate that."
E-mail: achoate@desnews.com
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