Ohio cemetery cleanup leads to ordinance talks
MAUMEE, Ohio (AP) – The extensive efforts required to repair headstones damaged when chunks of ice along a northwest Ohio river pushed into a cemetery last spring has city officials looking for ways to better enforce an ordinance restricting the size of grave markers.
Crews at Riverside Cemetery in Maumee have been averaging 30 repairs a day to headstones after ice jams flooded the Maumee River in March, The (Toledo) Blade reported. Hundreds of headstones were displaced, including some dating to the mid-1800s.
But cemetery sexton Alan Taraschke said the stones’ size is challenging for repairmen, with some taking several hours to reset.
“When you get into the bigger headstones, instead of 20 or 30 a day, you’re talking five or six,” Taraschke said. “There’s a 4-foot-by-8-foot stone there. I expect that will take one entire day.”
Maumee’s building and lands committee is considering enforcing a 1982 ordinance that caps the size of headstones at the city-owned cemetery to 42 inches in height.
The city doesn’t sign off on stones before they’re placed, which has made the policy hard to enforce, officials said.
Maumee needs to establish a policy to approve grave markers, said Brent Buehrer, city council president and chairman of the committee.
“I think we need to look at if we need to stiffen the policy on what we allow out there,” he said.
About two-thirds of the overturned and displaced stones have been replaced, with city workers logging an estimated 1,000 hours at the cemetery.
Estimates for repairs to the cemetery and a city road also damaged by the ice chunks were initially around $1 million, but the city has worked to keep costs down and repairs have been under budget, said Joe Camp, director of public services.
Taraschke said he expects the work to be completed by fall.