SHREWSBURY – The design and permitting to expand Mountain View Cemetery is among the articles going before Town Meeting Oct. 17.
“The Mountain View Cemetery is nearly at capacity and the Town has been limiting burial plot sales to only those with an immediate need,” the warrant read.
According to Director of Public Works Jeffrey Howland, the current proposal is considered phase one of the design process and would include a cemetery that would last 50 years.
During the Oct. 6 Select Board meeting, Howland said there are 157 graves left to sell.
The Department of Public Works is seeking to raise and appropriate or transfer from available funds $200,000 to develop an adjacent cemetery across the street in part of the lower portion of Prospect Park.
Howland noted that the funding covers costs for the design, permitting and bid documents of the cemetery.
Back in 1976, the town purchased Prospect Park and established the Masonic Home Study Committee, which recommended that the park be used as an expansion of the cemetery, according to Howland.
Since then, Howland said the town has conducted many studies, which examined the park and its potential to serve as a cemetery.
He added that funding for a cemetery expansion concept plan, which was developed by a consultant hired by the town, was approved during the 2019 Town Meeting.
Howland said the cemetery would not be a “conventional cemetery,” but a “passive open space” type of cemetery, which would include “meandering graves tucked within the existing landscape.”
Furthermore, the proposal includes the addition of a parking lot that is “just beyond” the Prospect Park gate and a walking path between the entrance to the cemetery park and the Prospect Park entrance, according to Howland.
“We would like people to be able to prepare for their long-term final resting place in a more planful and thoughtful way than [their families] having to wait to see if there would be something available after their passage,” said Town Manager Kevin Mizikar.
Shrewsbury’s Town Meeting will be held at 7 p.m. at Oak Middle School.
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