The residents near Burnaby's Ocean View Burial Park are tired of scratching their heads in trying to figure out what the cemetery's next move is.
Gordon Smith, who lives across the street from Ocean View on Arbor Street, expressed his and his neighbours' frustrations at what he calls a marble wall going up in the community.
Ocean View is run by Dignity Memorial, which is one of the largest networks of funeral, cremation and cemetery service providers in North America.
Smith says the cemetery is building three more mausoleums that are 37 feet high, 100 ft. long and 80 ft. wide, which will form a quadrangle.
"The effect of this will be a wall of marble-faced concrete at least 180 ft. long in the clear view of anybody who lives near the area or anybody who passes along Joffre (Avenue)," Smith told city council Monday night. "So far as we know, this proposal has never come before anyone officially, but the planning department has in its possession the drawings for the east-west building."
Smith said the original paintings made up show that trees would line the site, but they do not exist.
"There are grave sites instead," he added. "To date, Dignity Memorial has made no effort to do anything to contact us."
Smith said the neighbourhood wants to see the full-site plan.
"We'd like to know exactly what they propose to do," he said. "We do not believe that a multi-national corporation such as Dignity Memorial does not have a long-term plan for development.
"And we'd like to see it before they go further."
Smith said it's not the first issue the neighbourhood has had with the cemetery - and that the neighbourhood is paranoid when it comes to Ocean View's development.
Smith noted that when construction was happening before, crews were starting work around 5 a.m., despite bylaws stating work can't start until 7 a.m.
"Building inspectors last time around went down there on half a dozen locations because they were starting at 5 and 6 o'clock in the morning where they were building the original one," he said. "Now they start precisely at 7, but there's very frequently a line up of dump trucks on Joffre (Avenue), engines idling, any time after 6 o'clock."
Mayor Derek Corrigan asked staff to prepare a report to address the issues brought up by Smith.
Corrigan also noted the city's limited authority over cemeteries, as it's under provincial jurisdiction.
"We've been down this road, attempting to assert authority over the cemeteries and meeting with legal requirements that come from the provincial government, that the provincial government has been determined to uphold even with municipalities opposing them," he said. "It's difficult and we'll try again to explain in a report what the limitations of our (authority is)."
Smith asked council to convince Dignity Memorial to involve the community in its plans.
"I don't want to plug up Joffre (Avenue) with the cars of my neighbors because that's just going to cause more problems," he said. "They need to talk to us. They need to tell us what's going on."
Coun. Nick Volkow said that there's no difference between the mausoleums and the self-storage units on Marine Drive.
"Our authority is very limited . but I think the opportunity for myself as a councillor (is) to be able to berate these so-called corporate citizens in our community, in the court of public opinions, is always a good thing."
Volkow said he's also curious about the cemetery's overall plan.
"I wonder what they're planning five to 10 years down the road," he added.
Volkow also noted that if the trucks are idling in the morning, the city should ticket them. [email protected]
