Work set to start on Grand View

LOS ANGELES — Work needed to abate fire and safety hazards at Grand View Memorial Park could start as early as today after a judge on Wednesday modified an evidence preservation order that had prohibited the property owner from doing the maintenance.

David Baum, the attorney representing cemetery operator Moshe Goldsman in a series of lawsuits filed against Grand View, said modification of the order was needed to allow the cemetery to rectify a string of city code violations related to hundreds of overgrown or dead trees on the property.

In court documents submitted Tuesday, Baum included a contractor’s estimate for tree removal and trimming, plus installation of an aboveground irrigation system and landscape clean-up work for $105,400.

“Our contractor is anxious to begin immediately because he’s set aside this time to do the work,” Baum said. “He’s even ready to start, like, tomorrow.”

Goldsman’s recent steps toward mitigating the code violations stem from a public nuisance abatement action filed in September by the city of Glendale, in which the citysought authorization to do the maintenance work without the property owner’s permission and at the property owner’s cost.

But both parties have agreed to an informal resolution stipulating that the city will drop its complaint if Goldsman completes the necessary work to mitigate the cemetery’s code violations, according to court documents.

“When the city decided that corrections needed to be made immediately, they filed that complaint,” Baum said. “Once we received it, we needed to take pretty immediate action, and that’s what brought about the present request for modification.”

The cemetery has been embroiled in controversy since October 2005, when state inspectors found the remains of about 4,000 people that were never buried or properly disposed of there.

The state removed the late former cemetery owner Marsha Lee Howard from her duties and replaced her with Goldsman, who owns a 49% stake in the business. But Goldsman, citing financial woes and the inability to secure liability insurance, closed the cemetery in June 2006.