Grand View stakeholders seek solution

NORTHWEST GLENDALE — As workers continue to clean up Grand View Memorial Park, stakeholders in the beleaguered cemetery are searching for a financial solution to cover the costs of reopening the facility to public visits.

The cemetery has been closed indefinitely since June, when city fire officials deemed the site a fire safety hazard, but maintenance crews have been trimming trees, clearing overgrown weeds and installing an aboveground irrigation system the past two weeks.

The work rejuvenated optimism that the park will reopen among commentators at an online group devoted to families with loved ones buried at Grand View. And to Moshe Goldsman, the cemetery’s operator and partial owner, the work looks like light at the end of a tunnel that has been mostly dark since state investigators in 2005 found the remains of about 4,000 bodies that were never buried or were improperly interred.

But when the initial cleanup work is done, a question mark could still hang over the park’s locked iron gates.

To cover the $105,000 worth of initial maintenance work, Goldsman dried up the accrued interest in a privately managed cemetery endowment fund. After paying a fee to fund managers and paying liability insurance, the cemetery nets about $1,300 a month from the fund, said David Baum, Goldsman’s attorney. Rental property owned by the cemetery generates another $1,200 a month, he said.

All told, the cemetery will still be hard-pressed to pay for ongoing upkeep needed to maintain the park’s soon-to-be-renewed condition, the water bill and staffing costs, he said.

“We can’t bear the entire burden,” Baum said. “We’re inviting participation from all the parties involved, and you know we certainly look forward to putting a plan together, and hopefully we’ll be able to get participation from the city and maybe from the attorneys handling the plaintiffs’ lawsuit.”

Starting in fall 2006, the city of Glendale was committing taxpayer dollars to open the park twice a month on Sundays for public visitations. But when fire officials deemed the park a safety hazard, the City Council canceled the visits and later filed a public nuisance abatement action that would have allowed the city to clean up the facility at the owners’ expense.

Now that Goldsman is on the way toward mitigating the safety hazards, he hopes the city will again commit resources to staff the park and resume limited public access.