Editorial:

It was great to hear that Grand View Memorial Park will open again — even if for one day. And the 40-or-so community volunteers, including Boy Scouts, who rallied behind the cause and volunteered to staff the park are to be commended for their efforts.

But the cemetery’s operators can’t stop there, and expect that the city, or anyone else, is going to come to the rescue this time to keep it open longer.

Cemetery operators say there are three obstacles to opening the gates on a regular basis: staffing, which volunteers are now taking care of; maintenance, which they say they can pay for with the monthly income from rental properties in the site; and irrigation, which they want the city to pay for by forgiving their water bills.

But the idea of the city not charging them for water is absurd. The city is, and must run as, a business. And as much as residents want the cemetery open, they also want a viable city.

None of us wants to pay for water, or any other utility for that matter, but that is how society works. And for the sake of those who rest there, and those who visit, Grand View operator Moshe Goldsman must work more creatively to come up with a plan to pay for that water and keep the memorial park open on a more consistent basis.

Grand View, like every other property in the city, has a responsibility to pay its own bills. Anything else would be a breach of taxpayer trust, and the taxpayers have already helped Grand View quite a bit. They don’t deserve to be on the hook again for what has been a failing business.

And frankly, Grand View operators know darn well that they need to irrigate the park wether they open the gates or not because otherwise by the end of the summer they will face more problems with the Fire Department and city when the place is a dried-out fire hazard.

So, it may take some creative financing; it may take a novel way to leverage interest from the cemetery’s private endowment care fund or rental properties. But whatever the ultimate solution is, Grand View needs to figure out a way to cover its total costs to fulfill its promise of being a place where the living can reflect on their lost loved ones, and those buried can truly rest in peace.

The news that the troubled cemetery will be open on March 30 moves the process forward in fulfilling this Glendale landmark’s promise. Stakeholders, including Goldsman, are on the right track in meeting the needs of loved ones and visitors while figuring out how the cemetery can sustain itself.

Summer is right around the corner. That means more dry weather, which brings with it the looming and terrible prospect that the hot sun will once again dry out what are the cemetery’s beautiful grounds.

Overgrown grass and brittle trees — the conditions that led to the city’s filing of a public nuisance abatement action against the cemetery — cannot become the legacy of a place, where the view was supposed to be grand.

The city and the community have stepped up already to aid the troubled cemetery they really need to find a way to pay their water bills until they can sell the property, as a judge as ordered, and open the cemetery at least once a month.