Residents Along The Property Line Don't Like Susong Cemetery Gravesite Plans

BRISTOL, Va. – Some Elmo Street residents are upset about a Susong Cemetery Association plan that would bring gravesites within a few feet of their backyards.
Resident Landon Mann said Tuesday he’s considering legally challenging plans to sell burial plots along a 75-foot-wide strip of cemetery property that abuts his property. The land, between the cemetery’s northern boundary and Walnut Drive, abuts the property of more than a dozen Elmo Street homes.
“We were told, when we bought property here, that [cemetery] land would never be used for burials. It would only be used for parking for funerals,” Mann said, adding he has no paperwork to back up that assertion.
Neighbor Chassie Van Pool, who’s lived in her Elmo Street home for 12 years, said she also understood the land wouldn’t be used for burials.
“I just don’t like it, They [trustees] should have come by. I don’t think that’s enough space between my fence and that [cemetery],” Van Pool said.
Current zoning prescribes a 10-foot buffer zone between the cemetery and adjoining property.
The first burial in the new section is scheduled for today.
On Monday, Mann presented a petition to the city’s Planning Department, asking city leaders to impose a 25-foot buffer zone and some type of plant screening for separation. Residents of 13 of 15 Elmo Street homes signed the petition.
City Manager Bill Dennison said the city has no standing in the dispute.
“The city has no involvement whatsoever,” Dennison said. “The cemetery is an established property that is properly zoned. We cannot go in there and apply restrictions that don’t exist [in city code]. The only way it could come into play is if they [association] wanted to build an above-ground mausoleum. That hasn’t been advanced, but that would put setback regulations into effect.”
Ralph Roark – one of seven trustees appointed by Circuit Judge Larry Kirksey – said the expansion is the only way for the historic cemetery to survive.
“We’re broke. We don’t have any money, so we’re selling plots to try and keep the cemetery going,” Roark said Tuesday. “The only way we’ve had to make money for upkeep is through donations. These people have got no beef. I understand they don’t want a cemetery in their backyard, but it was here long before their houses were.”
Roark said the trustees want to meet with residents to try and address their concerns.
During a sometimes tense, face-to-face meeting Tuesday with Roark, Mann said it’s too late.
“You should have done that six months ago,” Mann told Roark.
Survey work began a few weeks ago, but neither Mann nor his neighbors were notified about the expansion, he said.
In recent weeks, volunteer workers began removing trees and grading a small section of the property.
In response to the petition, Roark said trustees don’t plan to expand the buffer zone, but might consider adding some type of shrubbery to screen the view.
Trustees plan to mandate that all markers in the new section be ground level, instead of upright, to lessen the impact on residents, Roark said.
“We want to try to be good neighbors,” he said. “We’d like to try to get this ironed out. We don’t want hard feelings here; this is a cemetery.”
In addition to the buffer difference, Mann wants to maintain vehicle access to a gate at the rear of his property, which would mean driving across the cemetery property.
He plans to claim the section of cemetery land that abuts his property under the state’s adverse possession law.
“I’ve taken care of this property for 33 years. I know my rights and under the adverse possession law in Virginia, it’s 15 years,” Mann said of cemetery land between his property and Walnut Drive.
Adverse possession is a doctrine of state real estate law where a party takes “possession of property, improves it and possesses it in a public manner,” according to the Web site Findlaw.com.
Any such claim would have to be filed in Circuit Court.
Roark said property owners don’t have standing because the previous cemetery owners did some “bush-hogging” of the property.
“We’ll see them in court. I don’t care if it costs me $5,000,” Mann said.

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