Birmingham City Council wants fix for troubled Zion Memorial cemetery

The Birmingham City Council voted today 7-0 to pass a resolution urging the owners of the Zion Memorial Gardens Cemetery in the eastern section of the city to properly maintain the facility after numerous recent complaints by area residents.

The resolution was submitted and recommended by Councilor William Parker. The facility is located in his district at 501 Tarrant Huffman Road.

Parker said that about 100 residents from the area attended a recent public meeting regarding Zion Memorial and had numerous complaints about the facility’s upkeep.

“The customer service is poor” at the cemetery, and “the residents are tired,” Parker said during the meeting today.

It has taken up to “six months to a year” for customers to have broken headstones replaced, according to Parker, citing complaints he’s heard.

There is also a need to dramatically upgrade some of the roads and fencing at the cemetery, according to Parker.

“There were people crying” at the first public meeting, Parker said this afternoon. “That’s how upset people are.”

The councilor said that he is also working with area’s state representatives to try to get a solution to the problem.

The council’s resolution today stated that the owners of the facility should “comply with all city and state laws and regulations relative to the operation and upkeep.”

Prior to the vote today, Councilwoman Lashunda Scales asked Mayor Bell if there was a way for the city to use existing ordinances as a way to force the cemetery’s owners to maintain the facility.

The city has little if any legal authority to do so, Bell said, citing in part a study of the issue he said the city commissioned about 12 to 15 years ago. “To my knowledge, we have no authority over cemeteries,” he said.

However, the mayor acknowledged that improperly maintained cemeteries are a serious problem, one that the city and the state of Alabama – which is responsible for regulating cemeteries – must deal with.

“For at least 20 years, we’ve been dealing with cemeteries abandoned by corporate owners or escrow funds set up for maintenance that have been raided,” he said.

Bell said that he would like to see the Alabama Legislature create a fund to help maintain abandoned cemeteries and to give cities “more leeway” in maintaining oversight over such facilities.

Another public meeting on the issue is scheduled for the Brownsville Heights Community Center, located at 9255 Airport Road, on Thurs., Sept. 29, at 5:30 p.m.

Parker said that the area’s state representative are scheduled to attend the meeting. He also expressed the hope that the owner of the cemetery will attend the meeting, as well. “We need the decision makers there,” he said, adding that, ‘This issue is real.”

“The residents are ready to march,” Parker said. “They are ready to protest.”

The owner, Cedric McMillan, was not in the office when Iron City Ink called today for comment.

According to wiat.com, the owner of the cemetery said that he just took over the property a year ago and inherited some of these problems. He also told the station that some of the facility’s maintenance equipment was stolen this summer.