So far, Carrboro hasn’t backed away from its conceptual plan for expanding its graveyard throughout all of our Fidelity open green space.
Pittsboro does not have a town graveyard and Hillsborough’s has sold all of its plots.
In 2016 Chapel Hill sold the vacant land next to their graveyard instead of expanding it.
In 2022 cremations were used 60% of the time nationwide; that trend is accelerating as it broadens across ethnic groups.
But on February 7, while aware of a 2016 proposal to create a park in the Fidelity open green space, Carrboro Town Council voted 5-2 to continue selling the few remaining plots along Davie to non-residents at one-fourth of market value!
By refusing to restrict these sales only to Carrboro residents with kin buried along Davie, the Council committed itself to being pressured to continue rushing headlong into expanding that graveyard into this meadow.
This precious land is part of our Carrboro family’s legacy.
We should treasure and preserve its openness in the coming years; this will provide flexibility to future generations.
It would be short-sighted to squander it to accomplish very little.
Council is so far ignoring Comp Plan & neighborhood
The town’s Comprehensive Plan for 2022-2042 promised to involve our neighborhood in a planning process for this open green space.
But in spite of our group’s frequently raising concerns since October 2020 about their graveyard expansion plans, the Town still has not informed our neighborhood about their ongoing planning to expand.
There is a graveyard alternative to expanding into Fidelity open green space
There is no inevitability when it comes to the question of expanding the Davie graveyard and there should be no presumption on the part of the Council that this is somehow necessary.
If the Council wants to stay in the business of selling burial plots, then they should look into buying some beautiful inexpensive rural land five minutes out on Jones Ferry.
Many traditional families might instead prefer a simple cemetery in a quiet beautiful rural setting.
In October 2021 an expert on northern Chatham real estate said land near Jones Ferry & Damascus Church could be bought for only $30,000 per acre, or $90,000 for the 3 acres it would take to replace our meadow for new graves.
That intersection is only 5 minutes from Fidelity & Davie.
New graveyards are always put on the outskirts of towns.
Doing this here would benefit of far more people in the coming centuries as it would free up Carrboro’s far more valuable and irreplaceably centrally located land on Fidelity for a new park.
Graveyards aren’t sustainable and a compromise makes no sense
Councilors who insist upon expanding into our meadow before they have even heard from a fully informed public say some families with kin buried along Davie prefer to have their new plots in the same graveyard.
But Carrboro is all about sustainability, and nothing is more unsustainable than a graveyard:
Once the meadow is filled up with 2,800 more graves on top of the 2,231 graves we are already hosting, there will be hundreds of families confronted with the same cut-off reality.
A compromise won’t accomplish anything at all:
If the Council decides to use only one acre for 700 more graves, then in as little as 7 years those 700 families who are about to experience a cut-off will insist upon a further expansion.
GY2 Morality and Politics continues Graveyard?
Make Carrboro Parks 