30+ Possible Things You Could Say
* I vote in Carrboro and your position on the Fidelity Park will influence how I vote this November 7. (Romaine, Posada, Slade will be up for re-election.)
* I’m in favor of equitable access to parks and natural spaces in Carrboro.
* In the short term far more people will use this space as a park each week than people would use it as a graveyard.
* Our publicly-owned 5.5 acres of open green space on Fidelity is a priceless part of our town’s inheritance. It would be immoral to take it away forever from countless future generations who will live here long after any new graves put into this meadow are long forgotten. Our generation should leave it open for our park use and to provide flexibility to future communities.
* Please spend the money needed to buy 3 nearby beautiful rural acres for a new graveyard, so we can get the park we deserve! The Town can always get more money, but graveyard expansion will take this land away forever.
* I work very long hours and I need a nearby place to rest and refresh.
* Just because many of us will be moving away in a couple of years does not mean we are any less human or in less need of a park and a natural space. Please stop ignoring our presence and our humanity!
* It’s important for the 500+ residents who live in condos and apartments on Fidelity and Davie to have walkable access to open green space, and hundreds more residents on Jones Ferry and Poplar will also benefit.
* I don’t own a car.
* I’m a single parent and I don’t have the time to drive to a park.
* Once a new graveyard is established and the Davie graveyard is screened from our open space by native species, I would like to see the following things situated in a quiet and respectful park on Fidelity (choose your favorites): picnic tables, a community garden, a jogging trail, benches, a dog park, a playground, or a platform for yoga, ceremonies, and star gazing.
* Public gathering spaces build community: Parents meet parents, yoga students meet yoga students, stargazers meet stargazers, etc.
* Please don’t try to impose a “mixed use” plan for this tract upon our neighborhood, which would allow you to claim that you are providing us with a park as you are actually expanding the graveyard. I am not at all comfortable being around graves, and the folks for whom the graveyard has the most importance would detest having young transplants recreating around the graves of their family members.
* What better place could there be for a new playground than right next to Carrboro’s pediatricians’ office?!
* It is important to keep this space open and free of gravestones and cemetery structures so that it can continue to serve as green lungs to clean and cool the air the people in most densely populated part of Carrboro will breath every day. Otherwise, the current Urban Heat Island along Fidelity will be worsened.
* By spending just $100,000 to buy 3 nearby beautiful rural acres for a new graveyard, the Council will in essence be acquiring 3 centrally located acres for a new park in the densest part of town for only 5% of the funds it would take to buy 3 other comparably central acres (if they were available.)
* By winning the 1989 Carrboro election, our neighborhood saved this meadow by killing the Council’s plan to sell it for a new post office. So it’s OUR meadow!
* Any graves put into our meadow will be there permanently and in the coming decades their presence will deprive thousands of hard working nearby residents of a place to relax and to refresh. In less than one hundred years these graves will be largely forgotten after the meadow has been filled up. In the long run, what will that accomplish?
* Pittsboro and Hillsborough don’t have municipal graveyards, and Chapel Hill stopped selling burial plots in 2016. Please close the Davie graveyard once the area along that road is soon sold out, and get our town out of the cemetery business altogether.
* As a local business owner, an employee of a Carrboro business, or a local artist I feel I am helping to make Carrboro the vibrant place to live that it is, and I would like to see the Town give something to my neighborhood in return.
* I have seen how plush the MLK Park on the other side of town is, and I can’t understand why the Council doesn’t think we are deserving of a modest park of our own.
* Many retirees live in this neighborhood. Some can’t drive and some can’t walk very far. There are also some disabled folks.
* Carrboro is supposed to be all about sustainability, but there is nothing more unsustainable than a graveyard .. they all fill up eventually!
* If you want me to respect the cultural traditions of other (large extended) families, then please consider that my (tiny unextendable) family, which has been on the move for generations, has always chosen cremation. Why do you expect me to forego equitable access to a park to respect your particular traditions, and for a very particular location? Carrboro is diverse and families always get split between graveyards!
* The Town spent much time and money on the twenty year Comprehensive Plan. Creating a park on Fidelity would help to fulfill its goal of “Ensure all people have equitable access to parks and open space.”
* If you don’t want to buy new land for a graveyard, then please use less than 5% of Anderson Park out on Hwy 54 for this new graveyard. That Town-owned land is not surrounded by crowded condos and apartments. By preserving the dog park out there, the council is saying that they value the dogs of the folks who are well-off enough to have the time and money for both a car and a dog over my human needs.
* If the Council wanted to provide continual burial services, then it should have planned ahead and have set up a new rural graveyard by now. Why are you going to permanently punish the people who live in our neighborhood with a “compromise” that will soon fill up part of this precious open space and accomplish nothing in the long run?
* In 2020 cremations were used 56% of the time nationwide and are projected to increase to 78% by 2040. In 2050, what fraction of Carrboro’s population will still care about any new 2025 graves here (which could go out on Jones Ferry instead)?
* Plot sales along Davie doubled by 2018 after Chapel Hill stopped its sales. Why is the council insisting upon continuing to sell parts of our meadow to non-residents at one-fourth of the market value for burials that might not occur until decades from now?
* Urban green spaces provide valuable refuges for migratory birds and other wildlife. Carrboro is supposed to be protecting its pollinators and its trees.
* This is a great place for stargazing! It’d be even better if you could provide a code-operated kill switch for the light that would turn it back on after 30 minutes.
* I’ve used this spot to watch many gorgeous sunsets. I wouldn’t want to do that standing in the middle of graves.
* Someone needs to explain to us why we don’t deserve a large green park like those on the other side of Main Street. It’s not fair to regard the Farmer’s Market as serving our park needs. Are we subhuman because we live in apartments? We can’t use the Farmer’s Market much of the time on weekends, and over half of it is pavement. Please refer to the professionally prepared ParkServe map to see that our side of town deserves a park on Fidelity.
* It is unfair that the Council has already begun to decide to expand the graveyard before it has heard from the public and the staff about the need for a park on this side of Main Street, and before members of the public have had an opportunity to submit ideas for a park on Fidelity. Please do not conduct any more “graveyard work sessions” before you have publicized this issue and heard from the public. Do trials begin before evidence has been collected?
PH1 Petition + Helps was previous page
Make Carrboro Parks 