Plans for a cemetery in the Snyderville Basin are taking shape, and the board guiding the effort to establish the area’s first burial ground wants community members to chime in with their feedback.
The Snyderville Basin Cemetery District Board has posted the first of several surveys to get initial information about the public’s preferences for final disposition, which include burial of a casket, burial or scattering of cremated remains, and “green burial” with no embalming, among other options.
The survey also asks for desired features such as traditional in ground burial plots, above-ground casket crypts in a mausoleum, sections with a monument set aside for a family, a scattering garden, an indoor chapel where services could be performed and a reception center.
The board’s job includes choosing a financing model and a survey question asks if respondents would support on the 2024 ballot a property tax increase of $400 or less per year on $1 million of assessed value to fund the district’s work establishing the cemetery.
“We’re hoping that this would be more than your typical cemetery because we’re in the Park City area,” said Max Greenhalgh, the board chair. “We’re known for open spaces and greenery so we envision having a cemetery that has burial sites within the natural landscape as much as possible.”
With Park City Cemetery restrictions preventing most people who live outside city limits from being buried there, Snyderville Basin residents voted in 2012 to create a cemetery district. The goal was to provide and maintain one or more public cemeteries for residents of the unincorporated area, which has more full-time residents than Park City, according to Greenhalgh.
However, no board was formed and the endeavor stalled until last year, when the Summit County Council voted to appoint board members.
The five applicants selected in August to serve are Greenhalgh, who was Summit County planning director from 1975 to 1978; Vice Chair Daniel Whitehurst, an attorney; Treasurer Pete Gillwald, a landscape architect with nearly 40 years of experience; Clerk Bill Oshinsky, president of Temple Har Shalom in Park City; and Christa Cassidy, a land-use planner who spearheaded a committee of community members pushing for the creation of a local cemetery.
The district is expecting to have about 25 burials a year, and the board is looking at county-owned parcels for an appropriate cemetery site, Greenhalgh said. There also have been discussions with leaders of the Snyderville Recreation District about cooperation regarding maintenance and trail connections to a cemetery.
The board hopes to narrow down possibilities to three by midsummer and to pick a final site by early 2025 after conducting tests to determine if the soil can accommodate a cemetery, he said. Construction could start after that.
Go to https://forms.gle/u2Fd2avA6S6DTXTz8 to take the survey in English. A Spanish-language version can be found here at https://forms.gle/NkiDr411ta5bwEy69.
Visit https://www.summitcounty.org/2401/Snyderville-Basin-Cemetery-District for more information about the cemetery district.