District of 100 Mile House council will approve a Cemetery Amendment Bylaw on Oct. 28 that clarifies it is not responsible for repairs or replacements to memorials damaged by routine maintenance or vandalism.
District chief administration officer Roy Scott says the request for change originated from operations staff.
In some cases, the municipality has had to pay for memorial replacements due to the previous lack of liability language in the bylaws, he notes.
“If there is any negligence involved, or we knock something over with a piece of equipment, absolutely [we would replace it].
“It’s [about] the normal day-to-day cutting of the grass, moving snow – and things due to weather, and we get blamed for that. It’s trying to limit any liability or risk on our part.”
District director of operations Phil Strain notes the municipality is taking these measures to try to avoid misunderstandings about liability for damage to memorials.
“We’ve had people come in here very upset that their memorial has either been stolen or damaged by vandalism, and they feel it is the District that should replace it.
“We researched these two clauses that we put in, and at least 95 per cent of the cemetery bylaws in the province have similar wording to this.”
Sometimes damage can occur from mowers and other maintenance equipment, despite the District’s practice to inspect for shifted or risen stones from frost heave, and levelling them out, he explains.
“Even minor chipping and scratching, you can’t help that when you are maintaining a cemetery, but we get certain people in who demand we replace them. So, this just clarifies it and we have something that we can show them….”
The District “always” tries to minimize damage and does maintain the grave sites regularly, Strain adds.
“We have a summer student that’s more or less dedicated to doing that kind of work throughout the summer.”
Strain encourages people to report damaged memorials and ground heaving or settling at the graves to the District public works yard at 250-395-2123, or to e-mail him directly at pstrain@dist100milehouse.bc.ca.
“We do get people coming in and saying they noticed the graves either sinking or the memorial is frost heaved, and then we address them right away.
“We always need to know that because if we see a constant set of vandalisms we can get the police notified and they can do some extra checks through there.”
The District will continue to provide the labour to reset a memorial replacement, but won’t cover the costs of any damage that is not directly a result of staff negligence, he notes.
