This past week, Q-line asked:
City officials are considering a plan to lift the residency requirement at Woodlawn Cemetery. Cemetery officials say it would help raise funds to maintain the facility. Do you think Woodlawn should be reserved for residents or do you think opening it up to others is a sound decision given the current economic slump?
Here are your responses:
“Woodlawn Cemetery is larger than it appears and your question of the week indicates that business is slow, perhaps due to cremation, a choice that many families make these days due to burial costs. I see little harm in opening the cemetery. I am certain that those now residing in Woodland Cemetery will not mind.”
“Woodlawn Cemetery and all others should be closed. Dead bodies should be sent to medical schools for the benefit of mankind. What good does it do to rot or be burnt to ashes?”
“Woodlawn Cemetery should be open to residents only. Period. Let the city administration find the money to maintain it when necessary. We can find, or I should say THEY can find, money to feed, clothe, house and entertain the bums from all over the country. Do something for the residents once in a while. Remember us? The taxpayers?”
“That cemetery must be pretty popular. People are just dying to get in.”
“Yes, the cemetery should be restricted to residents only. The only thing is, every day I walk around Santa Monica, running errands and just getting some exercise, I see more and more moving vans with people leaving Santa Monica and more and more for rent, lease signs or for sale that never seem to move. How many residents will soon be left, unless the city counts the growing population of bums and freeloaders from all over California and the country? But then they will have to pay for their internment, much like they, or rather the taxpayers, pay for everything else. It’s a bit of a dilemma isn’t it?”
“I think Woodland Cemetery should just be reserved for Santa Monica residents. If they’re having problems getting people to know about the cemetery, they just need to advertise and get the message out there that they have plots to sell.”
“I am amazed that the City of Santa Monica hasn’t been hauled into court regarding its exclusivity policies at Woodlawn Cemetery. I live near 914 Fourth St. which has just been purchased by the Community Corporation of Santa Monica with taxpayer funds. The Community Corporation does not reserve most of its units for residents of the City of Santa Monica, and I’m surprised given the fact that the taxpayer funds are involved with Community Corporation that there should be any expectation at all that Woodlawn Cemetery should be reserved exclusively for Santa Monicans.”
“This town reminds me of “Saturday Night Live,” once funny 25 years ago, now just sad. Last week’s brilliant idea was a forced day off for city workers, supposedly to help balance our bloated half-billion dollar a year budget. Now we are going to sell space to dead people to balance the budget. How pathetic have we become? Let me repeat. This town is all about someone else. Light rail for L.A., beach club for tourists and East L.A.-ers, new schools for non-resident students, whole car lanes for weekend bike riders, overzealous funding for numerous nonprofits, a fiscal black hole pier, a concert hall for entertainment literati, one lane expensive politically correct big brother buses to control the herds. Now outside dead people are going to support all of this. I can hear it now: “Santa Monica, the place to be by the sea in your mound, under the ground.” What a great town.”
“No, I think the people of Santa Monica should be buried at Woodlawn. We’re a small community and I think we should have our own cemetery. I have a plot there. It’s small, it’s quiet and who wants to go to these other places? No. Leave it to Santa Monica.”
“City Hall must develop everything. Now it wants to develop the cemetery even further. Residents need only think of the long line of hearses and the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the crematorium should this thing go commercial. It is absolutely the wrong idea.”
“I’m calling about whether the cemetery should be left to the citizens of Santa Monica or not. The City Council people will need money forever so now we’ll give the cemetery to the outsiders and then the City Council will decide that maybe it’s about time for somebody else to move into our homes. There’s never an end with them.”
