By Nate Jones

Staff Writer 

Contrary to a long tradition of friendly “give and take” agreements between the South Portland City Council and the Highland Memorial Cemetery Association, Monday the city council buried a request for an easement to a city-owned parcel abutting the Highland Memorial Cemetery for construction of a new storage facility. 

It is the second time the association had requested access to city-owned property for what City Manager Jim Gaily called “some moving room” since 2005, when the city granted the cemetery a long-term easement to 10,000 square feet of unused land abutting their property. 

“That’s quite a chunk of land,” City Councilor Tom Blake said. “Use the site you do have, I think you can make it fit.”

Highland Memorial Cemetery Association Director Arthur Smith – who has been volunteering his time at the cemetery for the past 34 years – said the 10,000 square foot parcel already used by the association would not be large enough for a storage shed in addition to a planned chapel, parking and possibly a crematorium. The cemetery has “outgrown” its current storage facility to the point where the association was forced to leave a pick-up truck outside last winter. 

Smith said the new garage – more than 300 feet from Highland Avenue – would not be visible from the street and could be accessed through already existing cemetery property. 

“It’s a jungle, you can’t walk through it,” he said. “There’s plenty of buffer.”

Councilor Linda Boudreau said she would rather make a spot for the vehicle in the old National Guard Armory, which is already used to house municipal property and vehicles during the winter months. 

“There have been two requests in a short period of time to city property, we don’t want to start a trend,” she said.

Smith said the association once granted the city up to 14 acres of land to help accommodate the Portland Pipeline Corporation development – an agreement predating the entire current council – and routinely waived its right to collect municipal funding for veterans at the cemetery “because [the association] had such great cooperation with the city.”

“There’s been some give and take on our side too,” he said.

Blake said he would be more in favor of the easement if the cemetery proposed a “land swap” – an idea both Councilor Claude Morgan and Mayor James Soule agreed with – rather than granting a long-term easement. 

“A good faith swap makes it justifiable for me going back to the taxpayer,” Morgan said. “I would be pretty ‘loosey-goosey’ in coming up with terms of that type of agreement.”

Councilor Maxine Beecher said she hoped the city might one day adopt the cemetery as municipal property and said she wasn’t necessarily opposed to granting the easement.

“I recognize the work these people put in to make it a nice place for people’s last address,” she said. “I don’t understand this as a problem.”

Gailey said he would discuss the proposal with Smith before bringing it back to the council’s attention in another workshop. 

“It’s not a real ‘No,’” Boudreau said, “Just come up with something different.”