Pleasant View planning commission recommends adding ‘cemetery’ as conditional use in RE-20 with 5-acre minimum

The Pleasant View Planning Commission on Sept. 4 recommended that the city add a definition of “cemetery” to the municipal code and list cemeteries as a conditional use in the RE-20 residential estate zone, with a minimum lot size of five acres.

The change, presented by city staff member Tammy during the commission’s public hearing on the item, is intended to allow a cemetery planned by the city and the Ben Lomond Cemetery District to proceed on city-owned property currently zoned RE-20. “The city has been working kind of in partnership with the cemetery maintenance district in planning a cemetery location in Pleasant View,” Tammy said, describing the project as early in the design and subdivision stages.

Commissioners and members of the public raised concerns that adding “cemetery” as a permitted conditional use in RE-20 could enable private, small-scale cemeteries to locate anywhere RE-20 is allowed. Commissioner discussion focused on limiting unintended outcomes by either making cemeteries a community/public use or by applying minimum-lot-size and ownership qualifiers. “If we put cemetery as a use ... technically it could go in any place that is RE-20,” one commissioner…