4/7/2023 0 Comments War of beach 2017 tacticsWest said, “If it comes to that, we would certainly take a hard look at taking it over. In a few weeks or months people who want to come and visit their relatives will complain to the city and eventually the city will have to take it.” “If they don’t have enough money to maintain it, they’ll have to close the gates with chains and locks. “Have they chained it up yet?” was Long Beach mortician Ken McKenzie’s reaction when we told him we were writing about Sunnyside. “The subject has popped up more recently, but it still comes down to the same concerns.”Īt least one local mortician has had concerns about the fate of Sunnyside. “That was the last time we conducted a study into the matter,” said City Manager Pat West. In 2009, the city conducted a report on the feasibility of annexing Sunnyside and found it would become a financial burden because of its insufficient funds. The board has tried repeatedly to give Sunnyside to the city, which already operates and maintains the 3.5-acre Long Beach Municipal Cemetery adjacent to Sunnyside, but the city has expressed no interest in being saddled with a graveyard that’s going to wind up eating into its general fund. They’ve run out of steam, so I stepped in to see if we can at least keep it open until we can figure out a good action plan.” “We have one who’s had five strokes, a couple have just pulled up and moved away. “Our board members are old,” said Thomas. Her boyfriend Wayne Wilms, whose son is buried at Sunnyside, is on the board and, though he’s retired, he’s one of the youngsters in the aging group. Nevertheless, the cemetery has paid $284,000 in water bills over the last 16 years.įollowing the theft of funds, the state stepped in to take over the operation of the cemetery, but in 1999 it turned over the property to Sunnyside Cemetery Inc., a not-for-profit group made up of relatives of people buried at the graveyard.Įlizabeth Thomas is one of the few people who volunteer to help out at Sunnyside. “Not enough to make the grass green, but enough to keep it alive.” Its largest expense is irrigation “and we do very little,” said Miner. ![]() It now gets about $70,000 from the fund each year. The owner was convicted of grand theft and other charges in 1996 and given a four-year sentence.īecause Sunnyside’s operating costs come from the interest accrued by the endowment funds (the cemetery cannot touch the principal) it lost more than 50 percent of its funding as a result of the theft. Sunnyside’s steady decline started in 1994 when its owner stole more than $525,000 from its $1 million endowment care funds, blowing it on a Mercedes-Benz, a whopping bar tab, alimony and rent and cutting the cemetery’s operating capital in half. All I got was this lousy T-shirt,” he laughed. “I remember one was called ‘Downward Angel,’ because I got a T-shirt from them. ![]() “There were others that no one would recognize the names of,” said Miner. The cemetery was used for scenes in Nicolas Cage’s “8 mm” and Adam Sandler’s “Click.” To help make up for losses, Sunnyside has earned pocket money from a few events each year, such as the Historical Society of Long Beach’s annual Cemetery Tour and the occasional filming permit.
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