(News archive photo)
Miami Township Trustees discuss cemetery oversight
- Published: August 7, 2026
Plans to prepare the Pine Forest section of Glen Forest Cemetery for burials led to extensive discussion at the Monday, July 20, meeting of the Miami Township Trustees, as board members debated the cost of adding pine needle ground cover to the site — and more broadly, how decisions about Township cemeteries should be made.
The Pine Forest, intended as a natural burial area for cremated remains, was first presented in 2024 and is designed to hold more than 300 plots. Last July, trustees voted 2–1 to allocate an additional $5,000 to complete the section, bringing its projected total cost at the time to about $23,000.
Trustee Marilan Moir voted against the allocation; at the time, she cited concerns about the scale of the planned expansion and long-term maintenance costs. The Township currently maintains two traditional cemeteries, two natural burial areas — including Oak Grove, established in 2022 — a columbarium plaza and a memorial scattering garden.
Trustee Chris Mucher, who developed and has overseen much of the work on the Pine Forest and other cemetery projects, said at the time that the new sections are valuable public assets and that existing plot sales had helped fund their development.
Questions about cemetery planning and spending continued this March, when trustees reviewed cemetery expenses line by line and discussed how projects should be budgeted, tracked and approved.
On Monday, Zoning Administrator Bryan Lucas presented trustees with a list of work he recommended before the Pine Forest could open. That work included clearing weeds and redefining the Pine Forest section’s boundaries, adding pine needles as ground cover and determining how to use fencing materials already purchased.
Lucas said the marked burial area encompasses about 40,000 square feet, and that estimates from several vendors called for 700–800 bales of pine straw to refresh areas that had previously been covered and establish a thicker layer in sections that had not.
The estimates varied, but several totaled between about $7,500 and $14,000, depending on the number and type of bales and whether delivery was included. Lucas recommended a Franklin-area vendor that would allow the Township to begin with one delivery of 465 bales for $4,725, plus an $85 delivery charge, and then decide whether a second delivery was needed.
Trustee Lori Askeland initially moved to proceed with that first delivery, with Moir seconding.
Mucher objected to the number of bales recommended, saying he had cleared and covered most of the section himself last year with the equivalent of about 50 bales. He said the pine needles were intended to form a relatively thin covering, rather than the one-and-a-half- to three-inch layer on which the vendor estimates were based.
“It was just a covering,” he said. “It wasn’t meant to be a blanket.”
He also said he believed spending more than $10,000 on additional pine needles would not be “a fiscally responsible way to finish off this cemetery,” particularly when other proposed landscaping and fencing had not moved forward.
Moir responded that the board had decided collectively not to install 40 ornamental grasses or extend fencing across the back of the section, but had not voted to halt maintenance. She said the question was not whether the Pine Forest should be completed, but how the board authorizes and oversees that work.
The exchange grew into a larger disagreement about Mucher’s long-standing role in cemetery planning. Mucher said the other trustees had removed his ability to make decisions about the Pine Forest and given the work to a Township employee.
“My ideas have been removed from this consideration,” Mucher said.
“No, we’re considering this as a board,” Moir responded. “That’s the difference.”
“Making it collaborative is not taking it away,” Askeland added. “It’s saying this is a full responsibility of the whole board, including new people who need to be brought up to speed with clear information and with budgets that are written out.”
Mucher said he had carried out much of the work planning and launching cemetery expansions in the past because other trustees had not offered to help develop or maintain those expansions. Moir acknowledged that work, but said she believes the cemetery has reached a point at which it needs a management plan that does not depend on the knowledge or labor of one trustee.
“All three of us aren’t going to be here forever,” she said. “We have to reckon with the fact that this needs a management plan, both financially and physically.”
After additional discussion, the trustees settled on using the materials already available — about 40 bales of pine needle cover — before making a purchase.
“It sounds like we are making consensus to get those weeds cleared, use what we’ve got, see what that seems to amount to and then make a decision about the additional needed pine needles,” Moir said.
Lucas is also developing proposed guidelines and updated pricing for the Pine Forest and other cemetery services, with an anticipated completion date of Aug. 15; he proposed a tentative date for beginning plot sales of Sept. 1.
MTFR approaches full staffing
Trustees voted unanimously to hire Ross Higbee and Teresa Himes as part-time firefighter/EMTs at $19.05 per hour.
“With the hiring of those two individuals, I’m pretty comfortable we will be at full staff,” Miami Township Fire-Rescue Chief James Cannell said, noting that MTFR is currently maintaining three-person staffing on more than 90% of its shifts — a goal established by Cannell upon his hiring last year.
MTFR recently began a new schedule under which full-time personnel work 48 hours followed by 96 hours off. Cannell said the transition has been smooth and that department employees have generally responded favorably. The department had completed 742 runs so far this year, averaging more than 3.6 calls per day.
Cannell also reported that a new ambulance is now expected to arrive in mid-August, about a month earlier than previously anticipated.
Zoning fees updated
On the advice of Zoning Administrator Lucas, trustees approved changes to the Township’s zoning fee schedule. A permit for a new accessory dwelling unit, recently added to the Township’s Zoning Resolution, will cost $200; permits for decks, fences, pools and ground-mounted solar installations, which were previously included in the $100 accessory-structure category, will cost $50.
The trustees will not meet Monday, Aug. 3, because the board will not have a quorum. Its next regular meeting is scheduled for Monday, Aug. 17.
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