WORTHINGTON — The Worthington City Council denied a proposed text amendment in a 3-2 vote Tuesday that would have altered city code to allow for a cemetery to be located in the B-3 zone, which is a general business district in the city.
The Worthington Karen Baptist Church, which now meets in Rushmore, owns land in Worthington that they wanted to use for a cemetery. The amendment would have permitted cemeteries by conditional use only in the B-3 district.
Worthington City Planner Matt Selof told the council that after researching the plausibility of such an amendment, they would have two months to make a decision on the request.
Contributed / Mindy Eggers
“Staff did have some concerns with a special state statute that said ‘any private person or any religious corporation may establish a cemetery on the person’s or corporation’s own land,’” Selof told the board. “It seems pretty straightforward so we sought some legal advice on how that interacts with our local zoning requirements. Turns out it’s not a problem for us here, but that research did take some time and resulted in the city taking a 60-day extension on the application.”
Selof said the city’s legal team did some research on the statute, using up most of that 60-day extension. As a result, he told the council they would need to make a decision that night.
“Approval of this text amendment doesn’t approve a cemetery on any land that’s zone B-3,” Selof explained. “It just means that you’re giving any property that’s zone B-3 the ability to apply for a conditional use permit. Then you could very well deny every single one that comes up, but it would at least give you the opportunity to look at each request more specifically.”
Contributed / Mindy Eggers
Councilman Chad Cummings said making the amendment would be useful, if only as a contingency plan.
“There are many areas that already fall in there,” he said. “This is just allowing the opportunity for requests. It gives us more time, more research, more feedback time should they apply.”
Other council members voiced disapproval for the idea.
“I think if you pass the conditional use permit option in a B-3 or any B zone, it’s more difficult to deny a conditional use permit without a pretty in-depth justification of denial when it comes to a conditional use application,” said Councilman Chris Kielblock. “It really clears the way if you approve a conditional use permit in a zone where it hasn’t been an option before to fast-track into approval. I don’t know if I’d ever want the possibility of a cemetery in any business zone that we have. I’m not for this.”
“I’m concerned, similar to what (Chris) said, that our hands will be tied and we won’t really have a legitimate choice ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on this situation,” added Councilwoman Amy Ernst. “The other thing that comes to my mind is right now, the city and the county are subsidizing the care and maintenance of our public cemetery. If — for whatever reason down the road — this one was abandoned, I believe we would feel obligated to do the same. Is that something we want to potentially take on?”
“There’s probably a lot of other zones that are not worthy of a cemetery that are rated conditional use as well,” Mayor Rick Von Holdt pointed out. “What do we do with those, do we take them away? (Especially with) not knowing where this is going to be located at?”
“I completely get it and I somewhat agree,” Cummings responded. “But the fact is that we have cemeteries in some people’s backyards. We have cemeteries where there are business and next-door properties right now, they’re on the edges of town. I get it, I don’t think it’s ideal, but a cemetery is a place of rest, it’s not a place of disturbance.
“I don’t know that we’ve had any altercations or incidents of anything that would disrupt business at any of the current cemeteries,” he added. “I think that this is something that if someone wants to apply for it and then they show that their property isn’t very big compared to what they’re going to have upon it, then we can put some conditionals to it in that instance. We haven’t had any instance other than to say they want to know if there’s an option.”
“I think in a lot of cases it would be hard to challenge these applications, but I think there’s a greater level of consideration to something like a cemetery than a lot of other conditional use requests that come up,” said Selof. “I understand that there’s certainly some fear in denying some conditional use permits sometimes as they’re typically seen as you should kind of just allow them whenever conditions are appropriate, but they do exist because there are sometimes cases where it’s not appropriate and you should deny it.”
Samuel Martin became a reporter for The Globe in September 2023. He has a bachelor’s degree in media studies from the University of Sioux Falls.
