Toccoa Considering Creating Cemetery Advisory Board

The city of Toccoa is looking at putting together an advisory board to help with the operations at the city cemetery.

Toccoa City Commissioners discussed the matter at a work session on Monday.

Over the last couple of years, staff from the Georgia Mountains Regional Commission has worked to map the city cemetery and computerize those records for the city.

With that in mind, Toccoa City Manager Billy Morse said it was thought that a citizen committee could be helpful in assisting the city with implementing a future vision for the cemetery.

“I sort of had been thinking about it,” said Morse. “It could be a short-term board, in other words with a task, maybe it is a year or whatever long and then they would disband or it could be an ongoing type committee. They would make recommendations back to the commission about policies, procedures, the ordinance, things that are allowed and not going to be allowed at the cemetery.”

Morse went on to say that he thought a five-person board to advise the city commission would be appropriate.

“Maybe each commissioner could come up with one person for the board,” said Morse. “Five, I think is a good number.”

City Commissioner Jeanette Jamieson noted that it is important to get a wide range of people that would cover all demographics in the city, while fellow commissioner Gail Fry said it might be a good idea to reach out to families with large plots at the cemetery.

Also, Morse said having someone from the funeral industry might not be a bad idea.

The commission said it will come up with names for consideration and submit them at a future meeting.

Commissioner Fry said it is important to protect the cemetery moving forward after having all of this work put into mapping and computerizing the records.