The meeting will be held at 5:30 p.m. at the Lloyd Andrews City Meeting Hall on Jackson Street.

The three items on the agenda include an amendment to an existing conditional use permit, a rezoning request and a conditional use permit to allow the development of a cemetery adjacent to Crestview, which is located at 489 Smith Church Road.

In a letter contained in the agenda packet, the cemetery, which was first established in 1960, explains the need for the items requested for Thursday evening.

“In July of 1977 Mike and Sandy Showalter acquired the Tavlowe Corporation after the previous owner passed away. We moved here and have maintained the cemetery since,” the letter says. “We have become part of Roanoke Rapids as a family and good stewards of the community.”

The letter notes over the last several years the owners noticed they needed to be able to continue to serve the needs of families in the community. “We created a heritage over the years and realize the children of our owners are now grown up and still live here, and find the space we have available will not continue to serve the needs of our families to be able to have a place of peace knowing that their loved ones will be taken care of in their final resting place with continued upkeep of the property.”

The letter says many family cemeteries are not kept up because of dying out or moving away. “Our cemetery guarantees their loved ones will always be taken care of and they will never have to worry about their grass being cut or not being able to locate their loved ones twenty years from now.”

The property the cemetery seeks for its expansion adjoins the present property line, according to the letter. “We will continue to keep the new property in the same harmony that exists now. It will be used to expand the cemetery with the same standards that we have now.”

The letter says the cemetery owners see no additional increase in traffic and do not believe the expansion will endanger the public health and safety or injure the value of abutting property. “This expansion will not impact any residential property because we already have residents behind us and across the street from us. There is also a business on the west side of our property and a funeral home across the street in front of the cemetery.”

The North Carolina Cemetery Commission has rules and guidelines that Crestview must follow. “We have to uphold these standards to our cemetery because if we ever close the cemetery our perpetual care trust fund will be turned over to the state to maintain the upkeep of the cemetery.”

In a memo to the planning board, Planning and Development Director Kelly Lasky writes in the first matter for consideration Tavlowe, doing business as Crestview Memorial Cemetery, seeks to amend the Villages at Cross Creek planned unit development to subdivide approximately 11 acres from the map and relinquish all ties to the development.

In the second matter tied to the expansion, Tavlowe seeks to change the zoning classification to R-40 residential and the third item is to request a conditional permit to develop the cemetery expansion.

Planning department review of the three requests is favorable, according to the documents in the file.